DOJ Appoints Director to Newly Created National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team

The Department of Justice has announced that Eun Young Choi has been selected to serve as the director of the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET).

Choi is a career prosecutor who has focused much of her work on catching cybercriminals. Choi served at the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York as a law clerk. Her career with the DOJ continued as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

As the new director of the NCET, Choi will continue her work in the cybersecurity space by targeting both cybercriminals and nation-states including Iran and North Korea. The NCET will also focus on crypto exchanges as well as mixer services, the tools used to improve the anonymity of crypto transactions.

The new appointment was announced by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. Monaco stressed the importance of going after cybercriminals who target cryptocurrencies. “We’re going to make it our business to go after them and get those proceeds back and make it clear to them that they can’t hide,” She explained.

The rise in public interest in cryptocurrencies has been accompanied by a rise in cyberattacks that target cryptocurrency as the ransom payment of choice. Bitcoin tends to be the top coin of choice by these cybercriminals as they execute their illicit activities. In a January report by the blockchain analytics firm, Chainalysis, roughly 14 billion in cryptocurrencies were stolen as a result of illicit activities during 2021.

In announcing the news, the Justice Department’s Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. shared, “With the rapid innovation of digital assets and distributed ledger technologies, we have seen a rise in their illicit use by criminals who exploit them to fuel cyberattacks and ransomware and extortion schemes; traffic in narcotics, hacking tools and illicit contraband online; commit thefts and scams, and launder the proceeds of their crimes.”

More recently, a New York couple was accused of laundering 119,754 Bitcoin after the coins were initially stolen in 2016. While the couple has not been accused of the actual hack, authorities detail they tried to launder the coins which are now worth a whopping $3.6 billion. Authorities described the scheme as a record-shattering amount, digital or otherwise.

As the world of cryptocurrency continues to gain popularity and is likely here to stay, this new task force aims to keep digital currencies from being used in illicit activities and vows to “follow the money.”

Following her appointment, Choi shared, “The NCET will play a pivotal role in ensuring that as the technology surrounding digital assets grows and evolves, the department in turn accelerates and expands its efforts to combat their illicit abuse by criminals of all kinds.”