FATF has rolled out their most comprehensive guidance on asset recovery and the entire digital asset industry should take notice. In this episode, Jim Lee (Global Head of Capacity Building, Chainalysis) talks with both, Aidan Larkin (Co-Founder & CEO, Asset Reality) and Hugo Hoyland (Chief Strategy Officer, Asset Reality) and leverages their transformative experiences and efforts toward developing efficient solutions for managing seized digital assets.
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Public Key Episode 175: Seizing Crypto: A New Frontier in Global Asset Recovery
FATF has rolled out their most comprehensive guidance on asset recovery and the entire digital asset industry should take notice.
In this episode, Jim Lee (Global Head of Capacity Building, Chainalysis) talks with both, Aidan Larkin (Co-Founder & CEO, Asset Reality) and Hugo Hoyland (Chief Strategy Officer, Asset Reality) and leverages their transformative experiences and efforts toward developing efficient solutions for managing seized digital assets.
They outline the significant challenges investigators face worldwide, spearhead efforts to streamline asset recovery through innovative platforms such as Asset Reality, and highlight best practices reinforced by recent guidance from international bodies like the FATF.
The trio discuss the importance of public private partnerships to bridge knowledge gaps and coordinate cross border recovery operations effectively, and highlight partnerships with Operation Shamrock and the critical role that swift and capable asset management plays in the modern fight against financial crime.
Quote of the episode
” Everyone agrees we should take assets off bad people, but the actual processes and procedures vary. So what one country does is different than another. And then you just have lots and lots of additional challenges. Then you layer on something like virtual assets.” – Aidan Larkin (Co-Founder & CEO, Asset Reality)
Minute-by-minute episode breakdown
2 | Challenges and Innovations in Global Asset Recovery
5 | FATF Guidance and Importance of Seizures and Forfeitures in Investigations
10 | Improving Global Asset Recovery Through Effective Management Practices
14 | Challenges and Strategies in Digital Asset Seizure and Management
19 | Solutions in Government Asset Seizure Management
25 | Importance of Public Private Partnerships in Law Enforcement
29 | Private Sector’s Role in Asset Recovery and Law Enforcement
32 | Global Success in Digital Asset Seizures and Financial Crime Expertise
39 | Complexities of Crypto Asset Seizure and Forfeiture
43 | Government Strategies for Liquidating Digital and Physical Assets
46 | Improving Global Asset Recovery and Standardizing Seized Asset Data
51 | Operation Shamrock and Asset Recovery in Crypto Investigations
Related resources
Check out more resources provided by Chainalysis that perfectly complement this episode of the Public Key.
- Website: Asset Reality: One platform to seize and manage all assets
- Publication: FATF releases detailed guidance to help practitioners recover criminal assets
- Announcement: Asset Reality and Operation Shamrock Form Strategic Alliance to Build Law Enforcement Infrastructure to Seize & Manage Crypto Assets
- Article: Operation Destabilise: NCA exposes billion-dollar money laundering network that purchased bank to fund Russian war effort
- Blog: U.S., U.K., and Australia Target Russian Cybercrime Infrastructure Supporting Global Ransomware Operations; U.S. Targets Crypto Laundering of Global Drug Trafficking Network
- Blog: FATF Issues Comprehensive Guidance on Virtual Asset Recovery: What Law Enforcement Needs to Know
- YouTube: Chainalysis YouTube page
- Twitter: Chainalysis Twitter: Building trust in blockchain
Speakers on today’s episode
- Jim Lee ** Host** (Global Head of Capacity Building, Chainalysis)
- Aidan Larkin (Co-Founder & CEO, Asset Reality)
- Hugo Hoyland (Chief Strategy Officer, Asset Reality)
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Transcript
Jim
All right, Aidan, Hugo, great to see you, and great to have you join us here on the podcast. I know, I think the last time I seen you in person was at the Fourth of July party at the Embassy in London. So it’s great seeing you guys. I know you’re on the road quite a bit, and really appreciate you joining us here today on the podcast. I know, Aidan, you’ve been on the podcast before. Hugo, I think this is your first time. But just by way of a quick background, can I have each of you just introduce yourselves to our audience here, and what led you to building one of the most important puzzle pieces in global recovery efforts?
Aidan
Well, look, thanks so much for the intro. As I said, I had the chance to speak on the public key, I think probably nearly two years ago. It’s crazy how time flies, but I was a criminal investigator and the UK’s equivalent of IRS CI coincidentally, and HMRC, and then the UK does not, or did not have, until this year, an Asset Management Office. So there was no US Marshal style function, no central agency for managing assets. So as a private contractor, I spent sort of over six years managing the UK seized asset portfolio, everything from cars to boats to planes and horses and everything in between that gets seized and just accidentally got called upon when the UK did one of its first Bitcoin seizures and Monero seizures, and that led into relationships with different agencies across Europe. And we just got to see that there was no system to manage and recover digital assets or all assets. I mean, the way you’ve got fabulous analytic tools that help people trace on a blockchain. After that, tracing was carried out. There wasn’t really those tools to make it simple to generate wallet addresses for all the different types of crypto assets and then manage them, thinking about chain of custody, inventory reporting. Most people look after these assets for years in many countries. So I was during that sort of first couple of seizures, and seeing the scale of what the potential challenges could be, was where the sort of the idea came from to have a dedicated company to build a seized asset platform, and it was through that journey getting to know the different investigators around the world and the people that were at the coalface of these cases in 2016 2017 is how I actually met Hugo, and I’ll hand it over to Hugo, because I’ll not do a good enough job in introducing him.
Hugo
Super thanks. Aidan, yes, very much. An investigator by background, digital assets started coming across our desk at crawl with investigations into hacks, first breaches, exchange collapses, and as Aidan says, at the time, we were very much thinking of crypto as just another asset, which is great when you’re trying to prioritize your investigation, trying to prioritize where you look at and because it’s just another asset, you need to look at your investigation holistically. You can’t just focus on the blockchain analytics. You have to look at the open source, you have to look at the digital internet infrastructure. You have to look at the human source, public records, everything to be able to crack your case. But what I’ve also seen, really over the last 10 years in crypto is just how much more complex digital assets have got. I was fortunate enough to start when we were just tracing Bitcoin, and gosh, Bitcoin is easy to trace and it’s easy to investigate when you compare it to some of the stuff that we’re all coming across now. And I think that theme we’re very much seeing in the seizure in the management landscape, and it’s really one of the reasons asset reality exists, is to help others navigate the complexity of seizing and managing digital assets, which has got very, very intense at the moment.
