Understanding Crypto Forensics: A Deep Dive With Chris Groshong of CoinStructive

In this episode of Cryptonomix, Mark Eckerle sits down with Chris Groshong, President at CoinStructive. Together, they explore the complexities of navigating the regulatory landscape in the crypto industry, the crucial role CoinStructive plays in guiding companies through compliance challenges, the importance of investigative and forensic analysis in fraud cases, and the difficulties victims face in recovering lost funds. They also highlight the emotional impact of fraud on victims and the need for preventative education to help individuals recognize scams.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Hello, listeners, welcome to this episode of Cryptonomics. Before we jump into today's discussion, please keep in mind this recording is for general education and is not intended to constitute investment advice. Any opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not necessarily represent those of Ham . Well, everyone, welcome back to another episode of cryptonomics, brought to you by Ham . As always, I'm your host, mark Eckley , and today I woke up to the show, Chris Groan , president at Co-constructive, which we're gonna dive, do a deep dive into your history, your company , um, kind of how you got into the crypto space, which is always like where I like to start these episodes. But , uh, welcome to today's show, Chris.

Speaker 2 0:39

Thanks for having me, mark . Good to be here.

Speaker 1 0:42

Awesome, awesome. So let's dive in. I mean, I , I always like to start with introductions, but also your rabbit hole experience into crypto. How did you first get introduced to digital assets? Um, and tell us a little bit about your journey.

Speaker 2 0:53

Well, <laugh>, I was introduced to Bitcoin back in , uh, I want to say maybe it was like the end of 2011. And it was a conspiracy theorist friend at the time who was telling me about it. So I didn't give it a whole lot of <laugh> . I didn't give it a whole lot of creed , um, understanding. I just, I kind of looked at it as like, wow, this kind of sounds like a Ponzi <laugh> . You gotta have more people to get in for this thing to really take off. Um, and then about, I wanna say like a year later, I started looking into it again. So like the end of 2012, and then again at probably about 4, 3, 4 months after that, it was like March of 2012. And I , and that's when I realized, oh, you can't, you can't shut this off <laugh>. You can't turn off Bitcoin. And if you can't turn it off, then you know what's gonna happen is innovation will spur around it. That's exactly what happened with in the.com with the internet and pretty much every other influential technology that we have, always , especially if you can't turn it off , uh, innovation will spur around it. And I was like, well, this will be a second. This will be a new, a new place to, to play, a new place to generate wealth, A new place to go out and, and be adventurous and, and see what happens. So I was looking for a way out of my biotech job. I I didn't have, like, I didn't see a really great whole lot of options because of my skillset . And so when I found crypto or Bitcoin specifically, I was like, no one is really that much farther ahead of me, except for like the developers, which I'm like, I'm not, I'm not planning to become a developer. Right? And then , then there was the attorneys, right ? And I was like , I'm , I'm probably not gonna become an attorney . Those were the folks, it , it was either that , it was those , it was only three folks really when we got started, right? It was, it was the attorneys, it was the devs and it was the crypto anarch capitalists who wanted the banks to just disappear and wipe out everything. So I knew that was not gonna be a path. 'cause the people who have control never give up their control. And the banks and the financial institutions definitely have that. So, but there was, there was always gonna be a training wheels kind of period where there's gonna be this bridge. And I was like, if I can get in now and I spend all my free time, like if I was going back to school, right? Like, what would I have to do? I'd have to work, I'd have to keep my job, I have to still pay the bills, but I gotta go, I gotta get this new skillset . So all my free time, weekends, evenings, I would take vacation days and go to conferences. So I was committed to like this industry and becoming a part of it. And I wasn't sure exactly how I was gonna get there, but I knew that I was going to , and so sometimes determination is the most important.

Speaker 1 4:09

I think I've heard from a lot of people, it's a similar story, but it's one of those things where you go all in, right? It kind of envelops your entire world. With crypto, it's can't , you can't just be half in, half out , um, because it's a space that's moving so fast. I mean, I was the same way. I knew when I hit a crossroads in my career, at a certain point, I know I wanted to stay in crypto. It was just a matter of what direction within crypto did I wanna do that. Yeah . So it's neat to hear kind of the early mover space , especially when, right. You , you , you had a friend and you thought it was Ponzi, this fake internet money. And now we're seeing today, 12, 13 years later, new tokens popping up left and right every single day. And we're just numb to it at this point. It's just expected, basically.

