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The DOJ is launching a crypto enforcement team

The team will go after "criminal actors" and aims to "dismantle the financial ecosystem" they use to hide the proceeds of crimes, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a speech Wednesday.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco has promised to go after criminals using crypto.

Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

The Justice Department said Wednesday that it's forming a new enforcement team to go after "criminal actors" using cryptocurrencies and related services.

The national cryptocurrency enforcement team will focus on "combating misuse of cryptocurrency" marketplaces and other systems which have been used by criminals to "launder or hide their criminal proceeds," Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a speech at the Aspen Cyber Summit.

"We want to strengthen our capacity to dismantle the financial ecosystem that enables these criminal actors to flourish," she said.

The growth of crypto and related uses of blockchain technologies has also led to an uptick in the use of cryptocurrencies for ransomware, money laundering and other criminal operations.

In June, the Justice Department and the FBI announced that it had recovered $2.3 million in bitcoin ransom paid to DarkSide, the criminal group that hacked Colonial Pipeline.

Monaco also announced a separate initiative to punish government contractors and other companies receiving federal funds that don't properly disclose data breaches.

 Benjamin Pimentel

Benjamin Pimentel ( @benpimentel) covers crypto and fintech from San Francisco. He has reported on many of the biggest tech stories over the past 20 years for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch and Business Insider, from the dot-com crash, the rise of cloud computing, social networking and AI to the impact of the Great Recession and the COVID crisis on Silicon Valley and beyond. He can be reached at bpimentel@protocol.com or via Google Voice at (925) 307-9342.

and
 Issie Lapowsky

Issie Lapowsky ( @issielapowsky) is Protocol's chief correspondent, covering the intersection of technology, politics, and national affairs. She also oversees Protocol's fellowship program. Previously, she was a senior writer at Wired, where she covered the 2016 election and the Facebook beat in its aftermath. Prior to that, Issie worked as a staff writer for Inc. magazine, writing about small business and entrepreneurship. She has also worked as an on-air contributor for CBS News and taught a graduate-level course at New York University's Center for Publishing on how tech giants have affected publishing.

department of justice crypto regulation cryptocurrency
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