States Lead Crypto Enforcement as Feds Deal With Inchoate Role

The Texas State Securities Board’s investigators used to browse classified newspaper ads and monitor lunch seminars for investment scams.

Today, they are infiltrating chat rooms and using burner phones and fake social media profiles to root out fraud.

The high tech scope of their work, sometimes involving global players, was highlighted when Texas and four other states brought actions against a metaverse casino accused of running an NFT sales scam with alleged ties to Russia.

“There has been an absolute change in our work over the last couple of years, and I think it’s fair to say in state securities ...