Speaker 2 4:54

Yeah. It's , um, there was, there was no crypto, it was just Bitcoin, right ? Mm-hmm <affirmative> . So , um, there was no crypto Twitter, it was just Bitcoin, Twitter. And that's where I met a lot of people , um, because people were everywhere and there wasn't a lot of, there wasn't a lot of in-person gatherings back in like 2013 . Uh , my first conference was in 2014 in San Francisco, so I'm pretty sure Vitalik was in the corner working on the Ethereum at the time. He was sitting down on the floor next to a potted plant and just typing away <laugh> like , conference conference . Yeah ,

Speaker 1 5:35

I was gonna say the , the conference scene has changed drastically because it just, it scaled up so much now there's so much attention on it and there's so many different events. I'm sure it was more so like a , a meetup type phase where you're just getting folks interested in the space together at for happy hour drinks before it really scaled up to a real full blown conference. So, so it's neat to see the , the dichotomy between the two.

Speaker 2 6:00

Yeah. And I think, you know, it was only in the places that had big hubs of people that were interested, right? So Silicon Valley, New York City, those were the places where the bigger events were taking place. So I went to like my first, yeah, my first conferences in San Francisco in 20 June of 2014. And I met a lot of really great people, a lot of early, early builders, and then 20 it 20, yeah, I guess it was like April of 2015 was when I launched constructive, the first for , I mean, initially , uh, the business model has changed multiple times since then, but constructive has been around since 2015. So we're, we're in the 10 year, we're in the 10 year mark . Can't believe it's been 10 years.

Speaker 1 6:46

It's a big deal when it comes to crypto. That's a , that's a long life lifestyle cycle .

Speaker 2 6:48

Like , I

Speaker 1 6:48

Mean, you don't see many companies, they , they come and go when it comes to the crypto space. So you guys are definitely hanging around one of the veterans. But that's a great segue into let's dive into co-constructive. So what are you guys doing today? What's the, what's the company focused on and , and kind of the core operations, if you will .

Speaker 2 7:06

Yeah, so we, we <laugh> we've, we've changed by laugh because the business models have changed multiple times. Um, and that's how you really know, like if your business is working, if if you go into a, into a bear market and you can't make any money, then your business model isn't any good. <laugh> . Yeah . Right? Um , you gotta be able to make money during the bear and the bull during , uh, al everybody can make money during a bull run. There's so much opportunity. It's when the money dries up, is that, that's when you've really gotta make sure that your , your business model is, is on point. But what we're doing now, we're offering now are our two main services , uh, really, and we're a service provider. We, we provide, so I started a Bitcoin ATM company in 2017 with some folks, and I ended up leaving in 2018. The company's still around, they're not really doing much. And I think it was a good idea to leave. But the point <laugh> , the point being was that I became the chief compliance officer because one, no one else would do it. And two, I knew people in the space that were already chief compliance officers. So I was kinda like, well, if there's anybody in this group that's gonna be able to get this job done, it's gonna be me because I have people I can lean on for information and advice , right ? So that's how I kind of looked at it. And, and so, you know, after I left, I didn't really have that work anymore, but eventually I took another job and then I started treating it as a fractional role because most people don't need a full-time compliance officer. And, and it , and it turned out that was really what the market needed at the time. There was a bunch of people with this in the startup space with low revenue, but it's a legal requirement to have a compliance officer. And usually the CEO starts out as like the compliance officer. But over time there , there tends to be a, a conflict of interest in that position because the CEO and the other C-suites are trying to grow the business and increase the revenue. Whereas the compliance officer is looking at the bad guys or potential bad guys and saying , that guy can't do anymore business. That guy can't transact. So imagine a CEO , right? A CEO is, is gonna be like, yeah, just let it all through. Like, we're making money. Like who cares, right? So to have a CEO who's the chief compliance officer, it doesn't really bode well with the regulators because they know there's a conflict of interest. So it's kind of like separation of power. And that way the compliance officer can come in and say, these are the things that need to be done. These are things we're already doing, and here's where we can clean things up and make things better for your business. So we don't have to work while trying to, you know, also <laugh> allow the most revenue , uh, to come in as possible. And, and that's, so that's always the, that's always the tough battle doing compliance. But we service companies like Bitcoin, ATM companies, we service, excuse me, wallet providers who are now selling crypto directly, right ? So maybe they were just a wallet, but now they got a bunch of users and it makes sense to have this, we are own little exchange payment providers, so people who are using crypto backend rails to like allow people to do remittances and things like that. Other, some other interesting business models that I can't really talk about, but like, basically if it involves the movement of fiat currency and the conversion into crypto, that's usually where we sit in. So if you're, if you're building a business, right? And you, and you're, and you're in that space where you're touching customer's funds, there's a lot of regulation around that. And it's constantly changing, which is actually the most difficult part because it's not the same across the board. All 50 states have like their own different money transmitter licensing rules. Some of them have , some of them have crypto involved and some of them don't. So it makes it really difficult for business, a business operator or you know, a CEO to figure out, well , what do I even need? And like, and then even if I figure out what do I need, how expensive is it gonna be to accomplish all those things, maybe I need to do it in like chunks or pieces to make it more digestible for the, for the company and go after what's the , the biggest markets. Because the overhead sometimes to get into those markets can be a rather large <laugh>

