House passes bill to equip local law enforcement with scam-fighting tools
The U.S. House passed the GUARD Act, letting local law enforcement use federal grants to investigate financial scams and trace stolen cryptocurrency.
The bipartisan GUARD Act (Reps. Zachary Nunn, Scott Fitzgerald, Josh Gottheimer) passed the House, allowing existing DOJ grant funds to be used for fraud analysts, victim-support training, blockchain tracing software, and financial-information sharing with law enforcement. It addresses scams like pig butchering, often run by transnational criminal groups overseas; Americans lost a record $11.4 billion to crypto-related fraud in 2025, including $8.6 billion in investment fraud. Senators Katie Britt and Kirsten Gillibrand introduced a Senate companion in July 2025, and the House also passed a bill retroactively eliminating the 'scam tax' on stolen funds for 2021-2025 victims.
- GUARD Act lets five DOJ grant programs fund fraud analysts, training, and blockchain intelligence tools.
- Crypto-related losses hit a record $11.4 billion in 2025; investment fraud accounted for $8.6 billion.
- Senate companion bill from Sens. Britt and Gillibrand was added to the Senate calendar in February.
- Separate House bill removes taxes on stolen funds retroactively for 2021-2025 scam victims.
- Countries
- United States
From the original article
2 min read at therecord.mediaThe Guarding Unprotected Aging Retirees from Deception Act (GUARD) attempts to address a common complaint from the victims of online scams like pig butchering — that such cases typically do not rise to the level of a federal investigation but local law enforcement is unequipped to properly investigate them.
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