US Justice Department Will Double Its Crypto Team To Target Ransomware Crimes

The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has said it will double the number of employees in its crypto crime team, established two years ago. The number of acting prosecutors in the unit will more than double, and a new leader will be found.

On July 20, the DoJ published Remarks by Nicole M. Argentieri, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In his speech, Argentieri announced the merger of two DoJ Criminal Division teams – the Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) and the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team (NCET).

After joining the CCIPS, the NCET will continue its activities in the investigation and prosecution of criminal offenses involving the misuse of cryptocurrencies. Calling NCET “a hugely successful startup”, Argentieri emphasized that merging with a larger structure would provide it with new additional resources.

The number of Criminal Division attorneys available to work on criminal cryptocurrency cases would “more than double,” as any CCIPS attorney could potentially be assigned to work on an NCET case. NCET will also provide access to computer crime and intellectual property work.

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The structure will get a new acting director. Argentieri thanked the inaugural director of NCET, Eun Young Choi, for his work and named Claudia Queiroz as the new head of the team. Queiroz, a former assistant attorney for the US Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California, has been one of the original deputy directors of the NCET since its inception.

The immediate task for the new “super-charged” unit will be to tackle ransomware crimes. The NCET will focus on tracking criminals through their crypto payments, freezing or confiscating them “before they move to Russia and other ransomware hotspots”.

The NCET was launched in 2021 as a part of the DoJ’s Cryptocurrency Enforcement Framework. In May 2023, the former director, Eun Young Choi, said that the department was focusing on thefts and hacks involving DeFi and “specifically Chain Bridge”.

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