Jim
No thanks for that really timely podcast here. You know, let’s just jump right into it. You know, all things asset recovery. And maybe one of you can just provide the audience with a current state of asset recovery as you see it, you know, like, what’s working? What are the challenges? You know, who are the main stakeholders? Maybe some of that you can touch on.
Aidan
Yeah, sure. I’m happy to have a first sort of pass on it. And I’m interested to get your perspective. Jim as no almost 30 years in IRS CI I’m gonna, I’m gonna interview you a little bit through this podcast as well. And she goes here to answer all the technical stuff that I’ll not be able to answer. The way I try and think about it is that every single person listening to this podcast will have heard the term, or they’ll hurt a politician or a police chief saying, we want to make sure crime does not pay. Crime does not pay has been a slogan, and making sure crime does not pay has been a slogan that was actually created by J Edgar Hoover, which I found out on my nerdy, deep dive into the sort of the history of all of this. And no for decades, albeit nearly a century, we’ve been trying to take the profits out of crime, and that’s pretty much what Asset Recovery is. It is the ability to take the investigation and then add that layer of disruptions, deterrence, denial, depriving them of their ill gotten gains. So it’s fundamentally taking the assets and giving them back to the rightful owners. That could be a victim of a scam. A brilliant podcast recently with Aaron West, no hearing about the victim’s perspective. It could be a corrupt dictator steals from government, so the actual government is the victim. And then there’s just like all of us, there’s no the collective society. If you have a massive narcotics guy making billions. Is the people that suffer is society. So often, when we say getting money back to the victim, the victim can be a range of different things. So that’s kind of what Asset Recovery is meant to achieve. There’s lots of different legal definitions, whether it’s corruption proceeds or victim cases, but holistically, in sort of public and private sector, an insolvency practitioner getting assets back for the benefit of creditors like the FTX collapse, that’s an asset recovery action to go after those assets that have been put beyond reach, sell off assets to pay creditors to everything that we see that involves the recovery is what this asset recovery sector is. But for decades now, there have been challenges, and the big challenge, really is just how fractured and siloed. It is because in different jurisdictions with different legal models, there isn’t that uniform agreement. Everyone agrees we should take assets off bad people, but the actual processes and procedures vary. So what one country does is different than another, and then you just have lots and lots of additional challenges. Then you layer on something like virtual assets. So what we’ve just seen over the last couple of years now is desperation to try and improve Asset Recovery, because globally, the statistics make for pretty grim reading. I mean, it’s something like less than 1% and I know we’ll talk about it a little bit later on, this infamous 1% stat, but whatever the figure is we don’t recover a lot of the assets, and $6 trillion is the estimated amount of illicit finance that flows around the world. So it’s why asset reality exists. If we can make it a little bit easier to seize assets and give people the software and the tools that they need, we can try and make a dent and try and improve asset recovery. The main stakeholders are anyone who’s involved in that, like kill chain. So you’ve got the frontline officers and the investigators doing the seizing and case building. You’ve got the prosecutors who are trying the cases and the judiciary and the sort of the legal system that goes around that. Then you’ve got the people that actually hold the assets, the storage providers, the valuers, the maintenance guys, the asset managers. Some countries like the US has a US Marshals function, an asset management function dedicated so but again, it’s the inconsistency around the world that leads to a lot of the issues. But what did you see? I’m keen to hear your perspective, and I mean, you were on the other side of the table, literally being that Chief. What were some of the challenges you saw specifically, sort of in the US side, when seizing, liquidating assets, things like that.
Jim
You sound like a 30 year investigator, a financial investigator.
Aidan
I’m a grumpy old man, basically, right now
Jim
thinking to myself, as you’re talking Yes, yes and yeah. So yeah, spending 30 years at IRS criminal investigation, you know, by the way, that’s the only federal agency in the United States that dedicates 100% of its time on financial investigations. You know, the vision views, and I view seizures and forfeitures as like a critical and strategic consideration of every investigation. Well, in many instances, you know, fraudsters are more concerned about losing their money than spending time in prison. And I often, yeah, I often get into that debate with different people. I mean, there’s pros and cons to everything, but that’s generally what I see and when I’m talking, when I talk about seizures and forfeitures, another thing that not everybody has a legislation for is both civil and criminal forfeitures. You know, generally speaking, for those that wonder civil seizures, there’s typically no person or entity being charged, versus a criminal seizure, where you do see criminal charges. So when I think about seizures, I think about the importance where it involves you named them earlier. That’s why I’ve seen Yes, yes and yes. Cash, real estate, jewelry, think you mentioned horses or animals in general. And you know, crypto, anything. And I have always viewed the seizure and forfeiture tools as a critical way to disrupt criminal enterprises in sticking, you know, with crypto. You know, with my thoughts, seizing illicit crypto really deprives criminals and criminal organization profits. You know, which weakens, you know, their financial stability of any you know, well, organized crime, terror networks. You know, criminal you know, cyber syndicates. I also, one thing I always thought of here is seizures actually create deterrence. Especially publicized seizures is, you know, they demonstrate that, you know, law enforcement can actually trace and recover digital assets, you know, which deters other bad actors from, you know, using crypto to hide wealth or simply try to introduce it into the introduce illicit income into the financial system strategically. However, seizures don’t just hurt individual actors so they disrupt broader illicit infrastructure, such as darknet markets, mixers, unregulated exchanges that rely on confidence in anonymous transactions, and you’re literally taking the capital off them. Yeah, and just a thought that they’re untouchable. I think seizures help support victim restitution. Obviously, confiscated crypto, you know, can be liquidated and used to compensate victims, you know, helping to restore those losses. You know, we’re generally speaking, the most vulnerable are usually the one. Is impacted, and that becomes a very credible component for law enforcement in many jurisdictions, you know, as it demonstrates that law enforcement officers are there to protect the missions and the citizens they serve. And I think maybe the one other thing that I think about, well, there’s many but this conversation could probably go on and on, but seizures, you know, create opportunities for operational funding to support law enforcement budgets in many jurisdictions. You know, keep it in mind that not all jurisdiction or departments are fortunate enough to be able to benefit in some way from seizures, but many are able to take advantage of seizures and forfeitures for operational purposes. So you know, in my humble opinion, it’s a critical part of any financial investigation, maybe before we jump into the amazing work you’re doing at asset reality, fat F just released a 340 page document Asset Recovery guidance and best practices, which is aligned with their recent prioritization of global asset recovery. So maybe I it might be good that one of you, or both, whichever, however you want to handle this, can share some highlights that caught your attention in that report.
