By Joanna Summers, VP of Public Sector at Valid8 Financial.
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Cryptocurrency has gone mainstream, yet it remains a preferred channel for criminals due to its speed, pseudonymity, and borderless nature. The FBI’s 2024 Internet Crime Report documented over $5.8 billion in losses from cryptocurrency investment fraud alone, often involving pig butchering schemes. Separately, a 2025 investigation by The New York Times and dozens of global news outlets traced at least $28 billion tied to illicit activity (from scams, hacks, extortion, and state-linked cyber operations) flowing through major crypto exchanges over the prior two years.
While crypto enables rapid, cross-border transfers that often bypass traditional banking compliance, criminals must eventually “cash out” to spend proceeds on real-world assets like real estate, luxury goods, or vehicles, all of which require fiat currency through legacy financial institutions. This reentry point, or “off-ramp,” into the regulated banking system is where investigations gain traction, shifting focus from pseudo-anonymous digital wallets to verifiable transaction records.
Even so, many law enforcement agencies lack the specialized training and tools to effectively pursue these trails, especially when cryptocurrency is involved. Investigators need streamlined capabilities to map the full flow of funds, including crypto-to-fiat conversions, into clear, court-admissible evidence that supports convictions and asset forfeiture.
Crypto cases are often relegated to the “too hard” pile
Money keeps criminal organizations alive, but it also leaves a trail. Following the money enables investigators to transcend geographical and jurisdictional borders to expose the entire criminal network and legally seize assets, cutting off the funding that fuels these enterprises.
Financial evidence provides deterministic, reliable results that are consistent and reproducible, functioning more like a rule-based system than probabilistic AI. This insight exposes the structure and scale of even the most distributed and digitally savvy criminal networks. Transaction data forms an objective, timestamped trail that unmasks the full scope of these organizations.
Today, that money trail increasingly runs through digital assets. With cryptocurrency, the transaction record resides on public, immutable ledgers, ensuring every analysis of the same inputs yields the same irrefutable conclusions. The core challenge for investigators remains insufficient time, tools and training to review and interpret this data effectively. Many agencies have only one crypto specialist, leading to backlogged cases. Smaller offices often have no dedicated support at all, causing these cases to languish.
Cases involving cryptocurrency are not fundamentally different from other financial and fraud investigations. The money eventually moves through traditional banking channels, meaning law enforcement can track it like any other transaction. But to do so effectively, investigators need simpler, more streamlined financial analysis capabilities to follow the money and expose the criminal network.
Turning Financial Evidence Analysis into a Standard Practice
Reviewing financial evidence should be routine in investigations. Asset recovery depends on it. However, there are many hurdles, including:
- Data volume: The sheer amount of financial transactions is staggering. Investigators wade through years of statements from dozens of institutions, including peer-to-peer payment histories, check and deposit slip images, brokerage accounts and cryptocurrency exchanges. Law enforcement must obtain, review and interpret all of it.
- System fragmentation: Privacy laws and reporting mandates hinder quick information sharing from financial institutions. Meanwhile, law enforcement remains siloed: Local, state and federal agencies have different tools, priorities and access levels. International laws add complexity, as many countries have weak regulations or delay cooperation with foreign subpoenas. Crypto enables criminals to quickly and repeatedly move funds through these uncooperative jurisdictions.
- Analysis: Once data is in hand, investigators - often trained in tactical operations - are expected to double as financial analysts. Preparing these massive datasets requires extensive manual effort: sorting, data entry, verification and reconciliation. This groundwork alone can consume weeks or months amid competing caseloads and tight deadlines. Investigators then confront disorganized spreadsheets with no executive summary, no highlighted anomalies, just rows of transactions where critical patterns may be buried or overlooked.
New technology advancements make it possible to conduct financial investigations routinely by automating data preparation and analysis. With automation, the mountain of financial documents becomes a comprehensive, verified transaction history in hours rather than weeks.
AI-powered platforms can now analyze financial evidence to highlight suspicious or atypical transactions and present the red flags in a way all stakeholders can understand. Investigators don’t have to know every money-laundering method and review every line item to find a lead. Instead, AI maps the entire money trail, including where crypto-derived funds converge with traditional financial systems.
In just a few days, investigators can build an objective narrative strong enough to prosecute an entire criminal enterprise - not just isolated actors like a drug dealer or scammer. These insights also provide law enforcement with the evidentiary foundation for asset seizure: freezing accounts, recovering funds, and depriving criminal enterprises of their ill-gotten gains.
As criminal networks grow more sophisticated and digital, law enforcement needs the tools and training to follow the money with the same precision that criminals use to hide it. Jurisdictional and digital boundaries shouldn’t limit investigations when criminals themselves recognize none. Following the money erases those borders and severs the financial lifelines that sustain entire operations.
About the author
Joanna Summers is a Crypto and Asset Forfeiture Specialist with extensive experience in digital asset management and forfeiture. Joanna is the VP of Public Sector at Valid8 Financial. With over a decade of experience in the sector - including nearly 10 years at the U.S. Marshals Service Asset Forfeiture Division’s Complex Assets Unit - Joanna pioneered the DOJ's first cryptocurrency forfeiture processes, starting with the landmark Silk Road case.
She managed portfolios exceeding $1 billion, directed cryptocurrency liquidations, scaled security protocols, and authored standard operating procedures. She also develops and delivers training programs for both domestic and international law enforcement, both during her government service and in her subsequent roles at a tech start-up and as a consultant. Joanna lives in DC and is also the Mid-Atlantic Chapter President for IAFCI.
Joanna holds TRM Crypto Fundamentals and Certified Investigator certifications, an M.S. in Finance from Johns Hopkins University, and a B.A. from the University of Maryland at College Park.
