IRS Sharpens Cryptocurrency Investigation Skills

The Internal Revenue Service is sharpening its expertise in cryptocurrencies to help prevent their use for tax evasion and money laundering, says Jarod Koopman, director of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division.

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That has come, partially, by partnering with firms which have developed methods and applied sciences for tracing blockchain transactions, he says. In the meantime, the company’s experience in cryptocurrency is being tapped by different federal companies for investigations starting from terrorism to darknet markets to North Korean hacking.

Koopman says the experience of the IRS was demonstrated with the current arrest of the alleged administrator of Bitcoin Fog, a long-running “mixer” service that goals to obfuscate bitcoin transactions and holdings.

“These kinds of circumstances actually spotlight the extent of effort that CI [Criminal Investigation] brokers go to with a purpose to actually get a maintain on these kinds of transactions,” Koopman says. “There is a great quantity of labor that goes into that.”

On this video interview with Data Safety Media Group, Koopman discusses:

• How criminals are utilizing cryptocurrency for tax evasion and cash laundering;




• Challenges round investigating cryptocurrencies that shouldn’t have public blockchains, also referred to as “privateness cash”;




• Why the IRS is deep pure language processing, synthetic intelligence and machine studying to faucet into unstructured knowledge sources.

Koopman is director of the IRS Felony Investigation Division in Washington. He has spent almost 20 years on the IRS, together with serving as assistant particular agent in cost and particular agent in cost within the Chicago and Detroit subject places of work.