Europol warns criminal crypto use growing more sophisticated

Europol has warned that the use of digital assets for criminal activities has become more sophisticated. This development was communicated by Burkhard Mühl, the head of Europol’s European Financial and Economic Crime Centre (EFECC). He made these comments at the just-concluded Global Conference on Finances and Crypto Assets.

The event was organized jointly by Europol, the Basel Institute on Governance, and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). During the event, Mühl mentioned that the misuse of digital assets for criminal activities has become widespread and more sophisticated while pledging continued investment from Europol to support member states in complex and international investigations. “Investigating these crimes places a significant burden on the law enforcement agencies of EU member states,” he said.

Europol raises alarm over misuse of digital assets for criminal activities

The conference focused on the ways that digital assets and blockchains have evolved and how scammers are taking advantage of them to carry out their sophisticated crimes. In the 2025 crypto crime report released by Chainalysis in January, the firm mentioned that illicit crypto addresses received about $40.9 billion across 2024. The figure only represented a small segment of the overall proceeds of financial crime, and excludes traditional crimes such as drug trafficking, where crypto is used for payments.

Europol has initiated and completed several major takedowns since the beginning of this year. This includes dismantling the cybercrime network in Latvia, which authorities claimed laundered more than $330,000 through digital assets. It also carried out an operation targeting the clandestine hawala banking network that laundered over $23 million using several digital assets. In addition, it smashed a crypto investment fraud ring that profited more than $540 million from more than 5,000 victims.

Europe has been hit with a series of so-called wrench attacks, where criminals turn to physical assaults to compel digital asset holders to hand over their digital assets or, in some instances, their private keys. In particular, over the course of the year, France has witnessed more than 10 separate incidents. As previously reported by Cryptopolitan, the growing rate of these attacks forced crypto enthusiasts in the country to call for crypto data security as a way to safeguard wealthy crypto personalities.

Challenges of cross-border enforcement

Some of the challenges for police forces across the world when it comes to crypto-related crimes are their global nature. In addition, the need for cross-border cooperation in operations also makes it difficult at other times. For example, victims of a hack or scam in the United States could be targeted by operators located in another continent. Challenges also remain in how law enforcement and the private sector approach investigating these crimes.

Diana Pātrut, project manager at the Block Intelligence Professionals Association (BIPA) mentioned that different analytics companies often produce inconsistent results. “Our stakeholders have articulated that different blockchain analytics firms produce different results when tracing transactions. There has also been no standardization for wallet attribution, methodology, training, and formatting, making cross-border investigations especially challenging,” Pătruț said.

Pātrut also added that training is still an area that needs work. “The biggest issue we see at the moment is that blockchain intelligence training appears to be primarily driven by private sector solutions, and this creates the confirmation bias, herding trainees to specific commercial solutions and methodologies, without necessarily understanding or appreciating their underlying application,” she explained. She also added that investigators and financial institutions need to develop their critical assessment capabilities.

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