Congress moves to rebuild crypto crime task force after DOJ dismantled its dedicated crypto team
Congress needs a task force for cryptocurrency theft months after the Justice Department disbanded NCET.
The proposal, launched by Reps. Lance Gooden and Josh Gottheimer, would create a Federal Cryptocurrency Theft Task Force contained in the Justice Department and place it below the legal professional basic or a designee, in accordance to the bill text and a June 11 announcement from Gooden’s workplace.
That makes the bill greater than one other crime-and-crypto submitting. It lands in the midst of Washington’s try to transfer digital asset markets away from enforcement-first uncertainty and towards clearer guidelines, whereas asking the identical authorities to rebuild coordination for the thefts, hacks, scams, and coercion instances that preserve hitting customers.
The pressure traces again to the DOJ’s April 2025 memo, which ended what Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche known as “regulation by prosecution.” The memo disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, moved one DOJ unit away from cryptocurrency enforcement, and stated prosecutors ought to deal with particular person legal misuse of digital property relatively than treating the business itself because the goal.
The new House invoice preserves that market posture whereas drawing a line between market regulation and theft response: lighter policing of crypto markets paired with extra coordination when somebody loses funds.
What the invoice would construct
The Federal Cryptocurrency Theft Enforcement and Coordination Act would set up a task force inside the DOJ and make it the first federal coordination physique for stopping, investigating, and prosecuting cryptocurrency theft and associated legal exercise.
The invoice textual content names senior representatives from the DOJ, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (together with Homeland Security Investigations), and the Treasury (together with FinCEN). It additionally lets the legal professional basic add different federal law-enforcement companies as acceptable.
That wording issues as a result of some summaries of the proposal level to a wider group of companies; the seen invoice textual content names these companies and the legal professional basic’s catchall authority.
The task force’s duties are sensible relatively than regulatory. It would develop finest practices for proof assortment, evaluation of seized digital proof, investigative strategies, asset tracing, and sufferer engagement.
It would additionally present technical help, coaching, and steerage to state and native regulation enforcement companies and prosecutors, share info with federal, state, native, Tribal, and territorial companies, and coordinate with worldwide companions when instances cross borders.
A small clause close to the top is the coverage hinge. The invoice retains cryptocurrency, digital asset markets, monetary establishments, and monetary merchandise outdoors the task force’s regulatory attain.
It additionally leaves federal regulatory authority, the legal code, and personal rights of motion unchanged.
| What the invoice does | Outside the invoice’s scope |
|---|---|
| Creates a DOJ task force for cryptocurrency theft coordination | Leaves crypto market regulation untouched |
| Builds federal, state, and native playbooks for proof, tracing, and victims | Leaves legal offenses unchanged |
| Requires annual stories on exercise, tendencies, coordination, and really useful fixes | Leaves funding, staffing, and sufferer portal particulars open |
That construction provides the invoice its political form. Lawmakers are asking a special query from the alternate, mixer, pockets, and token-market fights: whether or not theft from crypto customers wants a standing federal hub after DOJ dissolved the team most intently related to specialised digital-asset crime work.
Why sufferer response is the stress level
The strongest argument for the invoice is the quantity and number of instances hitting victims and native authorities.
The FBI stated its 2025 Internet Crime Report logged 181,565 complaints involving cryptocurrency and greater than $11 billion in reported losses. Total reported cyber-enabled losses approached $21 billion.
Those figures cease wanting displaying {that a} new task force will get well extra money, however they clarify why Congress can separate the theft downside from the market-regulation debate.
A sufferer of a pockets drain, phishing scheme, alternate exploit, or coercive assault not often experiences the system as one clear federal lane. Local police might lack blockchain tracing experience. Prosecutors might need assistance preserving digital proof.
Federal companies might disagree over the place the case matches. Private-sector corporations could be the solely events ready to shortly freeze, hint, or flag funds. In cross-border instances, the timeline for tracing property can transfer sooner than strange referral channels.
Recent CryptoSlate protection illustrates totally different stress factors behind that coordination downside. The battle over the CLARITY Act has already pulled law-enforcement teams into market-structure negotiations as a result of safe-harbor language can have an effect on how prosecutors deal with builders, infrastructure suppliers, and intermediaries.
DeFi exploit protection has proven how a single flaw in shared code can have an effect on a number of chains without delay, turning a technical bug right into a response downside throughout networks.
Physical assault protection exhibits the offline facet of the identical menace, the place coercion against holders can flip wallet security right into a street-crime difficulty.
That is the a part of the story the task-force invoice tries to seize. Crypto crime now spans code exploits, scams, state-linked hacking, and offline coercion.
A basic assertion that DOJ stays ready to prosecute crimes leaves unanswered whether or not a sheriff’s workplace, a sufferer, a federal agent, and a prosecutor can transfer shortly by way of the identical case.
That combine provides the proposed coaching, proof steerage, and outreach provisions their sensible weight. A theft report might start with a neighborhood officer, turn out to be a blockchain-tracing downside, after which flip right into a sanctions, cyber, or cross-border query earlier than funds transfer once more.
The invoice’s premise is that these handoffs want construction earlier than the following sufferer exhibits up.
The invoice’s take a look at is capability
The proposal nonetheless leaves a big query unanswered: whether or not coordination can turn out to be capability.
The invoice would require annual stories to Congress on the task force’s actions, rising threats, coordination with state and native companies, and really useful legislative or administrative fixes. It would additionally require outreach to state and native regulation enforcement, although participation by state, native, Tribal, and territorial governments could be voluntary.
Those provisions might matter in the event that they produce an actual playbook, dependable factors of contact, and sooner escalation for victims. They might additionally expose gaps Congress has but to fund, together with the variety of brokers, analysts, prosecutors, forensic specialists, and victim-support workers wanted to make the task force greater than a listing.
The invoice leaves appropriations unspecified. It leaves sufferer consumption, response deadlines, and work-sharing guidelines open. It creates a task-force mannequin, whereas NCET operated as a dedicated DOJ enforcement team earlier than the April 2025 shift.
That restraint is politically helpful as a result of it retains the invoice away from the broader crypto market battle. It can also be the core weak point.
A task force can standardize proof dealing with, coaching, and referrals, however provided that companies dedicate individuals, knowledge entry, and authority to the job.
The coverage whiplash is actual regardless that the invoice textual content itself follows a coherent line. Washington may be friendlier to market entry and nonetheless resolve that stolen crypto wants a dedicated federal response.
The open query is whether or not Congress needs that response to be a specialised functionality with assets behind it, or one other formal label over an issue victims already expertise as fragmented.
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