TRM Talks: How the FBI Tracks and Seizes Illicit Crypto with the Virtual Assets Unit Chief Patrick Wyman

Ari Redbord (00:02):

I am Ari Redbord and this is TRM Talks. I'm the Global Head of Policy at TRM Labs. At TRM, we provide blockchain intelligence software to support law enforcement investigations and to help financial institutions and cryptocurrency businesses mitigate financial crime risk within the emerging digital asset economy. Prior to joining TRM, I spent 15 years in the US federal government, first as a prosecutor at the Department of Justice, and then as a Treasury Department official, where I worked to safeguard the financial system against terrorist financiers, weapons of mass destruction, proliferators, drug kingpins, and other rogue actors. On TRM Talks, I sit down with business leaders, policymakers, investigators, and friends from across the crypto ecosystem who are working to build a safer financial system. Today, we're talking to the FBI's Virtual Asset Unit Chief, Patrick Wyman.

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But first, Inside the Lab. Today on Inside the Lab, we're examining a landmark conviction that highlights the intersection of crypto and terrorism financing. Mohamed Chipa, a 30 5-year-old from Springfield, Virginia, was recently convicted for providing material support to ISIS through a sophisticated crypto financing scheme. This case demonstrates the increasing sophistication of terror groups in leveraging digital assets to fund their operations. TRM is proud to have supported law enforcement in this investigation. Specifically between 2019 and 2022, Chipa orchestrated a scheme to solicit funds online under the guise of humanitarian aid for Syrian camps. Instead, these funds amounting to over $188,000 were funneled directly to ISIS fighters and operations. Chipa converted cash into cryptocurrency, primarily Bitcoin, and transferred it to accounts in Turkey where intermediaries facilitated its movement into Syria. At least 18,000 of these funds were directly tied to ISIS activities including prison breaks for detained ISIS members.

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Key to dismantling this network was the use of blockchain intelligence. Investigators traced Chipa's transactions, connecting them to specific ISIS fundraising campaigns. The FBI leveraged glance analytics to undercover encrypted communications and digital footprints. Chipa's attempts to evade capture, including fleeing through Mexico and Guatemala, ultimately failed when Interpol issued a blue notice leading to his arrest. This case underscores the importance of blockchain intelligence countering terrorism financing. By combining technological innovation with international collaboration, law enforcement continues to disrupt the financial lifeline of terrorist organizations. For much more on this, check out our blog.

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And now, I sit down with Patrick Wyman, Virtual Asset Unit Chief of the FBI. Patrick, thank you so much for joining TRM Talks.

Patrick Wyman (02:56):

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Ari Redbord (02:57):

Well, excited to talk all things crypto investigations, the work of the FBI, but I have to tell you, my mind exploded a moment ago when you logged in and I see this really cool podcasting studio behind you. I can see this inside the FBI on the wall. Tell me a little bit about that space. That's not something that I was fully expecting.

Patrick Wyman (03:16):

Yeah, so neither was I, to be perfectly honest when I came in, who knew that this was available? It sounds like it kind of came online right around the time of COVID and it was a methodology location for us to be able to get some information out, not only to the public, but then also a good place to record for executive leadership to share information with the field.

Ari Redbord (03:33):

Terrific. Let's get to you. We'd love to kind of hear how you ended up in this role. It's a really unique role. There's only, in my experience, sort of knowing most of these people, a handful of folks really across the world in global law enforcement that are subject matter expertise, that are leading units on virtual currencies in particular, would love to hear about your FBI journey and then ultimately your journey to sort of this virtual asset space.

Patrick Wyman (03:57):

My journey to the FBI is kind an interesting one. I joined the Bureau in 2009. Prior to entering the Bureau, I worked in the real estate title industry for about 10 years, and when I left to come into the Bureau was right around the time of the mortgage crisis and we had a ton of mortgage fraud that was happening, and I actually got super frustrated just sitting there trying to do these closings and seeing what I thought was fraud activity taking place. So I said, enough talking about it, let me actually try to do something about it. So I put my papers in to join the FBI was lucky enough to be selected and make it through the process and it came to be orders night.