Aidan
Yeah, this has been the thing that’s been like such a long time coming. The last guidance document, I think, was 2012 and one of the reasons that we created asset reality was because we knew that no, as Bob Dylan said, No, the changes are common type thing like we knew this was coming down the line, and fat F has done a really good job at reaching out to different stakeholders. I know you guys are involved in it. We give views on the consultation documents, and they really did sit around a table with practitioners. I actually moderated Jared Cooper on a panel at the Interpol fire sessions where we sat down with guys, with Stephen yerger from Australia, and then Toyin from Cayman. And this was the whole point of all of these sessions, was to just irk out like what works in your jurisdiction? Let’s get it all down into a document. I know crypto is like dog years, so if you’re looking at 2012 for guidance, well, there wasn’t really any crypto seizures in 2012 so now you’ve got this document that basically over 340 pages, talks about, you know how to improve asset recovery, and the bet we made as known as founding asset reality was, if you want to improve Asset Recovery outcomes, ie, you want to and it’s not about policing for profit. It’s about generating the returns for victims in society. If you want to improve Asset Recovery, an easy like low hanging fruit, is get better at Asset Management. If you seize a car and you let it sit for seven years, there is not going to be a lot of value to return. So the victims of that Ponzi scheme or the speed boat that’s been in the marina for 10 years or five years, so one of the things they’ve really zoned in on is effective asset management. It’s mentioned something like 150 times over the 300 odd page report, and it’s because every single person that works in law enforcement or works in insolvency knows the cases that the dusty car in the compound. They know about the complicated asset that didn’t get recovered because there wasn’t anywhere to put it. And so this really goes into different countries, sharing different case studies about what works for them, what doesn’t work for them, and then you get, as you mentioned, sometimes it’s things like legal frameworks. So one of the big things you touched on earlier is some countries don’t have non conviction based forfeiture. And I think actually it was one of our podcasts with Amanda wick. She was telling us it comes from Old like admiralty law. As a former DOJ prosecutor, it was like, No, the pirate ship turns up with all the stuff on board, and, well, how do you get the stuff back? Like, what’s the legal mechanism? And that’s why you’ve got these cases in the US where it’s like no DOJ versus the United States, versus one Bitcoin or versus an address. You’re actually taking an action against the asset because the asset has been used in a crime or illicit offenses. So in the new guidance, it talks about, you’ve got to have this toolkit. You’ve got to have a system to manage seized assets. You’ve got to have better legal infrastructure in place to go after and do things like non conviction based forfeiture, and there’s just so many other things that they try and pack in there. But Noel, I’ll let you come in on some of the more technical language that they’ve brought out. But what I love to see is the constant repeat of, you’ve got to do things more quickly. You’ve got to secure things and then, because, as we all know, if you don’t move quickly in digital asset recovery, you’re dead in the water.
Hugo
This is where you can kind of see two of the main areas of focus that we have. Aiden very much likes talking about asset management. I’m always a little bit more interested in actually grabbing the stuff in the first place, the actual seizure. What I like the most about the guidance is they’ve come back to some of the language that they shared a couple of years ago about seizing expeditiously, being able to quickly, quickly, quickly react, especially with the emergence of digital assets as a seizable asset, because really, that is the most important thing about crypto, I think, is the speed at which you can transact. There’s also a recognition in the guidance, which is great, that not all seizures are created equal. There are some seizures that a financial investigator who has been trained on a blockchain analytics platform and. Has identified and trace some assets to an exchange, a third party custodian. There are some cases like that one, where the seizure can very easily be affected by that investigator working, obviously, with prosecutors, etc, because it’s not a very technical piece of work. This is like seizing cash from a bank in a bank account. You’re effectively saying I’ve traced the funds here. Can I have some disclosure? Great, I’ve taken a look at the information in the account. Oh, there’s a balance. I’m going to go off get a seizure order. I’ll come back with that. Can you just freeze the assets in the meantime, that’s not a technical piece of work. There’s a recognition in the very, very practical guidance that those cases are very different to other cases, like identifying or handling a seed phrase or hardware wallet that’s identified on site when executing a search and seizure order. For example, there’s a recognition that being able to see those identifiers and deal with those identifiers requires training. It requires an understanding of that first contact awareness they use that exact phrase to know that, okay, I might be looking at something that controls value, and if I don’t act not soon now, if I don’t act right now, then that value may be lost. And it’s no longer enough to just have the crypto person in the office who’s a couple of hours away that you can call when you’re a seizing agent having just burst the door down, you don’t have a couple of hours. You need to quickly take custody of that asset right now. And I know we’ll talk a little bit more about custody and some of the guidance, I think Aidan that they’ve given around how to select a custody technology partner to be able to have the coverage that you need. But really, for me, it’s all about that recognition that seizures are not created equal, and I know this firsthand. I’m an investigator by background and by training, and gosh, it took me a lot of time to realize just how different to investigating seizing is. It’s a very, very different skill set.
Jim
A ton of good points, a couple reactions, taking a couple of notes. I love the pirate ship analogy. Number one, lot of good points both of you make.
Aidan
Why do you think we call asset reality?
Jim
I think a couple of behind the scenes discussions, you know, that I’ve been involved in, you know, the dusty car, the dusty vehicle, you know, sitting there for seven years certainly drives a lot of conversation. You know, in addition to seizing apartment complexes where there’s tenants there, and cryptos brings a whole new complexity, you know, to what’s actually happening there, which what you both just laid out, especially the speed aspect of it. So, yeah, just again, I’ll probably say it 100 times here, but just a lot to think about. And I think, you know, thinking about, you know, well, the report, I mean, there’s a lot to dive into, and there’s a number of best practices, you know, that cover a wide range of issues that authorities can focus on. But I’m curious, based on your experiences, where do you feel that the biggest bottlenecks and challenges will be for law enforcement who’s attempting to implement some of these best practices?
