Sanctions evaders are drawn to cryptoassets because they assume blockchain complexity will slow investigators down. UK agencies are proving them wrong: Elliptic recently joined a cross-government operational sprint led by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFSI) to identify and disrupt crypto-enabled sanctions evasion and money laundering.
Together with OFSI, we worked alongside the following agencies :
- National Crime Agency (NCA)
- Metropolitan Police Service (MPS)
- His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC)
- Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
- City of London Police
- Regional Organised Crime Units
Our investigators and data scientists sat side by side with agency analysts and investigators to turn blockchain intelligence into operational outcomes. The framework that made this possible is the Crypto Cash Fusion Cell (CCFC).
What is the Crypto Cash Fusion Cell?
Crime using cryptoassets is growing more sophisticated, and the intelligence needed to identify and disrupt it often sits across multiple agencies. The CCFC is a multiagency initiative designed to address the abuse of cryptoassets for money laundering. It brings together law enforcement, regulators, sanctions specialists and private sector partners to share intelligence faster and coordinate more effectively.
The CCFC operates as part of broader UK efforts to tackle crypto-enabled financial crime. Operations under the CCFC have already resulted in the UK’s first crypto wallet freezing orders (CWFO) for sanctions evasion offenses, with blockchain intelligence informing live law enforcement activity and sanctions compliance work.
The CCFC’s sprint model puts everyone in the same room, working on the same cases in real time. Rather than exchanging reports or waiting on formal requests, analysts and investigators can ask questions and get answers immediately. That speed matters when the goal is not just understanding illicit activity, but disrupting it.
What did Elliptic bring to the table?
Elliptic’s solutions already give investigators the power to trace transactions, screen wallets and identify exposure to illicit activity. But some agencies want direct access to the underlying intelligence, so they can query it on their own terms, combine it with internal data and build custom workflows as investigations demand.
That’s what Elliptic Data Fabric provided during this sprint. Data Fabric is our blockchain intelligence infrastructure for government agencies. It brings Elliptic’s full dataset directly into agency systems: sanctioned entity intelligence, wallet attributions, transaction histories, risk scores and cross-chain tracing across thousands of cryptoassets and maximum blockchain coverage. Instead of working through a vendor interface, investigators can query the data directly to ask any question.
But we also brought something that can’t be packaged in a product: over a decade of experience interrogating blockchain data. Our analysts have spent years identifying patterns, tracing illicit flows and building the intelligence that underpins Elliptic’s solutions. With our team directly in the room, working side by side, agency analysts could tap into that institutional knowledge, learning how to structure queries, where to look for leads and how to validate their findings quickly.
Together, we cross-referenced OFSI sanctions data with Elliptic’s intelligence on sanctioned entities, tracked transactions flowing between sanctioned actors and UK-compliant exchanges in real time and built custom scripts to compress analysis from days into hours. This is exactly the kind of intelligence that supports asset freezing and seizure.
What’s next?
This sprint reflects a broader shift in how agencies are approaching crypto-enabled financial crime. Tracing funds from A to B is no longer enough. To be effective, investigators need to move faster, prioritize leads intelligently and work across agency boundaries. That requires shared access to the underlying data and intelligence that support blockchain analytics solutions.
Law enforcement is building toward that model. The agencies in this sprint are leading the way, developing the infrastructure and expertise to trace illicit funds across blockchains as effectively as they do through traditional financial systems. Elliptic is proud to support that mission, whether in the room directly or through the data and intelligence itself.
For agencies interested in exploring a similar partnership or in building persistent blockchain analytics capabilities through Data Fabric, we would welcome the conversation. Contact our government team to get started.