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Wasn't sure exactly what was going to happen with my career. I thought for sure I was going to be working Chinese gangs, something I knew nothing about, right? But in reality, the FBI nailed it. They put me onto a bank fraud squad, which was working primarily mortgage fraud at the time.

(04:46):

I showed up there on day one and hit the ground running. I didn't think I would still be doing mortgage fraud work, but I was happy to be able to know what I was doing. Fast forward just a few years and I put in my papers to go to headquarters into our money laundering unit as a supervisor, and when I arrived, my unit chief at the time said, "Hey, Patrick, we're going to have you lead our virtual currency initiative." And I said, "I don't know anything about virtual currency." And in true Bureau fashion, he said, "Don't worry about it, you'll figure it out." So I hitched my wagon to some really brilliant people, folks very well, Aaron Montgomery and Ali Comoli, and then others that were kind of spearheaded this space for the FBI on the initial side and just learned so much from them about what they were doing.

(05:27):

But took on a role within the FBI of really focusing in on virtual assets and how it impacted our investigations. Later I went and did a joint duty assignment to the USIC and the ODNI in the Inspector General's office, returned to WFO as a field supervisor supervising corporate fraud and frauds and swindles, that sort of thing where we were beginning to see a lot of virtual currency touching our cases. And in around January of 22, I began to realize or hear news that the FBI was going to stand up a virtual assets unit, like a centralized entity. And I harkened back to when I left my term as the supervisor in money laundering and said at the time, what I think the FBI really needs is kind of this centralized entity to be working on this stuff. Not only to provide the expertise but also administrative support to the field.

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So when I heard this news, I said, all right, well, I probably should put my money where my mouth is and put my papers in. I went back as a supervisor and shortly after I got there, my unit chief was promoted to a different spot and I threw my papers in for that job to say, all right, why not? Let's see what happens. And I was luckily selected for that role and now here I sit, it's been a few years and I'm in this spot in an unbelievable position in the Bureau having a chance to do so many different things that touch on all different investigations, all different violations, and I'm working with the absolute best and smartest and brightest that we have the FBI has to offer in this space. So it's been a very roundabout route to get here.

Ari Redbord (06:50):

It's amazing. Tell me a little bit more about the VAU. You mentioned it's a place where people with this expertise and you do have an extraordinary team come together to build cases. What types of cases? Is it truly every type of offense?

Patrick Wyman (07:02):

Yes, it absolutely is. So just as a little bit of background on vau, so the Virtual Assets Unit was created in a collaborative way between cyber division and criminal division inside the FBI because we realized we were somewhat siloed in our expertise. Cyber division was doing one thing, criminal division, something else, counter-terrorism division, even something else. And our subject matter expertise was not all sitting together. So some brilliant executive managers at the time said, alright, we're going to fix this problem. And they came together and shared some resources, shared locations, and we put us all together sitting at one spot. And what VAU does, our primary role is to provide operational and tactical support to the field across all investigative matters. And that happens through the subject matter experts that we have sitting in my unit. But then also we have deployed assets, some national assets that work for us but that are seated in various field offices throughout the United States.

(07:56):

And then we also have members of our team that are auxiliary members, folks that are in the field doing their day-to-day job but are willing to raise their hand and offer to support cases across field offices because they have some of this knowledge and expertise. In addition, we have a major training component that saddles with us, basically an upskilling of our personnel that falls to us as a mandate. We have an embedded intelligence team that sits with us run by Aaron Montgomery, and that team collaborates on any and all intelligence products that are being put forth, whether it be strategic or tactical, and also coordinating with our USIC and other law enforcement partners. And then we have a major administrative component which is trying to update policy or respond to what the evidence guide going to say about crypto for us dealing with IDIQ contracts for blockchain analytical tools and that sort of thing.

