Chainalysis has hired the former IRS criminal investigations chief, Jim Lee.
Takeaway Points
- Chainalysis has hired the former IRS criminal investigations chief, Jim Lee.
- Jim will use Chainalysis data and solutions to fight financial crime while working with law enforcement, tax agencies, financial institutions, and regulators around the world.
- During his time as Chief, leading the IRS-CI, he helped fight against several notable cases like shutting down Hydra.
Why did Chainalysis hire Jim Lee?
Blockchain data firm Chainalysis revealed in a company blog on Monday that it has hired Jim Lee, the former chief of the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigations (IRS-CI) unit. Jim will use Chainalysis data and solutions to fight financial crime while working with law enforcement, tax agencies, financial institutions, and regulators around the world.
Jim explained that crypto is the future of finance, which also means it’s the future of crime. Over the years that he has worked in law enforcement, the illegal world has become more complex. He also said that all types of crime are financially motivated, that criminals are adaptable, and that they are always looking for new ways to exploit the public.
Jim said in a statement that “Crypto has brought greater transparency and efficiency to finance, and we’re still in the early innings. I believe that with time, this technology can continue to give people more control over their money and heighten financial inclusion around the world. However, criminals of all stripes have also been quick to adopt cryptocurrency. We fought against this in several notable cases during my time leading IRS-CI.”
He added, “As Global Head of Capacity Building, I’ll be working to better enable the men and women in law enforcement to thwart many threats in parallel — just like I have been for the last 29 years — and will primarily focus on helping international agencies develop solutions against cryptocurrency-based crime to start. I’ll also have the chance to help crypto businesses and financial institutions in the private sector build and maintain robust compliance programs. These efforts will help Chainalysis in its mission to make the cryptocurrency ecosystem safer, and I can’t wait to get started,” he said.
About Jim Lee
Jim Lee is the former Chief of the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigations (IRS-CI) unit. He has worked there for 29 years, including more than three as Chief of the IRS-CI. During his time as Chief leading the IRS-CI, he helped to fight against several notable cases, like Shutting down Hydra, the world’s largest darknet market, where criminals sold everything from hard drugs to money laundering services; conducting the largest ever crypto seizure connected to terrorism financing in an operation against Hamas’ al-Qassam Brigades; and Rescuing 23 children and arresting 337 child abusers around the globe after taking down Welcome to Video, the world’s largest cryptocurrency CSAM marketplace.
About Chainalysis
Chainalysis is the blockchain data platform that provides data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 70 countries. The data of Chainalysis powers investigation, compliance, and market intelligence software that has been used to solve some of the world’s most high-profile criminal cases and grow consumer access to cryptocurrency safely.
According to Chainalysis, their mission is to help cryptocurrency realize its full potential by bringing greater trust and transparency to it.
