The U.S. Department of Justice is increasing its efforts to stop illicit and criminal activities on crypto trading platforms, according to a report published by the Financial Times.

Eun Young Choi, the director of the agency’s National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, said the DOJ intends to target crypto exchanges along with “mixers and tumblers,” which assist in hiding the origin of stolen funds by obfuscating the transactions.

Choi joined the DOJ as the first director of the NCET in February last year. The division was established to focus the department’s efforts when dealing with crime involving cryptocurrencies. including money laundering, fraud, cybercrime and assisting international law enforcement.

In her interview with the FT, Choi said that the DOJ is targeting companies that participate in crimes themselves or are complicit, such as allowing money laundering. “But on top of that, they’re allowing for all the other criminal actors to easily profit from their crimes and cash out in ways that are obviously problematic to us,” she said.

Examples also included crypto mixers, which “mix” together multiple transactions in order to anonymize the origins of the transactions when they are withdrawn. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned the crypto mixer Tornado Cash in August 2022 alleging it was being used for laundering the “proceeds of cybercrimes.”

“We’re seeing the scale and the scope of digital assets being used in a variety of illicit ways grow significantly over the last, say, four years,” Choi said. “I think that is concurrent with the increase of its adoption by the public writ large.”

Choi also mentioned putting more focus on crypto exchanges, which are trading platforms where users can buy and sell cryptocurrencies. Last year, FTX Trading Ltd., once the third-largest crypto exchange, collapsed and went bankrupt amid accusations of misuse of customer funds. Chief Executive Sam Bankman Fried faces charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering to which he plead not guilty.

In addition to FTX, federal regulators have also set their sights on Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission sued Binance and its founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao in March, alleging that the company operates illegally in the U.S. and serves customers in spite of officially withdrawing in 2019.

The size of the company would not be considered when considering potential charges against any particular entity, Choi commented, adding that there could be no “too big to fail” when it comes to flouting criminal law.

“Think of what message it would send,” she added. “It can’t be the way that we think when it comes to crypto, when it comes to any white-collar crime.”

Aiming beyond just platforms, Choi also said the DOJ will be targeting thefts and hacks that involved decentralized finance, also known as DeFi, particularly “chain bridges,” which are protocols that connect blockchains. Significant examples of DeFi hacks include $615 million stolen from the Ronin Network, a blockchain underlying the popular “Axie Infinity” game and $200 million stolen from the Nomad bridge.

According to a report from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, attacks on chain bridges led to more than $2 billion in thefts and losses last year. Most of those losses have been attributed to North Korea-sponsored hackers.

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