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So we have that huge piece of us as well. And so the cases that we support, what we have found is that it is really completely cross programmatic. What used to be generally just kind of a cyber cyber when I first started or just maybe a money laundering thing in the criminal sense, we are now finding crypto involved in every single case, every type of violation that the FBI has responsibility for mitigating. So it really is a completely, totally cross programmatic thing. The beauty for us is we don't think of ourselves as a program management entity looking at crypto necessarily as the threat. Crypto is the facilitator or the modality of the crime. It enables that money laundering activity. So I don't have to manage threat matters specifically. Those are actually the threats. So if we have a money laundering threat or the ransomware threat, those are managed by the appropriate and logical threat management units. Our unit gets to be the customer service entity. We get to literally come in and say We're from FBI headquarters, we're here to help. Which normally, normally believes, but that is in fact the case in this situation and we are trying to be the Chick-fil-A of customer service to our field, our pleasure to serve your virtual asset needs right out of the virtual assets unit.

Ari Redbord (09:52):

Fantastic. Let's talk cases, right? You mentioned that there's sort of a range of different offense categories. I think one thing I've been saying for years is as this crypto ecosystem grows, and my god it's growing with regulatory clarity and what's happening really in this moment, crypto is just going to be a part of every case from violent crime that we've seen an uptick in, to this sort of classic ransomware. But talk me through some case examples from the VAU and the work that you guys have done.

Patrick Wyman (10:15):

Sure. As you just mentioned, anything that's happening in the North Korea space, we wind up getting ourselves involved in that. We, again, we're nicely aligned and tapped in with the appropriate threat management units that work on those. So we have experts that are immediately deploying or engaging with some of the relationships that they have internal but also external, the FBI to work on some of these things. So as you guys well know, we're also involved with the Level Up program on the fraud side of the house. We are working hard in that space on the crypto investment fraud that's often referred to as pig butchering. And so those different frauds that start with that random text that you receive on your telephone, I know Erin West was on the show just in October. She's obviously leading a charge in this and has talked about it and what we're doing here in the FBI, one of the things in addition to try to work these overarching enterprise investigations to actually dismantle the threat itself, we've found that that's a tough challenge given where elicit actors are, what our reach is, the arbitrage area where some of those illicit actors sit and that our standard beneficial outcome that we might have is going to put handcuffs on people.

(11:19):

That is a challenge and it's a long game for us. We're working super hard on it, but in the short term, we want to try to be able to stop the bleeding a little bit and try to get ahead of what's happening to these victims. It's a terrible scenario. It's causing people to lose their life savings. And so we had some brilliant people who thought of an idea and kind of wouldn't take no for an answer inside the FBI and just said, we are going to figure out a way to get ahead of this and talk to victims. So by leveraging blockchain analytical tools and blockchain intelligence, what we've been able to do is look at transactions that are happening on the blockchain and trace those back to victims themselves. And we have a program that's being co-managed by our transnational organized crime unit and also by our financial crime section to work together in a collaborative way across all field offices to find analysts and agents, forensic accountants that are willing to volunteer their assistance on these cases, which result in our doing some tracing, working with the private sector to identify who potential victims are and then actually doing direct outreach to those victims, direct outreach in the form of actually telephone calls or showing up at someone's doorstep and talking our way through the rapport building that's necessary and breaking down barriers in those cases to have those victims understand, no, you are being victimized by this scam and we are here to try to stop you from doing that.

(12:40):

And we've had some really great success in that. I mean the very specific statistics, we just had a press release that went out a few weeks ago on this, but it's over 4,000 victims directly contacted by the FBI in a huge amount of savings.

Ari Redbord (12:53):

The numbers are pretty awesome.

