Manhattan US Attorney To Devote Fewer Resources To Police Crypto Crimes: Prosecutor

According to the latest report from Reuters, The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan will now 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.

Fewer Prosecutors To Work On Crypto Cases

Scott Hartman, co-chief of the securities and commodities task force at the Southern District of New York (SDNY), gave his assessment one day after President-elect Donald Trump’s former U.S. SEC chair Jay Clayton to become the U.S. attorney there.

Hartman said that the office would not ignore crypto cases, but has fewer prosecutors working on them than 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 Practising 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 our regulatory partners are very active in this space,” Hartman said, referring to agencies such as the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Notably, this shift comes as other regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), actively monitor crypto regulations.

Gensler’s Hostile Approach

Clayton was director of the SEC from 2017 to 2021. While he pursued some crypto-related cases, he was less aggressive at policing the industry, which was smaller at the time, than current SEC chair Gary Gensler. The current administration’s approach under Gensler has been largely criticized by the crypto community over its hostile approach toward crypto assets. 

Many cryptocurrency executives supported Trump’s campaign, believing that Gensler’s crackdown went too far. Gensler’s exit from the position of SEC Chair is largely awaited by the crypto industry as a Trump win has raised the expectations of more favorable regulations for cryptocurrencies.  His departure could indicate a seismic shift in the regulatory environment, not just in the U.S., but across the globe.