US Secret Service Seizes IDR 1.5 Trillion In Crypto Money, Belongs To Criminals?

The US Secret Service is eyeing the flow of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies on the blockchain. (Photo; olieman.eth Unsplash)

JAKARTA – The United States Secret Service (USSS) has not been silent in the midst of the explosion of cryptocurrencies in various circles of the world. The United States Secret Service or USSS, which is a US federal law enforcement agency, managed to seize cryptocurrencies worth IDR 1.5 trillion.

USSS executive, David M. Smith, a few days ago discussed cryptocurrencies in an interview with CNBC. Smith considered that cryptocurrencies are often used for several illegal activities.

For your information, Smith is a senior executive and special agent who currently serves as the 28th Assistant Director of the US Secret Service's Investigative Office, where he leads the agency's global investigative mission, consisting of 161 offices and more than 3,000 employees.

The US Secret Service is responsible for investigating, detecting, and arresting persons known to have violated certain laws relating to the financial system.

"In recent years, digital assets have been increasingly used to facilitate a variety of crimes, including various fraudulent schemes and the use of ransomware", reads a statement from the official US Secret Service website.

Furthermore, Smith explained that Secret Service agents and analysts actively track Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency transactions on the blockchain. According to him, tracking a digital wallet address is like tracking an email address.

"When you follow a cryptocurrency wallet, it's no different than an email address that has multiple correlated identifiers", said Smith.

"And once someone and someone else makes a transaction, and it gets into the blockchain, we have the ability to follow that email address or wallet address, if you want, and track it through the blockchain", the top US Secret Service official said.

According to statistics compiled by USSS, they have seized more than 102 million US dollars (equivalent to IDR 1.5 trillion) in cryptocurrencies since 2015 from criminals in connection with 254 fraud-related investigative cases.

“One of the things about cryptocurrency is that it moves money at a faster pace than traditional formats",  adds Smith.

According to him, the speed of these transactions attracts new consumers and American criminals. "What criminals want to do is make the water cloudy and try to obscure their activities", he said.

"What we want to do is track it down as quickly as possible, as aggressively as possible, in a linear fashion", said Smith.

The assistant director explained that once the Secret Service detected illegal activity, it worked to “dig deeper into the transactions and deconstruct” them.

"You sent me something bad in the email, I know there is some criminal activity associated with that email address, I can deconstruct, find whatever small information you used when you first logged in or signed up for that email address", he concluded.

In addition, Smith also revealed that criminals are also humans. That is, they are also concerned about the volatility of Bitcoin and altcoins. Hence many of them convert BTC and several other cryptocurrencies to stablecoins or stable coins whose price is tied to the dollar such as USDT, USDC, BUSD, and others.

“Because, you know, criminals, they're human too. They want to avoid some of the market volatility associated with some of the major coins", said Smith, as reported by Bitcoin.com News.