The Secret Service, best known for guarding the President, is expanding its efforts to combat cryptocurrency crimes on a global scale. According to a recent Bloomberg News report, the agency's Global Investigative Operations Center (GIOC) has been quietly building a robust operation to tackle digital financial crimes.

Over the past decade, the GIOC has made some impressive seizures, netting close to $400 million in digital assets. The majority of these funds are held in a single cold-storage wallet, making the Secret Service one of the largest crypto custodians in the world.

The operation is overseen by Kali Smith, a lawyer who directs the Secret Service's cryptocurrency strategy. Under her guidance, the team has conducted training workshops for law enforcement agencies in more than 60 countries. The agency focuses on jurisdictions where criminals take advantage of a lack of oversight or residency-for-sale programs.

The Secret Service offers these training sessions for free, with the aim of empowering law enforcement to tackle crypto-related crimes effectively. According to Smith, some law enforcement agencies have reported significant progress after just one week of training, with officers saying they didn't even realize the scope of the problem in their own country.

Unfortunately, cryptocurrency-related scams are becoming increasingly prevalent. In the United States alone, Americans lost $9.3 billion to crypto-related scams last year, a 66% increase over the previous year, according to FBI data. These scams have also led to real-life violence, such as in the case of two investors in New York who were charged with kidnapping and torturing a friend to access his digital wallet.

To recover stolen funds, the Secret Service has turned to industry players like Coinbase and Tether. One notable recovery involved $225 million in Tether's USDT stablecoin, which was tied to romance-investment scams.

Recently, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global organization targeting money laundering and other financial crimes, warned that the increasing adoption of stablecoins and other virtual assets could amplify illicit finance risks. The use of stablecoins by North Korean agents, terrorist financiers, drug traffickers, and other bad actors has risen in recent times, with most on-chain illicit activity now involving stablecoins.

According to FATF, just 3.8% of the $1.46 billion stolen by North Korea in a hack of cryptocurrency exchange Bybit has been recovered, highlighting the significant challenge of tracking and recovering digital assets. The organization also noted a "significant uptick" in the use of virtual assets in financial crime.

This growing threat highlights the need for governments and law enforcement agencies to stay vigilant and adapt their strategies to combat crypto-related crimes. With the Secret Service's expanded efforts, it seems that the tide is turning against those who would misuse cryptocurrency for illicit purposes.