Aidan
We’re already getting know, a lot of contact from this report that no on the consultation document that was issued a few months ago. So people have been knowing this was coming down the line. And I think that you can already see those countries that are about to do their mutual evaluations are already getting in touch with us, saying, Hey, you have a system. Can you help us? Because no one can deal with this like expeditiously seize secure assets earliest opportunity. You can’t do that manually. You need a system simply. But I think, I think where the with the big bottleneck that we’re seeing now is, if you don’t have the whole system approach, to use the cliche it is going to feel and what I mean by that is, let’s say, for example, you say, right, we’ve seen the guidance. We’re going to go out, we’re going to buy asset realities platform, we’re going to buy analytic tools, we’re going to train a bunch of people. We are going to go on a rampage for the next six months. We’re going to seize everything we get our hands on. If you don’t have the legislation that allows you to make decisions over those assets, you are just creating an enormous potential asset management problem. We’ve seen very practical cases like this, where governments have seized fleets of cars and as you said at the very beginning, Jim, all for the right reasons. Most of these criminals are on their third go by in prison sentences like it’s taking the cars, taking the cash, taking the houses off them, is what has the big societal impact. And when you actually take them all and then you see the conversations taking place like, where are we actually going to keep all of these things? Where are we going to put that $200 million vessel? Who’s going to pay the $1 million dollars a month and no mooring fees for that thing. As you said, Who’s going to deal with the tenants of the hotel? We’ve been involved in the seizures of television companies, radio stations, internet service providers, a member of staff has fallen over and broken a bone, and now they want to sue the receiver. There’s just so much asset management issues, and we’ve seen some of the jurisdictions that we’ve supported, and it’s in the public domain. I think Seychelles and others know, there’s some in the Caribbean, St Vincent and grenadine, small jurisdiction, but they very quickly brought out legislation to match their ambitions in the resource investment. So making it very clear, we’re going to have a person who’s responsible for the assets in our government, could be an asset management office, could be an agency, and that person is allowed. To sell depreciating assets. That person is allowed to sell and deal with volatile assets, as in virtual currency. They don’t have to worry about, how do I manage this stuff for seven years? It’s seize it, get it into immediate custody, convert it into a more stable asset, and then manage the cash in a bank account. Then it’s an inventory problem, and that’s where we’re seeing the best examples is when they marry up the resource commitment by creating accountability and areas of responsibility, but giving them the legislation. And I think Netherlands, New Zealand, Luxembourg, there are a few that jump spring to mind that have really nailed that, where the people who are responsible for Asset Management make the asset management decisions, whereas other countries, it’s kind of at the mercy of that prosecutor getting that judge to agree. And there’s a bit of a postcode, zip code lottery that tends to happen around the world. So I can foresee a lot of furious paper rustling is gonna take place after these reports come out. There’s gonna be a lot of knee jerk, big actions, big trainings, people buying software. People bounce just like 2019 fat F did the whole blockchain and the VASP and travel rule guidance came out. Now we saw the explosion of no other blockchain analytic companies and people trying to sell all sorts of compliance screening tools because people were in the market, because fat F said you had to have a thing. So I worry there’s going to be a little bit of knee jerk without sitting back and going, do we actually have the people or the resources? Like the Netherlands spend millions every year. There’s a reason they have some of the best systems for managing assets, but they invest in it. And I think some people might find that out the hard way, and then you’re in the press because you’ve damaged the asset, or you’ve lost the asset. The assets have been stolen by the officer who was seizing them because the controls weren’t in place. So having a whole system view, and even if you just start off small, but make sure incrementally you’re making progress on all fronts. Is the best way to avoid a bottleneck.
Jim
Yeah, no, agreed. And I’ve seen that insider threat issue with officers, you know, taking advantage of, you know, weak internal controls within departments. So, yeah, yeah. A lot of good, lot of lot of stuff, lot of stuff to unpack there, and some good.
Aidan
But if I can throw it back on you Jim, we know that we’re always going to have, like, public and private sector partnerships, and I’m obviously, we’re all saying this now as people in the private sector that come from law enforcement backgrounds, but I do often get offended when people are saying, No, we can’t involve the private sector. And they say it on a zoom call. Did you build the video conferencing? No. Did you build the MacBook you’re currently using today? Did you build the Toyota you drove to work in? It’s like there has to be a How did you feel about that in all those years at IRS CI, and what was your approach to private sector partners? Was it we can’t build it, we must bring them in, or they add value, and we’re going to work with them collaboratively. I’d just love to know, like, what the insider, sort of senior officer viewpoint was in that it’s a
Jim
great point. It’s one of the reasons why I came over a company like chainalysis, was because of the public private partnership. And I know at the division, you know, when I was there, we spent a lot of time. We thought that it was that important, just because of how complex, you know, things are today in criminal investigation, because there’s, you know, it’s across borders, right? So from my perspective, and I think I still speak for the entire division, public private partnerships, you know, absolutely critical. I mean, for one, you know, I think it definitely promotes international cooperation, especially if you put, you know, the value and the importance there. And when you talk about high profile crypto seizures, they often involve cross border coordination. So building stronger global partnerships and fighting transnational crime, both public and private, I think is absolutely critical. I’ve repeatedly said in just about every speaking event that I go to, you know, public private partnerships are not a nice to have. Rather, there’s they’re a must have today in an effort to address complex financial transactions utilized by fraudsters, crimes committed where crypto is involved doesn’t respect borders. Well, why should law enforcement? And, you know, I think we’re living, we are living right now in the days of a significant tech evolution and the way fraudsters operate. And we’re, it feels like law enforcement, I haven’t been removed. I haven’t been removed about a year and a half, but it feels like we’re our law enforcement is kind of writing the investigative playbook to address it all at the same time. That’s that saying, kind of building the plane while it’s in flight. And I think meaningful partnerships, when it comes to public and private, are not just simply exchanging emails when trouble arises, it’s really developing a proactive relationship where intelligence is shared before something you know, hits the headlines. And so it’s really about establishing partnerships, operational partnerships, you know, standing up communication channels, sharing best practices and trusted points of contact, which is a big thing because there’s a lot of staff turnover, but also means creating relationships where, you know, both sides can see the benefit, where industry can gain quicker access to threat intelligence that protects our customers, and law enforcement can gain technical insights that creates, especially as a leader in law enforcement, that creates investigative efficiency, and it’s really all about trust. Think the other kind of thought an undeniable advantage to. PPP, you know, is bridging the crypto knowledge gap within law enforcement and traditional finance. You know, blockchains and mixers and bridges and defi and nfts, this stuff can be complex,
Aidan
right for and if you’re not seeing it every day, you just the muscle memory. Couldn’t agree more, yeah, yeah. So, you
Jim
