NBC News: How Local High-Tech Crime Units are Tracking and Seizing Stolen Cryptocurrency

When a California man was scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars of cryptocurrency in a fake romance this year, Erin West was able to track and freeze the money.

West, a deputy district attorney who heads the high technology crimes unit in Santa Clara County, said she believes the scammer lives in a country where there isn’t an easy path to extradition and therefore is unlikely to be arrested anytime soon. The money, however, is a different story.

“Our bread and butter these days really is tracing cryptocurrency and trying to seize it and trying to get there faster than the bad guys are moving it somewhere where we can’t grab it,” West said.