The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan will devote fewer resources to policing cryptocurrency crimes after securing several major convictions, including that of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, a senior prosecutor said on Friday, Reuters reported.
Scott Hartman, co-chief of the securities and commodities task force at the Southern District of New York, gave his assessment one day after President-elect Trump’s former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chair Jay Clayton to become U.S. attorney there.
Hartman said the office would not ignore crypto cases, but has fewer prosecutors working on them when digital asset prices collapsed in 2022, a period known as “crypto winter.”
“You won’t see as much crypto stuff coming out of at least the SDNY in the future,” Hartman said at a conference hosted by the Practicing Law Institute in New York.
“We brought a lot of big cases in the wake of the crypto winter — there were a lot of important fraud cases to bring there — but we know or regulatory partners are very active in this space,” Hartman said, referring to agencies such as the the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Watcher.Guru reported the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office plan to reduce its pursuit of crypto cases and devote fewer resources to policing crypto crimes, prosecutors said Friday. This comes after the office succeeded in multiple recent crypto cases, including against Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX.
Scott Hartmann co-chief of the securities and commodities task force at the Southern District of New York, spoke Friday about the office’s future efforts in crypto cases. Hartman said the office would not ignore crypto cases but ha fewer prosecutors working on them than in recent years.
This assessment comes just one day after new president-elect Donald Trump nominated former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chair Jay Clayton to become the next US attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Cointelegraph reported: Scott Hartman reportedly said in New York’s Southern District had filed “a lot of big cases” after a crypto market downturn but suggested it was petering out.
A prosecutor with the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) has suggested that authorities are devoting fewer resources to brining cases involving cryptocurrency-related crimes.
Speaking at the Practicing Law Institute’s 56th Annual Institute on Securities Regulation on Nov. 15, Scott Hartman reportedly said there would not be “as much crypto stuff coming out of at least the SDNY in the future.”
Hartman, the co-chief of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force at SDNY, hinted that many of its criminal cases against high-profile executives like former FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried were filed in response to the crypto market downturn of 2022.
In my opinion, it sounds like the U.S. Attorney’s Office is lessening the amount of people who go after cryptocurrency crimes.