On October 8, 2025, I had the opportunity to give a talk to the National Civil Forfeiture Conference in Edmonton, Alberta on the way the United States has used civil forfeiture to recover funds involved in fraud schemes and other offenses involving cryptocurrency. The following lecture outline contains citations to, and discussions of, twelve recent cases — ranging from the simple to the complex — illustrating the range of cryptocurrency schemes that federal law enforcement agencies have encountered, and the ways in which the civil forfeiture laws were used to trace and recover at least a portion of the property.
I post it as a useful introductory guide to how law enforcement has pursued cryptocurrency cases, and how the courts have dealt with such recurring issues as the commingling of tainted and untainted assets, the need to provide notice to persons whose identity may be unknown, and the reliability and admissibility of blockchain analysis.