A CNBC report recently revealed how a forensic accountant helped a woman uncover her husband’s 12-bit stash in an undisclosed wallet, introducing a new twist to the couple’s divorce proceedings.
The woman, identified as Sarita for privacy, hired the accountant because she wasn’t convinced that her husband declared all his assets during the proceedings. Despite earning up to $3 million annually, the husband failed to declare enough assets, leading to suspicion on Sarita’s part.
In her reaction to the case, Sarita, who had been married to her husband for a decade before the divorce, admitted she didn’t know much about Bitcoins and digital currencies. While she suspected her husband had hidden assets, their being Bitcoins “was never even a thought” in her mind because they never discussed it until the forensic accountant’s discovery.
Financial infidelity is on the rise
According to the CNBC report, most attorneys they spoke to regarding the case admitted increasing levels of financial infidelity, especially among divorcing partners. One relatively safe way spouses keep their assets away from each other is through cryptocurrency, and the relevant laws are struggling to accommodate that.
However, relevant divorce and alimony laws are struggling to keep up with cryptocurrency’s sharp rise, with many states having no provisions for spouses to submit any proof of their digital stash during a divorce.
‘Crypto hunting,’ hot new job category for forensic investigators
While commenting on the case, divorce attorneys revealed people are increasingly amassing assets in crypto, and relevant divorce laws still struggle to keep up with it.
For any chance of uncovering a spouse’s crypto assets, a relatively non-tech-savvy individual must seek the services of digital forensic accountants, or ‘crypto hunters.’
Different professionals related to the field estimate anywhere between 25% and 50% of their cases explicitly involve cryptocurrencies, hinting at how widespread it has become. While these numbers expose the rise of financial infidelity in marriages, they also show how big the crypto-hunting market is, possibly making it a hot new field of specialization for forensic investigators.