Patrick Wyman (12:55):

So over 4,300 victims actually identified and 76% of those were unaware at the time that we contacted them that they were in fact being victimized, which allowed us to stop them from being victimized further. And it's about an estimated 285 million worth of savings by stopping those additional contacts. So it's a small piece of what we're doing, but it's an impactful and an important piece to be working on.

Ari Redbord (13:21):

Yeah, no, it's absolutely critical and you hear these stories and profile a lot of them. I think the challenge and what we're working on at TRM all the time is honestly to support level up in the work that you guys are doing is how do we proactively stop these things from happening in the first place? You can literally save someone's life this way. We're trying to put in technology that allows banks to associate a transfer, a legal transfer, right? I mean that's the challenge here is that the transfers that go out from banks are legal. The owner of the account has told them to send the funds, so how do we alert banks that they may be sending funds out to a scam type of activity? And so we're working on the technology aspect, but I love the fact that you have boots on the ground who are talking to individuals, but that is the key, right? As much as I love blockchain intelligence and as much as I want to trace my way out of everything, once you're starting to trace, you're oftentimes too late.

Patrick Wyman (14:10):

No, you're absolutely right. I mean that's after the fact, right? The act has already happened. The educational piece of this is huge. You and I talked about it before that this is not a problem that I think we can necessarily prosecute our way out of. There's just so much of it. Eventually we're going to get there and I'm positive the FBI working with our law enforcement partners, our USIC partners, international partners, are going to find a way to really dismantle this threat. But in the short term, like you said, you have to do something. And so in addition to just having those reach outs and really trying to take a proactive effort to stop the victimization where we can, there's also a huge educational piece on this.

Ari Redbord (14:49):

No, I give your team and you particularly credit and the Bureau for understanding that this is an important piece of things, right? I was a prosecutor for many years, you're just heads down in your case not realizing necessarily the importance of education and sort of that broader piece. So I think it's really critical work. Talk me through some wins, some case examples for the Virtual Asset Unit and some of the work you've done obviously level up, huge piece of that. All of those individual cases play in there.

Patrick Wyman (15:12):

Sure. So it's hard to talk about some of these because of the adjudication status they're in and where we fit in as you know, is kind of usually on the front end and then the work will happen, the case will be finished off and we don't always have the direct outcome, but speaking more of maybe at a higher level on some of those, I mean the Bitcoin fog case is a huge one that we are involved with where that's a pretty big win where actually blockchain analytics comes up and is something that is reviewed during that trial as being evidence that can be entered. So that was huge, right? That's a big win for all of the different cases that we have down the road after the fact. So that was a big one. We also, we've got some folks that are working really hard in the CM space to identify not only the producers of but also consumers of and through blockchain analytics, in addition to other casework, we've been able to identify administrators of sites, that sort of thing.

(16:04):

It's huge wins for us. We're very proud of that for sure. But also using blockchain analytics have been able to, not too long ago, actually, again, along with our other investigative techniques, actually identify a top 10 fugitive and actually locate that person so that they were able to be brought to justice. So those are just some of those things that we're touching on the ransomware side of the house. We're involved in all these different investigations. I wish I could point, I would say press releases that are coming out from DOJ are the best place to get the exact wins, and anytime you see VAU or VCRT, we had a little touch on it somewhere along the way

Ari Redbord (16:39):

Love it. We try to highlight something at least once a week that law enforcement out there is doing to track and trace the flow of funds to have these great outcomes. But you named such a cool range. You mentioned the Bitcoin fog case for folks who aren't tracking that Bitcoin fog, and there was another case called Helix, which was pretty similar, were individuals who were advertising mixing services on the dark net, basically, Hey, this is how you evade FBI detection, right? Mixers are one thing. They're used for lawful purposes. These were advertised literally to be used on the dark net and you were able to sort of take those down and ultimately prosecute the administrators successfully. So yeah, huge wins. And again, every crime is a financial crime and I think my colleague of the US attorney's office, Zia Faruqui famously said that in the context of welcome to video, which was the take down of the largest child exploitation marketplace, and it just goes to show that these one-offs that we used to do as law enforcement or still do, they're great and hopefully you stop a bad thing from happening to a child, but wow, the networks effects of following the money and taking down these sites are just extraordinary. I know that's where your focus is.

