Fight Illicit Networks and Detect Trafficking Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. VARGAS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge my colleagues to support H.R. 6069, the Fight Illicit Networks and Detect Trafficking Act, FIND.

Allow me first to thank Chairman Hensarling for his leadership and also Ranking Member Waters for her leadership, and also for their support of this legislation.

I would also like to thank my good friend, Mr. French Hill. I thank him for his kind words and for his support of this bill.

I especially would like to thank Mr. Rothfus for his leadership on the Terrorism and Illicit Finance Subcommittee and for generously agreeing to colead this commonsense, narrowly tailored legislation.

As you may know, a virtual currency is a digital representation of value that can be digitally traded. Since the creation of bitcoin, the first and most widely known example of cryptocurrency, thousands of cryptocurrencies have emerged and are designed to serve a variety of purses.

Some forms of virtual currency provide a digital alternative to cash that lacks the oversight of a government or central bank and, potentially, offers greater anonymity than conventional payment systems.

Just as virtual currencies have grown in use in legitimate commerce, they have also become an increasingly popular financial payment method for criminals. Virtual currencies have been and continue to be exploited to pay for goods and services associated with illicit illegal sex and drug trafficking. These are two of the most detrimental and troubling illegal activities sold online.

According to the DEA 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment, transnational criminal organizations are increasingly using virtual currencies due to their ease of use and the anonymity they provide.

While evidence points to the growth of virtual currencies as a payment method for illicit sex and drug trafficking, the true scope of the problem and the potential solutions have not been fully established.

According to the International Labour Organization, in 2016, 4.8 million people in the world were victims of forced sexual exploitation, and in 2014, the global profit from commercial sexual exploitation was $99 billion.

Unfortunately, virtual currencies are also being used as a payment method for transnational drug traffickers.

As you may know all too well, the United States is struggling to combat the rising number of lives cut short by the tragic use of opioids. As was stated earlier by my good friend Mr. Hill, in 2016 alone, the CDC estimated that there were 64,000 deaths--64,000 deaths-- in the U.S. related to drug overdose.

The most severe increases in drug overdoses were those associated with fentanyl and also fentanyl analogs. Fentanyl is an extremely deadly opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. Fentanyl is being illicitly manufactured in China and Mexico, with most of the illegal fentanyl in the United States originating from China, and it is readily available to purchase through the online marketplaces.

If we are to craft effective regulatory and legislative solutions to combat these transnational criminal organizations, we need to fully study and analyze how virtual currencies and online marketplaces are used to facilitate sex and drug trafficking to determine how to best eliminate their use.

H.R. 6069, the FIND Trafficking Act of 2018, requires the Comptroller General of the United States to: one, carry out a study on how virtual currencies and online marketplaces are used to facilitate sex or drug trafficking; and, two, make recommendations to Congress on legislative and regulatory actions that would impede the use of virtual currencies and online marketplaces in facilitating sex and drug trafficking.

It is my sincere hope that this bill is the first step toward crafting bipartisan legislation to impede and eventually eliminate the use of virtual currencies by transnational criminal organizations that facilitate drug and sex trafficking.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the bill, and I again thank both my colleagues here for their kind words about this bill and the bipartisanship that we have had on this bill.

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