The Anderson County Sheriff's Office used CipherOwl's Risk Assessment and Infinity Flow features to trace a $19,000 cryptocurrency scam across 11 transaction hops and secure a judicial seizure of $24,283.70 on behalf of a military family victim.
On January 22, 2025, a military family came into the Anderson County Sheriff's Office to report a cryptocurrency scam. The victim, a military spouse, had received calls from two different phone numbers from individuals claiming to be U.S. Marshals. The callers stated that she had an active arrest warrant due to missing jury duty.
What made this scam particularly convincing was the timing. The victim had recently received a legitimate exemption from jury duty, which made the fraudulent warrant the scammers sent her appear credible. Under the pressure of the fabricated legal threat, the victim was induced to deposit $19,000 into a cryptocurrency ATM.
The deposits were split across multiple addresses. There was one initial deposit of $14,000 to a single address, with the remaining $5,000 distributed across three additional addresses, a common tactic scammers use to obfuscate funds and complicate tracing.
The Investigation Challenge
Recovering funds from a scam like this poses several obstacles that legacy investigation methods struggle to overcome. The deposit address that ultimately reached the OKX exchange had received only $4 of the victim's original funds, which on its face would not justify a $25,000 seizure to most judges. The remaining funds had been bridged off Bitcoin and swapped into TRON based USDT, requiring cross chain tracing. Visual graphing tools alone tend to produce sprawling, hard to interpret webs of transactions, which makes it difficult to communicate findings clearly to non technical decision makers like judges and prosecutors. The investigator needed a way to establish, beyond doubt, that the destination wallet was part of an organized money laundering operation, and to do so quickly enough that the exchange could freeze funds before they were moved again.
Investigation Using CipherOwl
The investigator used CipherOwl alongside Merkle Science, noting the two tools complement each other well. While graphing tools like Merkle are powerful, the investigator observed that the visual mapping “gets very spider-webby very quick,” making it easy to get lost in the complexity.
CipherOwl’s Risk Assessment was highlighted as the investigator’s favorite feature:
“The risk assessment makes it so easy to explain, and for a judge to understand. That’s been the game-changer.”
The investigator also used CipherOwl’s Infinity Flow feature, which he praised for its depth and power, though he noted that users should be mindful of not getting lost in the weeds when navigating complex transaction flows.
Tracing the Funds and Achieving Recovery
Through the investigation, the team identified that funds had been deposited into an OKX exchange account. Notably, only $4 of the original victim’s funds had been sent to this specific deposit address. However, the investigator recognized that the address was part of a larger organized scam operation.
To prepare the seizure warrant and letterhead request for OKX, the investigator used CipherOwl’s Risk Assessment and SAR Narrative features for three of the four addresses that had been routed to the OKX deposit address. The request was sent at approximately 3:00–3:30 PM using Kodex to reach out to the exchange.
The results were remarkable:
Using CipherOwl’s risk assessment on the TRON wallet, the investigator was able to definitively establish that the deposit account was being used for money laundering.
Convincing the Judge
Multiple colleagues told the investigator there was no way a judge would sign off on seizing $25,000 based on only $4 of the victim’s funds reaching the target address. The investigator used CipherOwl’s risk assessment to walk the judge through the full picture, clearly demonstrating the criminal activity associated with the account.
“Everyone told him there’s no way a judge would sign off for $4 and seize $25,000. But using CipherOwl’s risk assessment, he was able to explain everything in a way the judge understood.”
The seizure required tracing backwards through the transaction chain. The original Binance account was 11 hops away from the deposit address, but every wallet in between was flagged as risky by CipherOwl. The investigator was able to produce a risk assessment for each intermediary address, building a comprehensive case that demonstrated the entire chain’s association with illicit activity.
As of the morning prior to this testimony, OKX agreed on the legal process and committed to sending the frozen funds to a wallet address designated by the Sheriff’s Office for forfeiture and eventual return to the victim.
“I truly feel like without CipherOwl, this would’ve been truly time-consuming to create thorough risk assessments on all of these addresses in a way that even a judge can understand. I don’t think I would have gotten the seizure without CipherOwl.”
Advice for Officers New to Crypto Investigations
The investigator offered the following advice for law enforcement officers tackling cryptocurrency cases for the first time:
By integrating CipherOwl into its investigative workflow, the Anderson County Sheriff's Office transformed what could have been a dead end case into a successful recovery for a military family. The combination of automated risk scoring, deep transaction flow analysis through Infinity Flow, and clear, court ready narratives gave the investigator the tools to act decisively across multiple chains and exchanges. For law enforcement agencies handling a rising tide of cryptocurrency scams, this case demonstrates that asset recovery is achievable even when only a small fraction of victim funds reaches a final destination, provided investigators have the right intelligence to tell the full story. CipherOwl has proven to be the preferred onchain investigation partner for agencies that need to move from suspicion to seizure in hours rather than weeks.
About Anderson County Sheriff's Office
The Anderson County Sheriff's Office serves a growing community where, like much of the country, cryptocurrency related fraud has become an increasingly common form of victimization. Investigators in the office handle a mix of traditional and digital crimes, and the rise of impersonation scams targeting military families, retirees, and other vulnerable populations has pushed the team to develop in house expertise in onchain investigations. The office works alongside federal partners and exchanges to freeze, seize, and return stolen funds, often under tight timelines and against sophisticated laundering tactics.