Speaker 1 11:43

On that client side. I mean, you're also helping kind of straddle the regulatory aspect as well with certain applications. Um, the first thing that comes to mind, you, me mentioned , you mentioned payment processors, like MTL money transmitter licensing process. You assist your clients working through that process as well, right?

Speaker 2 12:02

Yeah, we do money transmitter licensing. Um, it kind of came about organically as part of the , as part of the compliance work. 'cause you can imagine client comes to you and says, Hey, I heard the laws. Or you tell 'em , Hey, the laws just changed in one of the states you're operating looks like we're gonna need to get a license or we have to shut down operations by the state, right? So then people are like, oh my gosh, what do we do? And they usually, most of the time, the people who are providing money transmitter licensing services are attorneys. So people constantly, I constantly get asked if I'm an attorney all the time. And that's also because of the other business line , um, that we operate in, which is investigations, right? So not to cut the money transmitter licensing thing too short, but it's a lot of paperwork and regulatory overhead. Uh, it's bureaucracy at its finest. <laugh> . I mean, because some of the states you can reuse the information and some of the states you can't. So a lot of times it's duplicated and, and , and it can get very costly because there's things like the , the two biggest thing that people don't realize about money transmitter licensing , we can move on. And there's, there's the , it is really outside of the company's control too . It is what's called finance audited financial statements. So you need a CPA to actually give their stamp of approval that they audited every single dollar that came in and every dollar that went out. And they know exactly and they can account for everything because that's a requirement. Audited financials a requirement for my transmitters. And , and , uh, and you have to do this in some states quarterly after the first one, and they can ask you to go back two or three years , right? So the problem is, is that a startup may not have clean books going back two or three years, and there's no way they can get audited financials and they're really expensive. They can be 50 to over a hundred grand to get audited financials. So it's a , it's a really steep burden. And then the second thing is a net worth and as surety bonds. So a lot of times your company has to have at least a minimum net worth before they'll even let you operate in a certain state. So you might have to have a , a half a million dollars or $250,000 of assets. And crypto can't be part of that. Like if you had $200,000 in crypto <laugh> , right? You can't even like put that on the books. So there's this whole thing like about the accounting practices that go into, into this, and they're actually trying to change the laws right now to allow folks to use that because it's technically what's called an intangible asset crypto. And so the problem is, is that you can't put that on your balance sheet for net worth. So you might be sitting on a million dollars in crypto and it may fluctuate, you know, it might go up and down, but it probably hasn't been below half a million. But you can't, you can't, you can't use it at all. Right? So that's where some of the laws need , need to change. Um, around, around this couple things