Patrick Wyman (17:41):

Yeah, it really is. I mean, that's where we tap in on these cases. There's a ton of investigative effort that's happening on the pointing end of the spear out in these different offices, and what we try to do is just offer up taking off of maybe that financial part of the investigation, the forensic accountants that are there maybe are looking at the typical financial institution documents that they're going to get back and are providing tremendous analysis on that. If they can even spin off a little piece of this that they can let us tackle for them or that if we can out fit them with the knowledge and resources to be able to do this work themselves, that's a huge win. But anything that we can take off or by providing one of our national assets or the VCRT members as an expert to assist, we're in pretty good shape there.

(18:20):

And that allows the agent analyst, the folks that are actually on the pointing in the spear to go out and do the hard work of doing the interviews, moving through the next stage, getting to the grand jury. So it's a small piece of an overarching larger puzzle for sure, but wherever we can find the finances, we want to do that and it gives us a chance to beyond the charges that we might have in that case, also put a financial hurting on our subjects in that matter, which is all part of the grand prosecutorial scheme. We want to make sure that there's a huge impact and in a lot of ways, a deterrent impact to the illicit activity that's taking place there.

Ari Redbord (18:55):

It's a really important point. I mean, the reality is that these are often people who are overseas and beyond the reach of US, law enforcement, North Korea, cyber criminals, Russian oligarchs, the Chinese money laundering networks, but you've been incredibly successful seizing billions of dollars in cryptocurrency and other assets, and that obviously has become a huge focus for the Bureau of putting that financial hurt on of disrupting those networks from a financial perspective.

Patrick Wyman (19:23):

Right. Well, it's almost redefining a little bit about what is a win in this space for us. As I said, for me as a street agent, the culmination of a case is getting my arrest warrant and lets me go put hands on somebody, and that is huge. That's where we always want to be able to get to, but as you just described, where there is this arbitrage space beyond maybe our reach, we have to be able to inject some friction or other ways to make this less lucrative. So the freezing of virtual assets, the freezing of those virtual assets where we can, making it more costly to launder, finding out ways to slow that laundering process down or pushing adversaries to places where we have the ability to actually take some mitigating or disruptive efforts. Those are all critical things, and it's trying to make sure that we're also getting the win to be understood by the powers that be right.

(20:18):

It's important to understand we did not put handcuffs on this particular person. That's because it's going to be really difficult for us to get handcuffs on them until we can get 'em extradited somewhere. We're going to do this indictment, but in the meantime, we are going to create so much friction so that you're not able to loan to those funds or we're going to freeze those funds on chain we where your illicit activity doesn't have you any financial benefit in the end because you just never are able to obtain that. That is in fact a win. It's just defining what those wins look like.

Ari Redbord (20:44):

It's cool. I mean, in the age of government efficiency, we're all thinking about how we could do things leaner and meaner and use tools for big wins. And the ROI of these types of cases is extraordinary, right? You have a few agents in your unit who are the best in the world at tracking and tracing funds and ultimately seizing billions. Ultimately that can be used for victims and

Patrick Wyman (21:04):

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean you guys wrote, you got a piece that you wrote on return on investment. When I saw that and I read it, it made me smile because that's the same argument that I've been making in a lot of ways on funding for certain things for years, and it's an important argument to make. The return on investment isn't necessarily one for one because of course, whatever funds we use to invest into this, we're hoping to get value back for victims and return that to victims so that it's not coming to the USG. But in other places there's ways where we don't have a victim or if it's a heist or theft, whatever we could freeze and seize. There is in fact a return on investment. And the way that I like to look at it, the agent's toolbox is ever changing.

