- Cryptocurrencies are an increasingly common way for divorcing spouses to hide money from each other.
- One investigator said he's dealt with several
divorce cases withcrypto worth more than $10 million.
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Cryptocurrencies, which are
Sibenik, who is a lead case manager for blockchain investigation agency CipherBlade, said the amount of crypto divorce cases the firm handles has "grown considerably." When he started at the firm in 2019, he said the agency wasn't focused on investigating hidden crypto in divorces, and now those scenarios make up about 15% of CipherBlade's caseload.
"I was the first person — well, maybe one of the first people — to realize the potential that
Several cases, Sibenik said, have dealt with crypto stashes worth more than $10 million. Those assets, he said, don't "show up on bank statements."
The lack of a central authority, like a government or company, in charge of crypto has given the asset class a reputation for being elusive. But in reality, crypto's movements are easily trackable because every transaction is recorded on a public ledger called a blockchain, and investigators are becoming increasingly savvy at cracking tough cases. Take the US Justice Department's $4, worth $3.6 billion, last month from the 2016
Sibenik said in crypto divorce cases the legal process, not the investigative one, is the "cumbersome" aspect. In some instances, he said spouses have played the I-didn't-know-I-had-to-disclose-that card. In other cases, they deny, deny, deny, until the evidence is overwhelming.
Even
"It's not that they can't be valued; it's just that value is a bit more unclear, whereas with