To overcome the increasing cybercrime and money laundering through crypto assets, the United States proposed a bill to enhance the powers of secret service agencies to investigate crimes involving digital assets. The steps taken to stop financial institution fraud, unlicensed money-transmitting enterprises, and structured transitions in the country.
To stop the illegal transfer of money and the use of crypto by criminals, the Combating Money Laundering in Cybercrime Act of 2024 is proposed.
Senator Masto emphasized the serious threat to national security from funding illegal activities with digital assets. The bill requires a Government Accountability Report (GAR) within a year to assess how well law enforcement is detecting and stopping money laundering.
Empowering secret service: Cybercrime and money laundering
The increasing crypto crimes in the current time lead to upgrade the powers. To identify and eliminate money laundering activities and illegal transfers of funds Grassley identifies the need for enhanced threat assessments.
Since 2004, the Secret Service’s Cyber Investigative Section has been fighting against cybercrime. To improve cooperation and expertise in investigating financially motivated cybercrime, the agency created Cyber Fraud Task Forces in 2020 by combining its Electronic Crimes Task Forces and Financial Crimes Task Forces.
Increased efforts and cross-party approval
The political parties of the United States identify the need for new guidelines to minimize the risk linked with the rapidly growing cryptocurrency. Nine lawmakers proposed the same measures discussed in CMLC2024 in January.
With the new amendments proposed, Mastro is addressing cryptocurrency and money laundering crimes for the second time this year. In September 2023 she filed a bill to cover all loopholes and to guarantee all crypto businesses abide by the law which is involved in counter-terrorism funding and anti-money laundering.
Chainalysis estimates that over $22 billion in cryptocurrency was illegally transferred through addresses in 2023, which is about 30% less than the $31.5 billion laundered in 2022.
The US Treasury emphasized that cash is the ancient method for money laundering in the US, even with the large sums involved. However, in recent years, agencies like the US Treasury, Department of Justice, SEC, and CFTC have been actively fighting to overcome cryptocriminals.
