Zia M. Faruqui was appointed as a United States Magistrate Judge on September 14, 2020.  He received a B.A. and J.D. from Georgetown University. Following law school, he was a litigation associate at Willkie Farr in Washington, D.C., where he focused on government investigations and general commercial litigation.  Judge Faruqui then served for twelve years as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Offices in St. Louis and Washington D.C.  While there, he prosecuted cases involving terrorists use of cryptocurrency, North Korean weapons proliferation, darknet sites dedicated to child exploitation, and the theft of antiquities.  He also represented the Department of Justice at numerous conferences across the globe on financial crimes, cryptocurrency, and national security issues.

Chris Janczewski has led some of the most important cryptocurrency-related criminal investigations including “Welcome to Video”, a worldwide takedown of the largest marketplace for child exploitation material, which resulted in the rescue of 25 children. He has also investigated multiple cryptocurrency exchange hacks attributed to North Korea, resulting in charges against two Chinese cybercriminals for laundering over $100 million in crypto, as well as global efforts to disrupt Hamas, Al Qaeda, and ISIS cryptocurrency terrorist financing networks. He also assisted teammates in the investigation, operations planning, and/or arrests related to the Silk Road Market, AlphaBay Market, and Helix Mixer. Furthermore, Mr. Janczewski, was instrumental in establishing an interagency cryptocurrency strike force with the Washington, D.C. United States Attorney’s Office.

At TRM, Mr. Janczewski leads a team of unprecedented investigative talent from former law enforcement and private sector organizations, including U.S. Secret Service, FBI, Europol, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and Refinitiv.

TRM’s Global Investigations team acts as a horizon scanning unit for crypto crime threats, proactively tracking and investigating exploits such as hacks and scams.