(21:43):

For us federal law enforcement and local law enforcement, we are armed with our normal tools in the toolbox. You're walking out with your badge and your handcuffs and your gun and you've got, if you're a street cop, you've got a lot of other tools in your toolbox. For us, on the federal law enforcement side of the house, there's a lot of investigative techniques and tools that we use the way I view blockchain analytics for us, and it's certainly the team that I have and what they're providing support to the field, these tools are invaluable and you really can't do the job without it. And when we've looked at it, we've said to ourselves, alright, can we just do this with only open source information or can we do this and create something of our own? The fact of the matter is the SG is not built to do that, right?

(22:23):

We have to rely upon public-private sector partnerships, the great and smart people in the technology space that are going to develop these tools and then we're going to leverage that because you don't want me trying to develop some sort of blockchain analytical tool. It's never going to get off the ground. And that's not to say we don't have brilliant people inside the FBI that can do some of this work, and they can, but it's not the highest and best use of our time. So on the return on investment question, it's critical to have access to these tools because they have such tremendous results. In the end,

Ari Redbord (22:51):

There's this perception out in the world, and it is true to an extent about the television style, turf wars that go on. I have found that this is actually the one area where there's the least of that because there's such a cadre today of investigators across these different law enforcement agencies that have that expertise. They're all friends. You can go out and have a beer and you can talk about tracing and tracking funds, but I have found that it's the one place, and if you look, as you mentioned DOJ press releases as a great place to sort of see the wind. It's almost always FBI, HSI, IRS-CI, and so on quotes from senior leadership on those releases and I'm like, yeah, this is actually a place where this Is working.

Patrick Wyman (23:28):

You're so right. I think back to cases that I worked at one point where there's some flag planting that happens and while I was here first, and some of that's just natural and I know the FBI sometimes doesn't help ourself or the movies certainly don't help ourselves in that diehard agent Johnson and Johnson we're taking over from here. I get that, and I think some of that has really played up. I will tell you from personal perspective and experience, but then also just kind of seeing what I see on a day-to-day with the agents that are working these things whenever we're coming into these investigations really is trying to be a force multiplier if we weren't there first, and even if we were there first, the more people we can grab in, the better off we are. This is an exceptionally collaborative space to be in on the crypto side, I agree with you a hundred percent.

(24:15):

This is the one space where it's almost as though those walls don't even exist between our agencies. There's so much collaboration that happens. I mean, I meet with the guys from these various agencies that you just talked about at various, we'll show up to a conference and there's usually a sidebar that we get a chance to do, but even we're all working together to come up with just kind of quarterly meetings where we can work together to say, Hey, where can we be collaborating on this? What sort of challenges are you running into on this technical problem? Well, we've already been working on that. How do we work together? So there is so much collaboration that's happening in this space and the force multiplication is huge.

Ari Redbord (24:51):

Almost every case is an example of this these days, and I would encourage folks to read the press releases and read about these cases. My favorite example is probably Kyle Armstrong who was at FBI at the time. Christian Janczewski was at IRS-CI, and Ryan Landers was at HSI, worked sort of this really big counter-terrorism case. I think the first crypto ever counter-terrorism case, it was ISIS, Al-Qaeda. Everyone just brought their skillset to the table. What are sort of key challenges that you see when you're investigating cases involving cryptocurrency?

Patrick Wyman (25:17):

I mean they're probably all the ones that you think of. I mean for us, if I had to start somewhere, the key challenges when these cases are coming in is what is the knowledge base of the person that is picking this case up? Do they even know to recognize it? Once they recognize it, do they know what to do with it? So that is immediately a key challenge and it's one of the things that falls back to our unit again, is to upskill the personnel to not only recognize it, but once they recognize it, to know it's okay. There's things that they can do about it or at least resources they can reach out for. Part of it is just resource driven time. Like I said before, the agents or the analysts that are out on the pointy end of the spear in the field offices, they've got a lot of work to do in these cases.