Speaker 1 15:07

To , just a couple things to touch on there really quickly. 'cause you, you made a lot of great points. Um, we've worked with a lot of companies that are going through the MTL process and need audited financial statements as a, as a CPA firm. Um, and that is , uh, something that does come up in the 11th hour that they're just trying to get to the finish line and then understanding the audit process. It takes time. Um, so it's, it's one of those things that it's tough to get out in front of. It's costly, like you mentioned. Um, another thing that we've seen a lot is companies that are creating effectively shells or subsidiaries as the company that is submitting the MTL license. So there's not all that much operations from an accounting perspective. So it helps streamline both the application side as well as the audit requirement, right? Because there's not that much there to audit. Um,

Speaker 2 15:59

Yeah , that's a great, that's a great tactic. And I tell people that too. Like, look, it might be easier to spin up a subsidiary or a new entity that's clean because then there are no financial <laugh> audit

Speaker 1 16:11

Or , or it takes a week to get done, right? You get that stamp of approval because there's not much there. It's a cash account right. At the end of the day. So , um, there are

Speaker 2 16:18

Workarounds. Exactly.

Speaker 1 16:19

Yeah, you mentioned the , the bureaucracy. Love that word for kind of some of these licensing requirements. And I, I always come back to the entire bit license requirement here in , in the state of New York and just the paperwork, the cost that goes involved with that, with only here in New York. I think that needs to be scrapped immediately. Um, I'm hoping under the current administration that's one of the action items or under the crypto task force that we start to make some progress there because that's one of those things that , uh, it's very archaic, I feel like, and it's just creating , and you might have to get for companies to transact in the state of New York,

Speaker 2 16:55

And you might have to get the money transmitter license on top of a bit license. You have to get both sometimes depending on your business model. So it, it's like, it's like double duty in New York. Um, and, and, and it's not like these application processes are easy. Um, they're very time consuming. And it's actually, that's the hardest part is the time consuming aspect of putting it all together. Like if anybody's ever bought a home, right? And all the paperwork that goes into buying a home , um, and how long it takes, you know, you're like, oh, gimme your bank statements and then , oh, we need this and then we need these documents. And we , it's like the same thing and it's for every officer. So, you know , and any per any person who has like managerial, like responsibility, there's all these like, weird definitions. I'm actually skipping the NMLS conference this year. Um , just, I've gone pretty, I've gone every year for the last like four years. Um, and I do learn a lot of stuff, but I've noticed that the NMLS conference, which is where all of the , um, licensing is kind of held, like that's the portal, that's the National Mortgage Licensing system . I think that's what it stands for , right? But it's everything. It's lenders, it's the mortgage people, it's, it's this huge umbrella. So the money services businesses like the PayPals, the squares, the, even the Geminis, the Krakens, right ? Those kinds of businesses when they're, they're playing in that, in that space and going to conferences like that, you kind of get lost in the shuffle. There's a much better conference that's kind of held at the end of, in the fall, similar business line of, of of target audience. It's , but it's just MSBs. So it's just money service businesses. So you don't get all the loan people, you don't get all the mortgage people, right? You get just the MSBs and you get a lot of crypto folks there a lot more. So, and it's a smaller group. So the NMLS conference, couple thousand people show up. It's usually really big, it's multiple days. The MSB conference is usually two days and there's like 400 people probably. And you get to meet the regulators, that's always one of the best things. So you get to go in , if you've got a state you're talking, talking to, you go get to meet a person, like you can talk to them so you can actually get things done. But yeah, the surety bonds , the other thing on the money transfer licenses that people don't realize is that you need surety bonds. Surety bonds are basically an insurance so that you can, if you wrap up, if the things don't go well in that state or something happens, you have this money that you can use to like settle the situation and each state needs its own. So, and they have their own requirements. So some states it's like 20 grand, some states it's 250 grand, right? So it is just like, then there's these surety bond providers and you have to get a bond every, you have to renew your bond every year. So it's just kind of like a bail bond. It's like you pay a percentage, 2, 3, 4, 5% of the total value of the bond and then they issue you the bond and it's good for a year. And then you have to renew. So if it costs you $5,000 for one state, imagine getting all 50 states, right? Like it just, it starts to add up no problem . And exponentially. So you have to be very targeted in what you do, where you go and where you're spending your money. 'cause it's really easy to just throw money out the window and not see any return on it while you're dealing with all this regulatory burden.

