Congress seeks to restore crypto theft task force after DOJ cuts

Congress is moving to rebuild a federal crypto theft response just months after the Justice Department shut down its dedicated enforcement team. A bill from Reps. Lance Gooden and Josh Gottheimer would create a Federal Cryptocurrency Theft Task Force inside the DOJ and put it under the attorney general or a designee.

That is a fairly sharp policy pivot. Washington has spent the past year trying to dial back the “regulation by prosecution” approach that many in the industry blamed for inconsistent enforcement. The problem is that hackers, scammers and extortion crews have not paused while the policy debate unfolded.

The proposal would make the new task force the main federal coordination point for cryptocurrency theft, investigations and prosecutions. The bill text names the DOJ, FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and Treasury, including FinCEN, as core participants, while giving the attorney general room to add other agencies when needed.

Its remit is operational, not market-making. The task force would standardize evidence collection, digital forensics, asset tracing and victim outreach, while also training state and local authorities that often lack the tools to handle blockchain-linked cases. It would also coordinate with international partners when stolen funds cross borders, which they often do within minutes.

The timing matters because the DOJ’s April 2025 memo dismantled the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and told prosecutors to narrow their focus to individual criminal misuse of digital assets. In practice, that left fewer dedicated federal eyes on theft cases even as exchange hacks, wallet drains and romance scams kept landing on victims.

For traders, the first read is not about a direct market rule. It is about whether Washington is trying to separate fraud enforcement from broader crypto oversight, while rebuilding enough coordination to make theft cases stick. That distinction matters for BTC holders and exchange users because headline risk tends to rise when enforcement looks fragmented, but so does the chance of a more predictable response when money goes missing.

The bill now has to move through Congress and survive the usual jurisdiction fight over how much crypto-specific enforcement the federal government should centralize. Watch the committee process, any DOJ comment, and whether lawmakers try to broaden the task force’s mandate beyond theft into sanctions or other financial crime cases.