Congress wants a task force on cryptocurrency theft, months after the Justice Department disbanded NCET.
The proposal, introduced by Reps. Lance Gooden and Josh Gottheimer, would create a Federal Cryptocurrency Theft Task Force within the Justice Department and place it under the attorney general or a designee, according to the bill text and a June 11 announcement from Gooden’s office.
That makes the bill more than just another crime and crypto declaration. It lands in the middle of Washington’s attempt to move digital asset markets away from enforcement-oriented uncertainty and toward clearer rules, while asking the same administration to rebuild coordination on the thefts, hacks, scams and coercion cases that continue to hit users.
The tension can be traced back to the DOJ memo from April 2025, which ended what Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche called “regulation by prosecution.” The memo disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, moved one DOJ unit away from cryptocurrency enforcement and said prosecutors should focus on individual criminal misuse of digital assets rather than targeting the industry itself.
The new bill from the House of Representatives maintains that market position and at the same time draws a line between market regulation and response to theft: lighter supervision of crypto markets combined with more coordination when someone loses money.
What the bill would build
The Federal Cryptocurrency Theft Enforcement and Coordination Act would establish a task force within the DOJ and make it the primary federal coordinating body for preventing, investigating, and prosecuting cryptocurrency theft and related criminal activities.
Senior representatives are mentioned in the bill text the DOJ, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (including Homeland Security Investigations), and the Treasury Department (including FinCEN). It also gives the attorney general the ability to add other federal law enforcement agencies if necessary.
This wording is important because some summaries of the proposal refer to a broader group of agencies; These bodies and the overarching authority of the Attorney General are mentioned in the visible bill text.
The tasks of the task force are practical rather than regulatory. It would develop best practices for evidence collection, analysis of seized digital evidence, investigative techniques, asset tracing and victim involvement.
It would also provide technical assistance, training, and guidance to state and local law enforcement agencies and prosecutors, share information with federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial agencies, and coordinate with international partners when cases cross borders.
A small clause at the end is the policy hinge. The bill keeps cryptocurrency, digital asset markets, financial institutions and financial products out of the task force’s regulatory reach.
It also leaves unchanged federal regulatory authority, the criminal code, and private rights of action.
| What the bill does | Outside the scope of the bill |
|---|---|
| Creates a DOJ Task Force to Coordinate Cryptocurrency Theft | Leave the regulation of the crypto market untouched |
| Builds federal, state, and local playbooks for evidence, investigation, and victims | Leave criminal offenses unchanged |
| Requires annual reports on activities, trends, coordination, and recommended solutions | Leave the details of the funding, staffing and victim portal open |
This structure gives the bill its political shape. Lawmakers are asking a different question beyond the battles in the exchange, mixer, wallet and token markets: whether theft from crypto users needs a permanent federal hub after DOJ disbanded the team most closely involved in specialized digital asset crime work.
Why victim response is the pressure point
The strongest argument in favor of the bill is the number and variety of cases affecting victims and local authorities.
The FBI said its 2025 Internet Crime Report recorded 181,565 cryptocurrency complaints and more than $11 billion in reported losses. Total reported losses from cyber attacks approached $21 billion.
These numbers don’t show that a new task force will recover more money, but they do explain why Congress can separate the theft problem from the debate over market regulation.
A victim of a wallet drain, phishing scheme, exchange exploit or coercive attack rarely experiences the system as one clean federal road. Local police may not have expertise in blockchain tracking. Prosecutors may need help preserving digital evidence.
Federal agencies may disagree about where the case fits. Private sector companies may be the only parties that can quickly freeze, trace or flag funds. In cross-border cases, the timeline for asset tracking can be faster than with regular referral channels.
Recent reporting on CryptoSlate illustrates several bottlenecks behind that coordination problem. The battle over the CLARITY Act has already drawn law enforcement groups into negotiations over market structure, as safe harbor language could affect how prosecutors treat developers, infrastructure providers and intermediaries.
The DeFi exploit coverage has shown how a single error in shared code can have an impact multiple chains at once, turning a technical bug into a response problem in networks.
Reporting on physical attacks shows the offline side of the same threat, where coercion against holders can turn wallet security into a street crime problem.
That’s the part of the story the task force law seeks to capture. Crypto crime now includes code exploits, scams, state hacking and offline coercion.
A blanket statement that the DOJ remains able to prosecute crimes leaves open the question of whether a sheriff, a victim, a federal agent and a prosecutor can move quickly through the same case.
That mix gives the proposed training, evidence guidance and outreach facilities their practical weight. A theft report can start with a local official, become a blockchain tracking issue, and then evolve into a sanctions, cyber or cross-border issue before the funds start moving again.
The premise of the bill is that these transfers need structure before the next victim emerges.
The test of the bill is capacity
The proposal still leaves a major question unanswered: whether coordination can become capacity.
The bill would require annual reports to Congress on the task force’s activities, emerging threats, coordination with state and local agencies, and recommended legislative or administrative solutions. It would also require assistance from state and local law enforcement agencies, although participation by state, local, tribal and territorial governments would be voluntary.
These provisions can be important if they provide a real playbook, reliable points of contact and faster escalation for victims. They could also expose gaps that Congress has yet to fund, including the number of agents, analysts, prosecutors, forensic specialists and victim services staff needed to make the task force more than a registry.
The bill leaves the appropriations unspecified. It leaves open the victim intake, response deadlines and rules for the division of labor. It creates a task force model, while prior to the April 2025 service, NCET operated as a dedicated DOJ enforcement team.
That restraint is politically useful because it keeps the bill away from the broader fight in the crypto market. It is also the core weakness.
A task force can standardize the handling, training, and referral of evidence, but only if agencies dedicate people, data access, and authority to the task.
The policy whiplash is real, even if the bill text itself follows a coherent line. Washington can be friendlier to market access and still decide that stolen crypto needs a dedicated federal response.
The open question is whether Congress wants that response to be a specialized capability with resources behind it, or some other formal label for a problem that victims already experience as fragmented.