Speaker 1 20:34

One area I definitely wanna also pick your brain on and and learn more about is on the, you mentioned it earlier, investigative and forensic side. Um, and that's kind of where we originally crossed paths was we had certain cases to come up, cases come to us about divorce proceedings. And I know you said the business model's changed, adapted over time, but I'm curious your experiences there on that front and how you're assisting customers or clients, I don't wanna throw the word fraud out there, but on the investigation side right, on some of the forensic analysis that you guys do, can you talk a little bit about that?

Speaker 2 21:09

Yeah, I mean it does, it does encompass both sides of things, right ? So investigations can be, you can look into something fraudulent or you can look into something that's non-criminal, like an invest , like, like a divorce case, right ? So , uh, I started out doing blockchain forensics because I was, I had a continuing education , uh, initiative , uh, that I started back in like, eh , 2018 I wanna say as a follow, as a , as a an additional business model that I was trying to get off the ground . And , and I , you know, it's education is tough, right? It's a really tough go in this industry 'cause education should mostly be free. But I realized there are folks who pay for education every year because they need continuing education. So I targeted banking compliance professionals , uh, lawyers and the financial space and oh , and law enforcement. And, and so those three categories I was , uh, I had courses for and I was building , I even had a course that I built for the state of California that got certified to train law enforcement. I couldn't even get anybody to take the class <laugh> , I couldn't get anybody to even show up to this free class. But because of that, and I had a partnership with a blockchain forensics company, they were allowing me to use their tools as part of the demo. Then all of a sudden they started sending me victims . And I was like, what the heck? Like every , the first rule of crypto is if, if you sent your crypto to somebody, it's gone. There's no like, there's no getting it back. And I was like, well what are these people doing? Like, like this? The money's gone. And then I started realizing sometimes it's more about knowing what happened and getting some peace of mind to have somebody help you confirm that like, yeah, the money really is gone and here's what happened to it. Because at the end of the day, closure is a really important thing for people when they're dealing with being scammed or being a victim. So that's kind of how the business model started. And so we do investigations a little bit different, I think, than a lot of other firms because I wanted it to be something that people weren't throwing a lot of good money after bat. Right? That's what a lot of people would say. I was like, well how do I, there's no guar . I always tell people , there's no guarantee we can get your money back. Right? And people think the first thing they say to us is, if you can get my money back, like I know that everything's gonna be okay, right ? But that's also, that's also a little bit diluted and delusional, right? Because if you're in a relationship and you've withdrawn a majority of the funds out of the savings account and lost it, the trust has already been broken, right? Like getting the money back and putting it in the account is not gonna fix the relationship and the trust. So people need to think bigger picture about what they just got themselves into and how long it's actually gonna take to, to recover, right? So to speak. 'cause it's not just about recovering the funds always right? And there's a lot of recovery scams out there. Like the number for the longest time, the the biggest recovery scam was the number one advertiser on Google. So you typed in , how do I get my crypto back? Or my crypto was stolen, what do I do? And the first company that would pop up was a scam. And they were spending tens of thousands of dollars on ads because they were charging a single person $10,000 to get started, just flat 10 k, we will figure out what happened to you, we'll get your money back. And then that was just a process of lies upon lies and deceit and to the point where they would then show somebody, Hey, we found your money. It's sitting in this wallet, check this out. All you need to do is pay us 10% of that fund so we can release it to you another scan . Right? So, you know, it's, it's, part of it is people don't understand how crypto works, right? And they're trusting. So that's the only one of the real good things that I about doing the investigation work is how many trusting people that are still out there, right ? There's a lot of good people and they just, they made bad, they bad made bad choices, or they trusted someone and got duped right? Into believing that what they were gonna be doing was real. But the way we Oh , go ahead.

Speaker 1 25:38

No, I was just say , it's funny because this isn't a crypto only event, right? You have a lot of this in the traditional finance world as well with bad actors at the end of the day. So it's not just siloed to this industry, but the end of the day it's, some of these transactions are mutable, right? They're non reversible. So it's, it's a matter of trying to track them down. And I'm curious some of your maybe success stories if you will , uh, if you've had any around that piece of recovering funds or, or showing clients kind of what happened because it, it does become a web of just tangle transactions sometimes on the blockchain.