know, partnering with industry experts when it comes to tracing or seizing and forfeiture, I mean, can accelerate learning curves, you know, ensure investigations or investigators stay current. You know, with evolving tech, which is arguably far more efficient than if law enforcement attempts to do it themselves. And believe me, a lot of times in law enforcement, they do believe they can do it themselves, and a lot of times they can, but they’re just not as efficient,
Hugo
but, but it is. It is a funny one. I heard someone speak recently about, you know, they hated the phrase public and private partnership, and they wanted to make it redundant at an event. And I sort of get it. It’s kind of like asset recovery as a term, like asset recovery, I think.com.net and something else means three entirely different things. One is like vehicle recovery. Another one is like data recovery, off no digital devices, and another one’s like no the return of corruption proceeds globally. But when I hear like, PPP, it’s like, I always have to challenge people say, which one are you talking about? If you’re talking about the private sector taking on, taking the role of law enforcement, to just, know, go free and arrest people civilly? No, of course, most right minded people wouldn’t want that. But if you’re talking about someone who’s better placed to carry out a private prosecution under the Proceeds of Crime Act, we’ve seen some phenomenal results in the UK where private prosecutions and Hugo maybe, I’ll maybe tap you up on this, because this was your previous word, like sometimes just the resource gap. If you’re a victim and you go to law enforcement and you say, Hey, I’ve lost this amount in crypto and your local law enforcement just doesn’t happen to have the experience to deal with that effectively, but they’ve got the money to try and go after it. Could you give us a quick sort of example of where private sector is used for that effectively, where you think it works? It’s also an incredibly contentious topic, so I do want to kind of open that up, but ultimately it is about the end result and the access to justice. So I think there are, there are two areas where this works particularly well. One is when dealing with very, very fast moving cross border investigations. So for example, with the right resources, there are situations in the UK where, let’s say, there is a victim in the US, and they’ve traced some assets and they’ve identified as arriving in the UK. There are some situations where a law firm will be able to get in front of a judge and get a freezing order within hours after that first initial contact, and the first that, the first look, which, depending on the prioritization within law enforcement, may not necessarily be the case. So that there are situations where, especially with cross border investigations, it really, really does matter to the victim, and that’s why we see some large insolvency efforts, for example, where, in exchange, collapse will be treated as an insolvency, private sector led, and be able to deal with the recovery of assets quickly. That way. The second area where I think it works well is when you have lots and lots of small claims against the same individual or the same Ponzi group, the same Ponzi scheme, and someone in the private sector has put quite a lot of effort into grouping all of those individual victims together and grouping all of those claims, and is ready to manage and validate each of the claims individually, which, frankly, I see as good news, in a sense that it means that you don’t necessarily need law enforcement to be talking to 30,000 people at the smelt same time who’ve each lost $100 but you have a private company who has struck a deal effectively with these underlying creditors or victims to be able to take it forward. It’s still tricky, and unfortunately, it is also a sector where it’s very, very hard for victims and individual creditors to know who’s really on their side and who is actually a shark, or, even worse, who’s also just trying to scam them again, which is, which is why law enforcement has to always be the first port of call for victims or anyone who suffered a loss.
Aidan
We actually saw that. I think Jim know, with you guys at here with no like spincaster, like, there’s good times when proactively, private sector can do things. I’ve seen it before in my old role, where I know the banks, for example, like the gimlet in the UK, where banks are getting together with EX law enforcement people in senior banking positions, going, we’ve all of this data, like, how do we bundle this and parcel this up together to get it to you guys? And I think if you can, I sort of think of the analogy of just know the right tool for the job. At each time, there will be different times when private sector is well placed. Completely agree with with Hugo’s point, though. I mean, what I want to see is law enforcement having the freedom to go and do the spectacular stuff that only they can do. You look at like no, the NCA and the men, I think operation destabilize. I mean, that’s only public sector that can sit down in Europe. Polls project assets, sitting down and actually looking going, right. How do we go down through these enormous cases? But then they will bring in the component parts with private sector, because maybe there’s a tool they need, maybe there’s data they need. So So I do, but I think it is an important point you go to stress that even if you’re a victim of a scam and law enforcement can’t help you, still record it with law enforcement like you have to still and then only go to trusted regulated partners to get. Help. And we always tell people, go to a law firm or an insolvency practitioner. They’re regulated. The minute you see private asset recovery like I want to say that from the outset, we don’t do individual victim cases. We only service law enforcement and Asset Recovery practitioners and military and defense. Anyone saying to you, we can get your stuff back for a fee, I would start with that’s probably a scam, and work backwards,
Jim
yeah, yeah, no, again, a lot of good stuff. And I think each of you kind of triggered something. It’s Yes, yes and yes to what you said. And I think one of the, well, a couple of things that will come to mind as you were talking is I was pleasantly surprised coming over to the private sector, you know, to see that private sector folks are passionate, I mean, absolutely passionate about law enforcement, government missions, which I don’t know what I expected, but that definitely I was pleasantly surprised. And I think the other thing that I was pleasantly surprised by, you know, private companies with global footprints, and Hugo you touched on this a little bit, you know, can really help bridge jurisdictional gaps, help coordinate multi agency efforts across borders. You know, help track assets across continents. Really, I look back kind of getting to a comment I made earlier about law enforcement, thinking they can do it themselves a lot of times, and they can again, but my caveat was just not as efficient. I think law enforcement especially, I can speak for my agency, but I’ve seen this is very good with international relationships, but often struggle in certain jurisdictions, and networking with the private sector can really help. And I think the reality is that, you know, the criminal elements already collaborating. One of the thoughts I have when it comes to money laundering, especially, one of the most striking evolutions in crime that I’ve seen really in the past 30 years, is the utilization of professional enablers to launder money, making money laundering transactions that much more complex. You add crypto to it along with everything else, it just makes it that much more complex. So I think to be effective law enforcement, especially in the private sector, in that public private thought process must be just as coordinated, just as fast you both mentioned it and work with the same sense urgency too.
Aidan
I saw, I saw a dark neck market advert at someone’s presentation, a brilliant law enforcement presentation, and the guy was talking about no SaaS companies and class companies. What’s class? He says, crypto laundering as a service people. People offer it as a service. Operation, destabilize. Now there’s phenomenal write ups all over the BBC over public domain. I mean, that was a very classic case of completely separate entities just going to the and even the trust they build up with the networks like other criminal gangs to be like, I’ll give you cash. You’d launder it and give me crypto back, even if the original crime type or the original network is not a crypto native. And I think that’s been the big surprise. It’s called a lot of people out over the last couple of years. There’s always been that. There was the cases that featured crypto assets, and you would kind of expect it because of the crime type or the profile of the individuals, whereas now we’re just seeing regular, ordinary, normal crimes, that crypto is popping up because it’s just a vehicle that’s being used.
