Dear Reader,
Alona Katz runs the Virtual Currency Unit at the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office. Part of her job is recovering cryptocurrency stolen from scam victims. Most of the time, she can't — not because she does not know how, but because the money moves faster than the law does. She's had to explain this to people in their eighties who are now filing for bankruptcy. "It's more devastating than I can even put a word on," she said.
Over 10 months, ICIJ and 37 media partners investigated illicit financial flows in cryptocurrency— exposing which major crypto firms profit from them and the regulators who choose not to step in.
This isn't a story with a resolution. Recovery, for most victims, isn't coming. What is possible is a precise, public accounting of how money moves and the systemic gaps in oversight and enforcement that facilitate them.
That kind of investigation is constructed from the ground up. It's built by people who spent months following the trail of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency transactions. It’s painstaking work that is only possible with the help of supporters like you. Please give this summer to help fund this important work. |