Speaker 2 26:17

The hardest part about investigations is the , the inability to recover. Most people think, oh, well I'm gonna be able to get my money back at some point. And we have to be very honest with you , right? Because if you don't get your money back in the first six months, you're either likely not to get any back or it's gonna be multiple years, like three to five. And that's because that's how long law enforcement takes, right ? They have to do, they have to go through all their legal processes and they may even, like, we've had a couple cases where the people have been told we have money for you. And then it's sitting at the mar and like , um, I think with the marshals, US Marshals or somebody else, but they won't release it. And it's been over a year and this guy's waiting on like 120 grand I think, or 114 grand to come back to him. And they haven't given it back to him yet. The case is done, like everything is done, but they won't like release the funds . And it's like, I don't understand. He doesn't understand and we can't get any real answers outta anybody, right? So even a win sometimes feels like a loss. Yeah. Um , so, but, and that's, and that's part of the reason why I, I'm, I'm working on a nonprofit , uh, that does the same thing. So because constructive right ? The investigation work is great. And the reason why we do it in , we do it in these two stages too, I wanted to get to that was is because there's what we call the initial analysis step , which is like if you have taking your car 'cause it's making some weird noise or leaking some fluid to the mechanic, if the mechanic doesn't open the hood and just looks at the outside of the car and says it's gonna be probably three grand to to do the work , you'd probably be like, wait, what? How do you even know what's wrong with the car? Like, you didn't look under the hood. Like you have no idea what's going on. How do you know it's gonna be three grand ? What if it's the windshield wiper housing, right? It's like a $200 part and like an hour for 'em to put it in. It might be three, $400 max rather than like who knows what is going on under there, right? So what we throw a general figure out there, <laugh> , yeah. Oh, it's freaking gonna be six grand . We need to , that looks like a transmission leap , you know, like, wait, how do you know? I would take, you'd take it to someplace else and you'd get a second opinion crypto though there's not, there's not a lot of companies and it's not exactly easy to find somebody one that you can trust. So you go with the first, the first guy that you find usually, right? But they may be ripping you off. So we always do in two stages so that you get this like estimate of what actually happened or whether it's not, it's even worth going after, right? Because the outcomes we call 'em the good, the bad and the ugly, right? There's the three, the three things that can really happen out of it . After you look and see, you look under the hood, the money either went someplace that it's likely to be recoverable, like an exchange that will cooperate with your law enforcement or allow us to freeze the funds long enough so that it can be recovered. Or you get like a, what we call the bad, which is like a place where the company like may not cooperate, it could be an exchange in China or in the Seychelles, and they don't have any real responsibility , um, or they don't feel a sense of responsibility to their customers. Um, and they're not really gonna help, especially anybody in the us . So the second part, or the third part is the ugly, which could be things like mixers and tumblers and super complicated. They break 'em up into like a thousand small transactions. Like it's not probably worth the time and the money to do the investigation knowing how bad and how ugly it's so, but this is enough sometimes to give people that peace of mind of, okay, well the money really is gone, right? They, they did a really good job or were they sloppy and the money's like sitting in this wallet still and it hasn't moved. We can watch those and we can say, oh, it moved, it's moving again. Oh, it just hit an exchange today. Let's go get, let's try to go get it. Right ? So, so there is a difference right on how we do things because we want people to know upfront what they're getting themselves into. Plus for us, the people who are gonna end up building a report, a forensic blockchain forensic report at the end of the day with images and annotation showing the flow of funds and what actually happened to the money, that that step is more time consuming. So if we can do the first step, then we know exactly how long the second step of building the report is gonna take. So we can give somebody an accurate quote on how much it's gonna cost rather than some arbitrary number. And people will just be like, oh yeah , uh, I guess we'll go with you five. Here's five grand, here's 10 grand. Uh, I never felt like that was fair to the victims or to the individuals. So, but it's basically investigations is half victim work, which actually compliments the compliance work because on the compliance side, people, people don't tell you what they're trying to do when they're trying to get around your, your controls and your thing , the things that you have in place to , to stop fraud. But the people who have been scammed come to you and they tell you everything. So it makes, when you do your compliance work, it makes it much stronger. 