(25:56):

They're having AUSAs ask for different sets of information, and so we're trying to go out and collect that. And the ability to sit and be able to maybe do some of this tracing, which really takes a good bit of effort is not always something they can do. So it's finding the resources and the personnel that can lend the time to do it. Then there's just a knowledge of even that, like, okay, I understand what I see and what I can do with it, but do I actually understand how to then do the tracing that's going to be valuable and lead to something that'll give me a lead in my case that'll go to the next level. And then the challenges get exponentially harder for, I think what we see is our illicit actors are quick to adapt, especially on the money laundering side of the house as quick as we are to be able to find ways to, as I said before, kind of throw gravel in the cog and slow things down, create friction, make things more costly.

(26:48):

Our illicit actors then pivot and it's kind of keeping up with those pivots a little bit. So those are all challenges that we face in this space. I think it's such a new area that there's not a lot of maybe continuity in some of the partners that work in this space, whether it be exchanges in each of the different returns that we get back from an exchange looks different. And so okay, we have to build something that's going to normalize those things so we can ingest information right away. Other challenges are just internal. When the Bureau was originally putting together our evidence policies and that sort of thing, cryptocurrency was never even contemplated. So it's coming up with those internal challenges as well that we need to overcome to make ourselves as efficient as possible.

Ari Redbord (27:32):

I really relate to this idea that cyber criminals and others are moving at the speed of the internet, and it's always very hard for government to go there. Criminals are often early adopters of technology. One of my favorite sort of stories or analogies is the Bureau was literally created because of the Model T. All of a sudden, criminals were able to cross state lines at unprecedented speed and scale, and we didn't have federal law enforcement, we just had state local police and we created the Federal Bureau of Investigation to cross border to go after the Bonnie and Clydes of the world who were also going cross border. And I feel like it's always been about trying to keep up with bad actors and new technology.

Patrick Wyman (28:13):

Absolutely true. Yeah, no, it's funny you just talked about that reminds me, I'll go back just a minute. When I first started in this, I worked in the money laundering unit and you're the virtual currency guy. I said, okay, great. So I was trying to explain to my dad, who was a 23 year FBI agent as well, who worked bank robbers and deserters. He said, so what are you doing? I'm trying to understand this. And I tried to explain this the whole thing to him, and he just was like, I don't get it. I don't understand what it is that you all are doing. So I gave him a book and I said, look, read this. It'll make perfect sense to you after the fact in terms of how this plays in through your overarching space. And he came back about a week and a half later. He goes, I got it. I read this book. I just put yours and your brother's inheritance. It all went into Mount Cox. Is that okay?

(28:58):

But I mean, it's interesting. This space is so different from the FBI of old in terms of the technology, but as you've pointed out, it's really the same thing. It's just instead of now cash, they're using crypto. We just constantly have to continue to adapt and change, and we try to do it as nimbly as we can, but we're a big giant ship. US government is a big giant ship in terms of law enforcement trying to move and pivot where we can when we need to. We're really pretty fast at it. And then it's just trying to make sure that everything falls in line administratively to make sure that we're doing this according to policy and procedure and everything. You

Ari Redbord (29:34):

Mentioned your dad. I mean, it is a pretty unique situation to have this in common and to have been this as being the family business. You didn't go right into the family business.

Patrick Wyman (29:42):

No.

Ari Redbord (29:43):

You tried some other things. Tell me about that relationship and what it means to have done this.

Patrick Wyman (29:49):

Oh, well, I mean it's amazing. I get to talk to him about these things routinely. We talk about Level Up and I just sent him a bunch of information of the press release the other day, and he has his old school agent hat on and says, this is amazing work in fairness. He goes, well, you do it to catch the bad guy. And I said, I get it. No, you're right. But it's very interesting. We have the Bureau changed so much when he was in and how it's affecting me. My brother was also an agent, so it literally is the family business, as you say, and we've all worked very different things. And it's interesting that the swath of experiences that we've all had at some point walking through the halls of Hoover building or being out of the Washington field office or just moving around in the beginning, it's a very interesting and a neat thing to share with your father and your brother to have some of those shared experiences. We have shared wins for sure. We have shared things that we commiserate about now and then, but it's all very, very good. For sure.

