Brazil Creates Crypto-Dedicated Investigation Unit

The public prosecution of the Federal District, located in the center-west region of Brazil, has launched its own cryptocurrency investigation unit. The newly formed unit will focus its activities on aiding other prosecutors in cryptocurrency investigations, and also educating consumers about the safe use of cryptocurrencies.

Cryptocurrency crimes have several traits that make them difficult to detect by traditional intelligence units. This is why some countries have already dedicated part of their budget to building resources to face these new tech crimes. Brazil, a country where numerous cryptocurrency-related scams have happened, has officially reported the launch of a cryptocurrency-dedicated investigation unit.

This new unit, denominated “Crypto,” is being created by the public prosecution office of the Federal District in the country, and will perform its duties by helping public prosecutors deal with cryptocurrency cases. In the same way, the unit will target the consumers of crypto products to warn and educate them about the safe use of cryptocurrency assets.

Frederico Meinberg, the coordinator of the unit and public prosecutor, talked about the training that the agents in the Crypto unit must follow. In an interview, Meinberg stated:

The best training for an agent dealing with digital assets is to interact with the market. Without practice, we can offer the best tools that, in the end, the agent will not know what to do with. That is why we always focus on the interaction of agents with the ecosystem, starting with exchanges and peer-to-peer sellers.

Meinberg did not disclose the number of agents that are part of the crypto unit due to security reasons.

The establishment of the first cryptocurrency-dedicated investigation unit comes on the heels of the approval of the cryptocurrency bill by the Senate of Congress in April. This proposed bill has, amongst other objectives, the goal of curbing crypto-related crimes in the country by defining a new kind of crypto-related fraud and assigning penalties of imprisonment from two to six years, depending on the crime.

Meinberg has said that, due to the nature of these crimes, cryptocurrency investigations are more difficult than traditional ones. In this sense, he believes that the advancement of these regulations could be a big help for the public prosecution, because they could help to speed up procedures by establishing specific protocols for this task.

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