SHERIFF: How Do You Freeze an Account You Can't Find? Louisiana Sheriffs Want Congress to Answer That.

In St. Charles Parish and across Louisiana, sheriffs pride themselves on knowing our communities. We know our neighbors and our streets. And increasingly, we know the devastation that follows when residents lose their life savings to a scam that began with a phone call, a text or an online message.

What has changed is not criminal intent. Scammers have existed for centuries. What has changed is the speed, scale and sophistication of their tools. Cryptocurrency has become a favored weapon, allowing criminals to move money instantly, anonymously and across borders with little oversight. Our department has warned residents about an overwhelming surge in scams — from romance fraud and impersonation schemes to complex cryptocurrency cons that are nearly impossible to trace. These crimes are not isolated. They victimize families, seniors and small businesses across Louisiana.

We have seen the consequences firsthand. Cybercriminals exploited digital transaction systems to steal more than $1 million from our own parish. Around the state, scammers increasingly direct victims — far too often seniors in our communities — to withdraw cash and deposit it into cryptocurrency ATMs. In seconds, their money is converted into digital assets that vanish beyond recovery.

The playbook is familiar. A victim receives an urgent call from someone posing as a government official, bank representative or even law enforcement. The victim is told there is a problem, such as an outstanding warrant, an unpaid bill or a compromised account, and instructed to “fix” it by sending money through a crypto wallet or ATM. Once the transaction is made, the money is gone.

We are also seeing the rise of “pig butchering” schemes: long-term fraud operations in which criminals build trust over weeks or months before luring victims into fake cryptocurrency investments. These scams combine emotional manipulation with financial deception, leaving victims financially ruined and deeply shaken.

As sheriffs, we are responding. We are educating the public, coordinating with federal partners and pursuing criminals wherever the evidence leads. But we face a fundamental challenge: The regulatory framework governing digital assets is inconsistent and incomplete.

Traditional banks operate under clear Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and Anti–Money Laundering (AML) requirements. They must know their customers, monitor transactions and report suspicious activity. Those rules give law enforcement the transparency needed to track illicit funds and hold criminals accountable.

In the digital asset ecosystem, however, those same standards do not apply uniformly. Criminals know this, and they exploit it. Cryptocurrency transactions are fast, borderless and often pseudonymous. When bad actors can move money across jurisdictions in seconds through lightly regulated platforms, it creates a dangerous imbalance between criminals and law enforcement.

That is why Congress must act.

Louisiana is fortunate to have strong leadership in Washington, including U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy and Speaker Mike Johnson. We need them to lead on this issue.

The goal should be straightforward: Create a level regulatory playing field that allows law enforcement to prevent, detect and prosecute financial crime. Any legislation creating the market structure for new currencies should include these provisions. We also need rules to enable law enforcement to trace funds and quickly obtain information about accounts, account holders and transactions — and, when law enforcement agents have probable cause to link an account to a crime, seize the contents of an account.

If a platform moves money, it should follow consistent BSA and AML standards, whether it is a traditional bank or a digital asset company. That means robust customer identification, transaction monitoring and suspicious activity reporting across the board. It means closing loopholes that criminals exploit. And it means ensuring law enforcement has timely access to the information needed to do our jobs.

Congress must also provide clear authority and resources for state and local law enforcement. Sheriffs’ offices are navigating a patchwork of regulations, unclear jurisdictional lines and rapidly evolving technology, all while criminals operate globally with impunity. That imbalance is not sustainable.

The people of Louisiana deserve better. They deserve innovation that coexists with public safety, not a system that allows criminals to hide in regulatory gaps.

We are not asking Congress to slow technology down. We are asking it to catch up.

Greg Champagne is sheriff of St. Charles Parish.

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