Crypto Fraud: Can’t Catch Them All
Crypto-powered fraud continues to bother regulators as they try to crack down on crime. But who will have the punishment delivered to them?
Christy Goldsmith Romero, one of five commissioners at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), has bad news. Though the regulators are trying to curtail crypto-based crime, there is no way to police all of it due to its omnipresence.
She said cryptocurrency cases comprise 20% of the agency's portfolio that includes claims against Binance and FTX. The former, alongside its CEO CZ, is accused of allegedly operating a sham compliance program. CZ has dubbed this accusation an "incomplete recitation of facts."
Meanwhile, Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX’s former CEO, is indicted for causing a loss of more than $8 billion in customer deposits.
"There's just a lot of fraud in the space," Goldsmith Romero said. "There's just no way we can police all the fraud, but we've got to do something."
She also said that the CFTC is trying to divide its responsibilities with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, not least because many of the industry's products are novel.
These remarks come at a time when Chainalysis releases a new blog focused on fentanyl sales around the globe and their delivery from China to the United States.
According to the authors, these sales are carried out with the help of cryptocurrency on a large scale. Despite the magnitude of the problem, the company says that law enforcement can develop proper tools and training to identify criminals, reduce drug trafficking into the U.S., and build strong cases for juries, all through the lens of cryptocurrency use.
Previously, GNcrypto published an article about the crypto community vs. Gensler: the latest twist.