Hugo
This is, this is one of the fantastic opportunities, though, from a seizure perspective, is being able to investigate and identify some of these underground banking networks and some of the operations that Europol has been working on with partners over on this side of the pond have been especially impactful with that is, if you are able to make a large seizure from a large underground banking network, you are permanently destroying the reputation of that underground banking group with all of the other criminal organizations they’ve been working in, and it’s very hard for them to set up shop again, which is great for disruption.
Jim
Yeah, absolutely. That’s the name of the game. Let’s switch gears slightly. You know, your asset reality, you know works with global regulators and law enforcement authorities. You’re right. You guys are everywhere. Any best practices of the countries you’ve seen that are doing well? Are there any, or maybe, think about it, are there any other countries that you’ve seen that seem to always be involved with large scale recovery efforts?
Aidan
There’s a couple of ways to think about it, and the new guidance and the documents will not necessarily surprise people, but there is often that, like running debate. No, I say sort of half tongue in cheek, half seriously. We talk about offshore banking, and we talk about the typical company countries that are on the gray list every year. The last time I checked the elephant in the room, the UK and the US probably launder as nation states, probably more than all the countries in the world put together. And no so there is this sort of issue around different countries do certain things well and not so well. And obviously, with the big asterisks that if you’re a global financial hub, you are going to have money laundering. It’s unavoidable. And if you’re a good it’s like, if you’re an international shipping port, there is going to be a percentage of illicit assets that move through. But I think that this stat that will strike people that was on the actual fat F press release, was this more than 80% who scored, like, moderate to low in their asset recovery efforts. So immediately everyone jumps to who’s the 20% and what are they doing? So Well, like, if you think of some of the most challenging Asset Recovery countries, are obviously the bigger countries, the bigger the country, usually the bigger the challenge, even though they might have more resources. And like, India is a great example of when I talked about whole system approaches. India scored highly because it has the systems in place. It has dedicated purview over all things financial. Crime and completely dedicated to it. Now, India has ed the enforcement directorate, no incredible set of powers within one agency that can touch all of these different cases. I sort of, I think of them and like no guarda de financia in Italy, no, that’s just like, it’s asset recovery and enforcement on steroids, where their information sharing isn’t a problem. Now, you want something from customs, you’re getting it as an officer. You want something from tax, you’re getting it. So some countries are scoring well because they have the infrastructure in place, from a legislation point of view, resourcing case. But I think that everyone is in the same sort of bucket that they’re still struggling with, seizing assets expeditiously at scale. So there is no doubt there are brilliant people and individual forces. That is the crypto guy or girl, and everyone can pull out those my here’s my one case, my two cases, my 15 cases. But how do you do that 100 times? How do you do that 1000 times? And that’s what fat F is thinking of. This guidance isn’t going to be redone in two years. This guidance is going to be no same guidance for another five or seven or 10 years. It’s about scale and infrastructure. So I think that those that are doing the best, and if the best is turning assets over quickly and getting money back pro rata, I still go back to those countries that I think from a legislation point of view. No, the New Zealands, the Netherlands, for example, it’s very clear what you can do with assets the minute you seize them again. I talk about Luxembourg’s. We were literally there a couple of days ago, and I was so surprised to see just the freedom they have when they’re dealing with such complicated assets, like securities, that their asset managers can make these remarkable decisions to maintain the asset, maintain the value, whereas I’ve seen other cases where a decorated police officer isn’t allowed to make a decision on a car. And it just seems crazy that you have these this, these fractures. But in spite, and I don’t want it to be a doom and gloom like, let’s be clear, Asset Recovery stats globally couldn’t, could increase, and lots of change could happen, but we’re still seeing phenomenal cases and phenomenal results. If you compare physical assets to virtual assets in the overall asset recovery ecosystem, no virtual assets were a fraction by value only five or six years ago. Nowadays, we are so far beyond that the scale has tipped it. I haven’t done the maths recently, but it could even be as much as 80% we’re that far ahead now that virtually every large nation has a multi billion dollar crypto case or a multi billion dollar crypto seizure, I don’t recall there ever being a Fiat seizure. I think in the one MDB corruption case Overall, about six or 7 billion was recovered, but that was across multiple asset like, there’s no such thing as 61,000 Bitcoin on a Ledger Wallet like the Mets case in the UK. Like you talk about disruption, you talk about taking capital. Now, even though in those particular cases there might be victims’ claims, assets could go back. It’s still out of the hands of the criminals, wherever it ends up it ends up. So I think that, I think that the jurisdictions that have the systems in place are scoring well, what will now hopefully happen off this asset recovery focus is now, let’s see the performance indicators. We’re seeing words in fat F guidance that I’ve never seen before, like carrying out risk assessments about the value of the asset, really sensible commercial suggestions. Don’t seize the $10,000 thing if it’s going to cost $15,000 to maintain over the five years because of your legislation, takes four or five years. So I think we’ll I think if you ask me that question, two or three years time, it will be, did the countries with the right legislation, right systems, achieve their potential? And we need to separate out those big black swan cases, because they can drag an entire country’s performance. I’ll be looking for like the scale No, do the big metropolitan areas have lots of individual seizures? Do the big tax authorities have lots? We know there’s loads of tax non compliance and crypto. How many no seizures have the tax authorities been making? They’ll be the big indicators of performance, in my opinion.
Hugo
And even even even kind of simpler indicator is I spent all of my time just talking with seizing agents and anecdotally, because they haven’t really been any big studies on this or published it, published figures. Certainly that I’ve seen is anecdotally, I keep hearing we’re not seeing cash anymore. We’re breaking the door down, and there used to be duffle bags of cash, and we’re not seeing it anymore. And that’s where you see the two very different responses that some agencies have. Some agencies go, Okay, well, keep looking the cash must be somewhere. And others go, Okay, let’s train everyone up on crypto, and let’s start having the infrastructure and capacity, the tools, the infrastructure training, etc, to be able to handle the crypto when we do see it, because maybe we’re not looking in the right place. And and those two very different approaches, I think, are being highlighted by that 8020 figure that fat F have released
Jim
Great point. Yeah, I still remember, you know, in my early days as an investigator, calling up to a search warrant site and backing up a semi truck trailer to take out all the documents that are entity. And now you can put everything in the back of a trunk, practically. I mean, there’s still paper, of course, but a lot of these devices now, and there’s just petabytes, I was just
Aidan
about to say petabytes, not even terabytes. But on that point, why do you think the US was so successful? I refuse to believe it was just population and lots of people had crypto Well, why? Because, like when we look across Europe and we look across the US, I mean, the US were and. IRS in particular. Ci, I mean, you guys were getting these enormous seizures back before most people even had an analytic tool. Like, what do you think the reason was behind that? Yeah.
