Criminals stole about $11 billion in crypto from victims last year. The bigger problem?
Most of those victims had nowhere to turn. A new bill wants to fix that.
Two lawmakers teamed up on the plan, one Republican and one Democrat. It would create a Federal Cryptocurrency Theft Task Force.
The Republican is Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas. The Democrat is Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey.
Gooden says the scale of the problem is the point. He argues that thieves steal billions while Washington has no clear plan to stop them.
The goal is speed. A central team could act before the money vanishes for good.
The group would be led by the U.S. attorney general. It would pull in the DOJ, FBI, Treasury, and Homeland Security.
The aim is one place that handles crypto theft cases. Right now the response is scattered across many agencies.
Think of it like a 911 line for crypto theft. You call one number instead of guessing which door to knock on.
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The bill covers more than just hacks. It also targets scams that trick people into sending their own money.
One common type is called pig butchering. Scammers build trust over weeks, then push the victim to invest in a fake platform.
Some attacks are even backed by foreign governments. The result is the same for victims, which is money that is hard to trace and harder to get back.
The losses are not small, either. They run into the billions of dollars every year.
The lawmakers say the scale is huge. Gottheimer points out that victims often have no single place to report the crime or ask for help.
The timing is a bit of a U-turn. The DOJ used to run its own crypto crime team.
It shut that team down under the Trump administration. Leaders said the unit was regulating the industry through enforcement.
This bill takes a different path. It is aimed at catching thieves and helping victims, not policing the crypto industry.
It builds on earlier work too. Last year a Treasury strike force seized more than $700 million in crypto tied to overseas scams, part of what the FBI flagged in last year's losses.
Industry groups have lined up behind the idea too. They argue that better teamwork helps victims and builds more trust in crypto.
There is a recent model for it as well. A few years back, the government set up a similar team to fight ransomware attacks.
The bill still has a long road. To become law, it needs to clear a House committee or join a larger must-pass package.
For now, it's a plan, not a law.
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