The IRS Criminal Investigation Service (CI) announced Thursday that it will begin a pilot program in June to send cyber resident officers to four continents to fight cybercrime.
The officers will focus on cracking down on tax and financial crimes using cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance, peer-to-peer payments and mixed services.
Four military officers are sent to Sydney. Singapore; Bogota, Colombia; and Frankfurt, Germany. They plan to work with law enforcement agencies in Australia, Asia, South America and Europe.
“To effectively combat cybercrime, we need to ensure that our foreign responders have access to the same tools and expertise that we have in the United States,” CI Director Jim Lee said in a statement. said.
CI currently has one permanent cyber attaché at Europol headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands. This position was created in 2020 to build CI’s partnership with European law enforcement agencies.
CI is the criminal investigation arm of the IRS and focuses on financial crimes such as tax evasion, drug trafficking, money laundering, official corruption, and medical fraud.
US authorities are cracking down on cybercriminals, especially those who use cryptocurrencies to steal assets.
The Justice Department announced in March that it had dismantled a darknet cryptocurrency mixer that allowed cybercriminals to launder more than $3 billion in cryptocurrency.
The agency said it had seized two domains that direct users to a mixing service known as ChipMixer.
The agency added that Chipmixer was also involved in other illegal activities such as ransomware, fraud, cryptocurrency heists and other hacking schemes.
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