Jim
I mean, of course, you know, the US law enforcement has certainly seen some successes and IRS. Ci did. I mean, IRS, like I mentioned earlier, 100% of their mission is financial investigations and financially focused.
Aidan
So is it about focus? If you’re looking for it, you’ll find it. I think so. I think
Jim
someone’s focused. I think you know that division is just, I mean, there’s a lot of I mentioned, private sector, passionate about what they do. And again, I think I speak for all us, law enforcement, those agents and every jurisdictional level are passionate about what they do. You know? I mean, there seems to be more and more jurisdictions, you know, catching up and having success, and I feel that much of it has to do with training and understanding and adoption. So, I mean, yeah, the US is often viewed as a as a model for digital asset seizures. And I thought there’s several reasons why you mentioned, you mentioned some of it already, but, you know, the US has mature legal authorities in place for asset forfeiture, you know, and they’ve been in place for quite some time. So, you know, consistency is king, and knowing what to do, you know, as I think Huber, you mentioned, that part of it, so the infrastructure gives investigators, you know, a fast and legally tested process, you know, compared to
Aidan
the playbook is there? It’s not, you’re not explaining it for the first time, every time, that’s right.
Jim
And I also feel, you know, the US has seen success, because I mentioned long standing financial crime expertise, strong interagency coordination. It’s not like the movies, believe it or not, the agencies do talk you
Aidan
guys. You guys love a task force
Jim
and really effective cross border cooperation. And as you guys know, I mean, there are still challenges that law enforcement agencies face here in the US. I mean, some of what we’ve already talked about. I mean, think about the time that it takes for a seizure. I mean, the process to obtain evidence to support a seizure can involve a varying amount of time based on the complexity and the process from the status of seizure to forfeiture requires litigation, you know, and that can also take varying amounts of time, sometimes more than the actual investigation. And I, I think it’s common that the process can involve multiple years of litigation prior to the seize asset actually being able to be forfeited, which I know you had touched on a little bit. What about the value challenge when it comes to crypto? I mean, as you guys know crypto, you know certain assets, value changes constantly in some assets, right? And so crypto assets are not liquidated through, at least here in the US, until the final order of forfeiture is obtained. You know, can take multiple years to get that value. Challenge. What about the liquidation challenge? You know, upon receiving the final order of forfeiture? Here, an additional concern is, not, you know, liquidating or overloading the market and creating, like a blockage discount on the asset. You know, the goal is sell the asset at fair market values. That’s a challenge. And then, I think, ultimately another challenge, again, we’ve touched on it, that I see is that claim challenge. I mean, if there are identified victims from the crime that led to the seizure forfeiture, the government has to disperse the appropriate amount to each victim who’s verified, valid claim or loss. And that takes time, kind of getting back to the first comment I mean, it’s a lot of moving parts.
Aidan
Yeah, it is a funny one. If I was a fat F assessor, I could almost take the successes and use the success against some of the countries, because, as you said, they were having those enormous figures of crypto seizures. A lot of the times it’s it’s been the passage of time, season, season 10,000 Bitcoin and season 50,000 Bitcoin five years ago is a no, a wonderful, I know accidental by product, that the value has just happened to go up, but similarly, what if the price had gone down and you had to seize this asset, and had to be this massive market collapse? Because if you actually look at the fat F guidance, it’s pretty unequivocal. It’s like, you should be selling this stuff pre confiscation. You should be converting volatile assets. Chain analysis has more data than anybody to show that crypto is one as many things, it is not stable, so unless it’s literally a stable coin. So there is going to be some interesting, I think, discussions going forward in places like the UK, like the US, where they do rely on a, usually a confiscation, a conviction model before assets are realized. Though, the UK did bring out some guidance, and the Home Office fact sheets were published to say they will deal with crypto know when it comes in. But we’ve also, we’ve often seen this where it can be dictated at a country level, but it still takes quite a while to bleed down at the like Regional Court level. So remain to be seen whether that sort of happens sort of super quickly. But Hugo, no, you have plenty of thoughts on the actual the liquidation part. I think we’re past the days now, aren’t we? Of a billion dollars isn’t going to sort of rock the boat anymore, because the maturity in the market would say that’s fair.
Hugo
Yeah, this, I mean, yes and no, there’s still a responsible way of doing these. And this is where, you know, governments have that responsibility towards the market, to to not move it. There’s a couple of tips and tricks that certainly we’ve been deploying for some of the agencies that we work. With some of them include, for example, executing the sell off chain before there is any actual on chain movement or transfer of the asset, which means that, effectively, the liquidation has happened, and by the time the whole world can see the digital asset moving, it doesn’t matter what the market does, because the market is not actually reacting to the sell they’re reacting to the hype around the potential sale, so the government has absolved themselves of their duties. They’ve clearly explained the asset has already been sold, and then it moves. And hopefully that’s enough for the market to understand that that’s the process. There’s other considerations, I think, around governments being able to get the best possible price for a digital asset. And I’m sorry to say, but it is not good enough to just appoint a single liquidation route and say, Great, all of our crypto will be sold through this exchange. And whatever happens, we will always take the exchange’s own price for what they think a bitcoin is worth on that day, what really should be happening is the government should be through a contractor or directly going to the market and saying, Hey, I’m selling 10 Bitcoin. Who’s going to give me the best price for it? Rather than just, well, we’ve on boarded with this exchange. That’s who we work with. Historically, let’s just sell it there, and we’ll just take whatever the exchange’s price is or happens to be on that day. I think the sophistication around government and law enforcement and asset management agencies is now such that they recognize that that is not a fair practice. And actually, a lot of these concerns are also highlighted, really, in the FATF report. I don’t know Aidan, whether you want to talk about the selection of providers in the first place, but that’s also one of the things that’s mentioned, not just, you know, for crypto, but also cars, boats, planes, etc. There has
Aidan
been it goes back to the public private sector, part Jim, where, traditionally, many agencies just know off their own back. As you said, they didn’t have 13 large like Tow Truck providers, and they couldn’t grab a HTV and they couldn’t lift a boat out of the water. So for decades, governments have worked hand in hand with private sector contractors to recover season value assets. Again, no, season a million dollar painting is not something you’re going to do in the local police station. You’re going to bring in somebody. So we’re seeing now clearer guidance from FATF around picking your partner wisely. I mean, the FTX collapse is a good example of what happens if you had had a law enforcement account at FTX who seemed like a perfectly good company at the time. Their name was on sports arenas. So there’s now clear guidance around working with partners that do not have money laundering breaches, do not have their CEOs being locked up in prison, do not have these challenges. And also, we’ve seen it before, and again, this predates crypto. I remember working in cases in the UK where the auction company appointed in the UK, when they got the expensive assets, they fled. They literally ran off the husband and wife, and they had to go and track them down. So it’s a tale as old as time, trusting someone with assets, and they abscond with your assets. It extends to digital assets as well. So I think agencies having clear, robust processes, whether it’s procurement processes, RFPs, high standards, you should be able to have the decision as to why you chose that company auditable. And there’s a lot that it’s kind of like, we don’t know. We’ve just used them for a long time. And I think that there’ll be a bit of an overhaul. An overhaul in that as well, and simply because the stakes are too high, and that’s why it has to change,
Jim
All right, guys, hey, let’s shift gears just slightly. I got a question. So how do we measure as an international community whether or not we’re getting better? So we keep hearing about this 1% stat. Where does that come from?
