Forensic crypto-crime startup raises $4.3 million
A former US DOJ special agent who brought down the largest darknet market in the world has raised $4.3 million to establish his own cryptocrime agency.
Lilita Infante, a former special agent who served the US Department of Justice (DOJ) for 10 years, has raised funds to launch CAT Labs, which will specifically target crypto hacks, scams and fraud.
Special Agent led the Hydra Task Force
Infante was the lead agent in the task force that shut down Hydra, the world’s largest and longest-running darknet marketplace in the world, accounting for more than 80% of all darknet transactions. It also laundered millions of dollars worth of crypto.
Although the project was inaugurated three months ago, it announced a pre-seed round of $4.3 million on Wednesday. According to PR Newswire, the round was led by Nic Carter’s Castle Island Ventures, Brevan Howard Digital, CMT Digital and RW3 Ventures.
According to Fortune, CAT Labs was part of the incident reporting team for the MyAlgo.com hack in February.
Will Infante’s expertise help CAT Labs take down cryptocrime?
While at the DoJ, Infante launched the first task force to focus specifically on the darknet and crypto-related crimes. She led the team that took down Hydra, the Russian darknet marketplace. In the operations against Hydra, authorities seized $25.3 million worth of Bitcoin from the marketplace’s crypto wallets.
CAT Labs plans to work with the US government to help recover digital assets lost due to cryptocrime. Crypto thefts are increasing every day. According to a Technext report, $452 million has been stolen by crypto fraudsters so far this year.
Infante told Fortune, “Crypto has made it very easy to monetize hacks, scams, and fraud. There are still many technological gaps in investigative technology in law enforcement that create a large backlog of cases that basically prevent law enforcement from effectively targeting these the cases.”
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