Ari Redbord (30:44):

Yeah, really extraordinary. What do you do when you're not stopping bad guys, when you're not chasing cyber criminals? And you and I have had some fun conversations. You're also a baseball dad. You love country music like I do. What do you do to kind of unwind?

Patrick Wyman (30:58):

Well, I mean you just kind of described some of those things. My baseball dad times are over. I'm sad to say my son hung up the cleats a few years ago. I think I saw you maybe taking batting practice the other day, which I thought we could probably work on your swing a little bit. For me, the job is one that I kidded in the beginning here that I sleep in my suit and that sort of thing, but I do like to wind down and have a good time for sure. I mean, for me, it's spending time with the family for sure. My daughter is in her senior year about to go off to college. She and my son will both be at James Madison together next year, which is huge for us. We are very fortunate in my circumstance to have been local to the DC area.

(31:36):

So my dad is still here, my brother's down in Richmond, but then my wife's family is all very close. So it's a lot of time just spent with family. I get out and hack up the golf course when I can, not very well. I'm hoping someday maybe in retirement I'll be a better golfer. The country music for me is huge. I think the folks that work for me maybe give me a hard time a little bit about that. I recounted that I was doing a country ride on Peloton the other day, and I think someone said, you can't ride a Peloton. It's to country music. It's too slow. I'm like, it's fine. It's fast enough for me.

Ari Redbord (32:05):

I run marathons to country music. You tell those guys to talk to me. Well, Patrick, seriously, thank you so much for joining TRM Talks.

Patrick Wyman (32:13):

I really appreciate it. Thank you for asking me to be on. It was my pleasure.

Ari Redbord (32:20):

It's interesting, I think all the time about the origins of the FBI and really US federal law enforcement, and it really was that era of Bonnie and Clyde and Al Capone. And literally the same year the Model T rolled off the assembly lines was the year that the FBI was created because it was, how do we stop bad actors from now going state lines at unprecedented speed and scale? And now I think about today, right? How do US law enforcement entities, federal law enforcement entities, go after bad actors who are now moving across borders at the speed of the internet? And that's why Patrick is leading a specialized unit within the FBI for individuals who are using this type of technology entities, nation states, that are using this type of technology. And I think the other really key piece is in this age of technology, with the use of blockchain intelligence tools, law enforcement is now able to track, trace and seize and eventually forfeit through legal proceedings, billions of dollars.

(33:16):

And it really comes down to a relatively few agents who are using these types of tools to do this. And in the age of Doge and the age of government efficiency, this is a great example. And then this administration comes along and there's an executive order on a stockpile that's made exclusively, created exclusively from these seized assets, 3.6 billion in the Bitfinex case alone. And we start to see, hey, we now see bad actors leveraging technology, but we see law enforcement both led by Patrick, who are leveraging technology to track trace steel and forfeit funds to build a reserve to build a stockpile. So, so much happening right now. I felt like this was a very of the moment conversation about what the sort of very best tracers, the very best law enforcement investigators in this world are doing around crypto related crime.

(34:06):

On the next TRM Talks, I sit down with Eleanor Tart, former Fox Business producer and co-founder of the "Crypto in America" podcast. If you love the show, leave a review wherever you're listening to it and follow us on LinkedIn to get the latest news on crypto regulation, compliance, and investigations.

TRM Talks (34:26):

TRM Talks is brought to you by TRM Labs, the leading provider of blockchain intelligence and anti-money laundering software. This episode was produced in partnership with Voltage Productions. The music for this show was provided by EcoX.

Ari Redbord (34:44):

Now let's get back to building.