Aidan
So the infamous sort of 1% stat actually comes from a un ODC report in 2011 where they tried to measure the comparison of this global estimate. And it is an estimate. It’s literally four to 6% of GDP is laundered every year, so no one’s actually measured the 6 trillion. For example, it’s just basically GDP multiplied by a percentage. And out of that, when they took sort of data sets from around the world and questionnaires that were filled in, they were able to start to build up a bit of a picture. So it’s a terribly imperfect, but only way of actually doing it, and it sort of hits to the heart of why we exist. There’s no standardized data collection and seized assets around the world. We are that data layer for seized assets because it should be easy. You should be able to press a button and say, here’s exactly what our seized asset holdings are right now, live digital assets. You should read them on a blockchain. It should be easy, and that’s why our platform covers all assets. It covers the Monero, covers the Bitcoin, it covers the car and the boat, because that’s what you need as law enforcement. You don’t want four systems if you can have one. So this 1% was then refreshed in 2015 Europol did a report? Does crime still pay? And it’s like, unfortunately, yes, was this spoiler alert, and it was a statistical information set from 2011 to 2014 but the really important thing about this is that all of these numbers are pre virtual assets. So the question is, has it got worse, or has it got better with virtual assets? I could make a case that it’s got much better, because we’re seeing these multi billion dollar seizures all the time. We’re seeing more asset recovery. I don’t know about you guys, I see the word seized assets all the time. We’re seeing the reference points coming on and on. And on more, but we can all agree that it’s a fraction of what could be recovered. It’s our mission. Our mission is the node to try and improve asset recovery by making it easier to seize assets. And what keeps me awake at night is not the 1% that we recover. And there’s all of the lost opportunities about that, and there’s all of the no the victims not getting their money back, and society not getting its money back. What terrifies me more is the 99% that’s reinvested. Is what those organized crime gangs, serious organized criminals, those terrorist financing networks, think of the amount of capital that they are reinvesting every like there’s a reason, as a tax inspector, you’re incentivized to go, no, do the mission, because it’s unfair on other businesses. If people get to keep all of the money. Don’t pay their fair share. They have an unnatural, competitive Head Start and fair trade look at criminals and reinvesting all of their crime. So for me, we don’t need to get caught up on the percentage. It’s going to be an imperfect science anyway, but it can be globally agreed that we can’t manage what we can’t measure. We don’t have a standardized data set of how we manage seized asset performance. This new guidance is the beginnings of that, and I think in the next 2468, 10 years, we’ll start to see standardized data sets. We’ll start to see OKRs, maybe we’ll start to see KPIs and just better asset management, because there’s ISO standards and asset management for things like army equipment, Navy equipment, capital, infrastructure being used, but it’s not really, it’s a bit like seize and forget with seized assets. So I think, I think that’s what we’ll see changing in the future, and this new guidance is an important step into quantifying the problem, and then we can start to fix it.
Jim
Yeah, I think disruption is so key. And I know we’ve talked about that a lot, you know, when it comes to these investigation and you just solidified that, and you’re 100% right that in mind, we’ve covered a lot of ground here today. Guys, you all just announced a recent partnership with Operation Shamrock, which has done a lot, and we just had Aaron west on the podcast, you know, doing a lot of great work there. Can you just talk about the importance of that partnership to kind of close out the session for today?
Aidan
Yeah, it is fundamentally just capacity and infrastructure. I remember meeting Erin when she was on the prosecutorial side, and we would talk about, you’d really willing mission driven investigators, Jim, as you talked about, and it was just they don’t have the wallet that can accept the Monero that they’ve seized. They don’t have the authority to go and open an Exchange account and get the chief of police, passport and driving license to pass the KYC or they there’s just so many things. And for years, people got away with just buy a ledger, wallet, just open an account with an exchange, and it got them where they needed to be. But then it requires a lot of manpower, and then you’re back to the issue of you already are struggling with resources, and now you’re dedicating resources to cutting and pasting blockchain addresses on a spreadsheet to put it into an explorer. And so for us, if we can do our part, I always use the example of you guys are the metal detectors, where the shovels, if they have the tools to find this stuff, we’ve made that bit easier. It’s no a hell of a lot easier to use an analytic tool than use an explorer. We want to just make that bit easier so that the seizure and the management isn’t a concern. They don’t have to worry about that. And that’s what we’re so sort of delighted to be working with Operation Shamrock, so that when someone’s doing their first crypto seizure. They have people like Hugo and people from ex law enforcement on a call with them, walking them through these new first seizures. Because even if you give everyone the technology, sometimes people just want that reassurance before they push the button scan the QR code. Yeah, we’re delighted to be supporting shamrock and Aaron and the guys.
Hugo
Ultimately, it’s all about being able to get assets back to victims more quickly. So the work that operation shamrock are doing, the work that chain analysis do, equipping investigators with the right tools to respond to cases very, very quickly, and the work that asset reality does to be able to very quickly and effectively and securely take custody of assets at the point of seizure is all really helping with that same mission that law enforcement are all involved
Jim
in Yeah, no, that’s That’s amazing, and I appreciate the hard work. It’s critical, and I think we’ve covered a number of aspects. Probably could talk to you guys for another couple hours about this topic,
Aidan
but the director’s cut will be three hours the
Jim
work there. Keep up the hard work, guys. It’s awesome to have you on safe travels out there, because I know you’re around the globe weekly, and just stay safe, and thanks for joining me on the podcast here today. Thanks guys, thanks for having us. Thanks. Jim.