'cause you can ask the questions that you, 'cause you understand how the person got scammed in the first place, right? So it , they definitely help each other. But on the other side of the investigations is things like you mentioned earlier, the expert witness work, which is really starting to pick up because if you think about it, every year that crypto goes around and doesn't disappear, more people put in their portfolios, but people are still getting divorced at the same rates they always have , right? Yeah . That's not going away anytime soon . <laugh> . So we're also working on things like bankruptcy, receiverships. So companies who put crypto on the balance sheet, they gotta figure out what do they gotta do with that, right? Or they took it as investment and now the company's dissolving. Where did that money go and what is the waterfall? Like, who gets who gets paid back and where are their assets hiding potentially, right? Was it laundered, right? Like, did they , did it go out of business or go bankrupt because they they stole the money, right? Like those are all really, and so that's why investigations is actually pretty fun , right ? Like it sucks to having to deal with the victims , um, because of what they're experiencing, right? But I like helping them because at the end of the day, they feel like they're , someone is actually taking a stand to help them . Um , which is, which is part of the problem with the whole like victim journey, right? And um , and if people aren't familiar with the victim journey, what , basically what happens is after you realize you've been scam , right? This whole, this whole triggers go off on your head and you're like, holy, what have I been doing for the last three months? I need to figure this, I need to get help now. Right? And, and in your whole mindset changes and like panic, but you know, the, the , the investigation like at the end of the day, right? Like you really just want to make sure that people get good solid information so that they can make informed decisions about how to proceed. So that's, and that's part of the reason why I'm starting a nonprofit that's doing this because there's a lot of people who can't afford private investigation services. You know, they may have only lost 50 grand, but that was, that was their entire life savings, right ? Yeah . It's all relative, right? Yeah. Each individual. So, so I'm launching a nonprofit called the Crypto Recovery Alliance. Mm-hmm <affirmative> . I've been working on it since October of 23. Um, last year was a lot of paperwork and trying to get things aligned and we're waiting for our nonprofit status to come back from the IRS so that we can kind of officially open the doors and start bringing in the , uh, donations that we need to operate. But I'm excited about it because it does three main things. It's gonna provide no cost blockchain forensics investigations for victims who qualify financially. So that like the guy who loses a million dollars and comes to us and says, I lost everything. I might have to sell my second house and go, ah , I don't know if you need free services. Like you might actually, you still have money, right? It's the other guy who's living now paycheck to paycheck has no saving , right? That's the , that's the person who's gonna get the help. But the other two things that we're gonna offer I think are just as important because the investigation is definitely a key component, but like what I mentioned about getting people the help that they need to recover holistically, right? That is, that's gonna stem from access to lower no cost mental healthcare . Because you can't just process the trauma of being a victim , uh, yourself. Right? Especially the, the bigger the loss or the more traumatic the loss. 'cause that sends people into like this downward spiral, right? Of, of negativity. They stop eating, well, they not sleeping at night. Their children, their adult children aren't talking to them anymore . They're , they get a divorce, their performance at work goes down, they lose their job, they become depressed, isolated and suicidal. Right? And it's just this cascade and this all stemmed from like a scammer, right? Building this confidence with them having a relationship and then pulling the rug out from it . And if we can save one life, I feel like it's all, it's all worth it .

