FBI hosts annual Virtual Asset Technical Exchange on crypto crime
The bureau's little-known annual gathering brought law enforcement and blockchain security firms together in New Orleans to tackle trafficking, scams, and laundering tied to digital assets
The FBI just wrapped its ninth annual Virtual Asset Technical Exchange, a two-day conference in New Orleans where federal agents, law enforcement officials, and blockchain security researchers compared notes on how criminals are exploiting digital assets. The August 27-28 event, co-hosted with the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, zeroed in on two of crypto’s ugliest use cases: human trafficking and investment fraud.
Inside the conference
One of the more notable presentations came from BlockSec, a Chinese blockchain security firm and the only international company at the event. Co-founder Professor Yajin Zhou delivered a keynote on what the industry calls “guarantee platforms,” essentially escrow services that use Tether’s USDT stablecoin to facilitate human trafficking tied to scam operations across Southeast Asia.
The research Zhou presented tracked roughly $1.9 million in transaction volumes flowing through these guarantee platforms over a six-month period. Operators of these services collected fees ranging from 10% to 15% per victim.
The presence of a Chinese firm at an FBI-hosted event is itself worth noting. Crypto crime is inherently cross-border, and the guarantee platforms Zhou described operate primarily in Southeast Asian jurisdictions where US law enforcement has limited reach.
AI, tech, and the markets they move—in one daily briefing.
Daily. Free. Join 34,000+ readers across crypto, finance, and policy.
The FBI’s crypto arm has been busy
The conference is organized under the umbrella of the FBI’s Virtual Assets Unit, or VAU. Launched on February 7, 2022, the VAU was designed to centralize the bureau’s expertise in tracing illicit digital asset flows across a range of crimes, from ransomware to fraud to trafficking. It pulls resources from both the Criminal Investigative Division and the Cyber Division.
In December 2025, the unit played a central role in dismantling what investigators described as the E-Note money laundering operation, which allegedly processed over $70 million in illicit crypto flows.
Beyond enforcement actions, the VAU has also invested heavily in victim outreach programs. Agents proactively contact people identified as targets of investment fraud schemes, sometimes before the victims even realize they’ve been scammed. The bureau estimates these outreach efforts have prevented roughly $285 million in losses.