Cryptocurrency

Asset Tracing

Our cryptocurrency experts have experience in tracing digital assets in matters involving ransomware, darknet marketplaces, high-risk cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency enabled money laundering typologies, business email compromise schemes, and Chinese and Russian state sponsored entities.  We know that sophisticated cryptocurrency enabled money laundering techniques use multiple blockchains to obfuscate the flow of funds. Our experts use industry leading blockchain analysis techniques and tools to uncover the true source and destination of funds, to include transactions occurring between various blockchains, and uncover cryptocurrency specific behavioural patterns and money laundering typologies.

Investigations

We have decades of experience working with international regulatory and enforcement agencies in both mature and emerging markets. Our experts not only have expertise in the tactical tracing of cryptocurrency assets but an understanding of how the flow of funds informs the bigger picture. Drawing on our expert’s experience conducting investigations on a wide array of cryptocurrency matters, we rapidly develop and execute a comprehensive investigative strategy focused on answering our clients most urgent questions.

Compliance Advisory & Risk Exposure Assessment

With the current regulatory environment, it is important now more than ever to continually assess the effectiveness of compliance and risk mitigation programs. Our experts have first-hand experience investigating the effects of when compliance and Anti-Money Laundering (AML)/Know Your Customer (KYC) policies fail to prevent high risk activity. From this, we have unique insights into what compliance policies would have reduced a client’s risk exposure to sanctioned entities or illicitly acquired cryptocurrency.

With cryptocurrency, it is not enough to just know your customer – you also need to know your transaction. Our experts are well versed in the characteristics of on and off-chain risky behavior and have extensive experience turning those assessments into specific recommendations. Our experts use their deep industry knowledge to pinpoint the most impactful compliance recommendations, enabling companies of all sizes to achieve compliance at scale. We have experience reviewing AML and sanctions compliance programs for cryptocurrency exchanges to include reviewing the customer onboarding, transaction monitoring risk and compliance activities, and identifying a range of operational and regulatory areas requiring enhancement.

Sanctions

Financial institutions are under heightened pressure to ensure that sanctioned entities do not use their platform. Given the prevalence of ransomware and the use of cryptocurrency to transfer funds outside of the traditional banking systems, this pressure extends to the cryptocurrency realm. Leveraging the right data and applying the right analytic techniques not only optimizes detection efforts but also enhances monitoring and prevention capabilities. FRA’s sanctions analytics tools combine our sanctions investigations experience with our understanding of sanctions list and cryptocurrency transactions. We use advanced data analytics techniques to detect transactions directly or indirectly linked to sanctioned entities on the blockchain.

Expert Testimony

The cryptocurrency industry is a rapidly evolving field, and articulating the nuances of a cryptocurrency investigation can have an outsized impact on the results of a case. Our cryptocurrency experts have a wealth of experience clearly communicating technical concepts and first of their kind financial paradigms, empowering our clients to argue from a position of strength.

Data Analytics & eDiscovery

Artifacts holding critical pieces of information are fundamentally different in a cryptocurrency investigation, and without this knowledge significant pieces of evidence can be missed during the eDiscovery process. Our cryptocurrency experts work hand in hand with our data governance and forensics experts to identify cryptocurrency specific investigative data and effectively review that data at scale.

Disgorgement and Penalty Calculations

Regulators around the world are scrutinizing the cryptocurrency industry, resulting in headlines and fines. For companies and their legal counsel facing significant penalties and fines, having a forensic accounting partner with deep experience in conducting financial gain and profitability analysis and expertise in how digital assets impacts this analysis is critical. We blend strength in accounting knowledge, financial modelling, and expert analysis of the movement between crypto and fiat currencies to provide robust and defensible calculations of revenues and costs attributable to the business activity tainted by allegations.