Speaker 1 36:23

Yeah, no, a hundred percent . I mean, and it's a great compliment to what you are already doing and in the space of, I think they go perfectly hand in hand . Um, and I think a lot of people are going to benefit from this. Um, it's an unfortunate circumstance and something nature of the beast within the industry. But like I said, it's not just a crypto thing. I think this is just a human issue nature of doing business. But I think a lot of people are going to benefit from the work that you and, and your company are doing.

Speaker 2 36:51

And then the last thank you, and the last thing that we're gonna be offering is this , uh, preventative education aspect. Because you know, like I mentioned, people get into this like tunnel vision and that's all they can see is like what's right in front of 'em and the immediacy mm-hmm <affirmative> . And they end up fall , a lot of those people end up falling scam victim again. They become repeat victims because they never learned what the signs were to, to spot a scam or when they're being targeted retargeted because the scammer doesn't care. They , they will sell your information on the web so that other somebody else, 'cause they know they got everything out of you. They could right now, but someone might hit you up in a year. Right? And if they get $500 or $1,500 out of you, that might be enough for them to live for 3, 4, 5 months in another country. But we don't really know exactly what their motivation is. Some of the people that are doing the scams are held against their will. Like that's where we've gotten to the point now where like even the scammers aren't necessarily the bad guys. It's like the bad guys forcing good guys to scam good guys. And it's like, it's such a psychological mind, like tease , like you just, you just don't even really know like who, who's the bad guy anymore.

Speaker 1 38:10

No , there's a lot of interesting stuff and you , you see a lot of interesting scenarios, which I think like you mentioned, keeps you coming back, right? It's again, it's unfortunate some of the situations you come across, but it's fun to help people. You get enjoyment out of. It's rewarding seeing Yeah, rewarding I should say. Yeah. Seeing people made whole at the end of the day. So I think that's very important. No, we touched on a lot of good stuff here. I , I think , uh, where can folks go to learn more about co constructive as well as the non-profit ?

Speaker 2 38:40

So for the nonprofit , you can visit crypto recovery alliance.org. Uh , we do also have a , a LinkedIn page on the Crypto Recovery Alliance. And we're looking for volunteers right now. So we're in the process of trying to get things squared away. So we're really looking for someone who can help potentially on the fundraising side. So anybody who has a background with fundraising. And we're also looking for volunteers on the investigation side. So we are gonna need to ramp up people. And that could be anything from like doing intake calls a couple hours a week to actually performing investigation work. And then I am still looking for somebody who can help with the mental health side of things to kind of help push that in the right direction. 'cause I think one of the other things I'd like to do is provide not just access, but also , uh, like group therapy setting, right ? So that the victims can talk and hear about what other people are going through and experiencing. And they won't, it'll make them not feel so alone and that they're so isolated and this is only happening to them . And because the first thing people normally do is they blame themselves. They're like, how could I be so stupid? Right? And the , and , and I wanted to also bring up the point that you mentioned earlier about how this, the scams are not new, right? Like it's the same scams, it's just they're using crypto as a means of moving the money around, right? But the thing about crypto is the dollar value of those scams are usually a lot higher , right? They're , it's not the same as the gift card scam where they're going and getting 500 or a thousand dollars. We're talking tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, right? Millions of dollars. People are losing there . People aren't losing boatloads of money like that to like regular scammers, right? So it's, it's less people, but much more value is being lost, right ? So on the coin constructive side, if you're looking for investigation work or you're looking for compliance services, you can visit coin constructive.com and we have a couple surveys on the site. So like, if you're looking for compliance , great, there's a button right on the first page if you wanna open a case. And we always do free consultation. So you fill out the survey, as long as you have lost over 10 k, you'll qualify and we will get you an email that will be automatically sent out to you so you can book an appointment to talk to and take accounts and they will explain to you all the steps and the process that we go through in the investigation. And that way you can be, you can be informed enough to decide if it's something that you wanna actually do and , and how much it might cost to get you there. So you can also follow us on Twitter at constructive . I'm on Twitter as well , um, at DJ K-I-N-K-L-E , that was my , uh, my college DJ name, <laugh> . Um , and I never thought, I never thought Twitter would take off, but I decided that it's a little too late to change it.

Speaker 1 41:56

Yeah. Crypto Twitter's the place to be, man.

Speaker 2 41:59

So, but there , the good thing is there's not a lot of ONGs out there in the world, so it's pretty easy to find me directly. I think there's only one other Chris Haw in the entire world, so <laugh> .

Speaker 1 42:12

Well that's awesome. Chris. I appreciate you joining us today. Learned a lot of good stuff about Coin Constructive, and now we know where to go to learn more and chat with yourself and , and your colleagues . So thank you for joining us today and uh, appreciate the time.

Speaker 2 42:26

Thanks, mark . It was a pleasure being here.

Speaker 1 42:27

Awesome. That wraps up another episode of Cryptonomics. Thanks everyone.

Speaker 3 42:33

All views expressed in this podcast by Mark Eckley or his guests are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinion of rhythm . This podcast is for informational purposes only.