Reading time: ~2 m
The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the US Department of Justice conducted an audit of the storage of crypto assets confiscated by the Marshals Service.
It turned out that the US Marshals Service (USMS) has “quite adequate systems for accessing and storing confiscated assets.” But to track the movement of cryptocurrencies, marshals use ordinary tables. Thus, the Consolidated Asset Tracking System (CATS) was unable to perform the tasks of daily tracking of crypto assets.
As of June 2021, the USMS managed nearly 200 DOJ cryptocurrency seizures. We looked at the USMS’s management of seized cryptocurrency, and found that the USMS faced challenges in managing and tracking cryptocurrency.
— DOJ Inspector General (@JusticeOIG) June 14, 2022
Large-scale criticism of the Ministry of Justice was subjected to documentation on the management of cryptocurrencies:
“Current management policies are inadequate, often non-existent or, in some cases, provide conflicting guidance on asset retention, valuation and allocation.”
USMS plans to give the management of confiscated digital assets to a third-party agency or private company. The auditors prepared seven recommendations for the management of cryptocurrencies, one of the main ones was the recommendation to implement a special property management system that would “record the history of changes in order to prevent possible criminal alteration of records.” It is also recommended that CATS be refined in various aspects to keep records of transactions.
Back in 2020, USMS was looking for a contractor to manage the confiscated assets. First, BitGo was chosen, then the contractor was changed to Anchorage, but the documents have not yet been agreed.
#Department #Justice #Confiscated #crypto #assets #poorly #tracked
