A lately launched U.S. Division of Justice audit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) practices with reference to darknet prison investigations concluded that the legislation enforcement company is in disarray — and an overarching “cryptocurrency assist technique” is likely to be among the many options. 

Based on an unclassified model of the audit launched on Thursday, the FBI’s present darknet investigation efforts are — maybe sarcastically — hampered by a “decentralized” set of practices, insurance policies, and coaching applications, in addition to compartmentalized intelligence resulting in “redundant” efforts.

Notably, the audit discovered that there are two separate Digital Foreign money Groups that help with darkweb investigations, each of that are funded by the DoJ’s Asset Forfeiture Fund. Moreover, “rising prices and static funding from the Property Forfeiture Fund resulted in disagreement between these two Digital Foreign money Groups on the prioritization of sources”, and lots of felt that the 2 Groups performed overlapping work. 

The Property Forfeiture Fund receives a portion of its funding by way of the seizure and sale of property and belongings, together with cryptocurrency, tied to prison investigations.

The DoJ made 5 suggestions to enhance darknet investigations and insurance policies, a lot of which concentrate on centralizing procedures with a view to cut back “ambiguous or overlapping investigative duties”. 

This features a advice to “Develop timelines to acquire suggestions from remaining FBI divisions and full its growth of the FBI-wide cryptocurrency assist technique”, and the report indicated that such a timeline is forthcoming.

The DoJ suggestions come at a time when the FBI may quickly have extra work on its fingers because of new rules. The Treasury’s Monetary Crimes Enforcement Community lately proposed new guidelines that may require exchanges to KYC their prospects for transactions over $3,000.