Divorce and Hidden Cryptocurrency: How to Find Crypto Your Spouse May Be Hiding

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What happens if you think your spouse is hiding money in cryptocurrency during your divorce?

First: don’t panic. And definitely don’t assume crypto is impossible to find.

In this episode of How Not to Suck at Divorce, Andrea Rappaport and family law attorney Morgan Stogsdill are joined by Jason Wright, Managing Director in the Disputes, Compliance & Investigations group at Stout, to break cryptocurrency down for the rest of us — and explain exactly what can happen when crypto becomes part of a divorce.

We’re starting with the basics: What the hell is cryptocurrency? What’s a crypto wallet? What’s a private key or seed phrase? What are Coinbase, Kraken and other crypto exchanges actually doing?

Then we get into the question that matters during divorce:

Can your spouse actually hide marital money in crypto — and can you find it?

Jason explains why cryptocurrency isn’t necessarily as anonymous or untraceable as people think, how forensic experts can follow transactions on the blockchain, and what financial clues might indicate that money has been moved into cryptocurrency.

We discuss:

• How cryptocurrency differs from traditional bank and investment accounts

• Crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini

• The difference between custodial and non-custodial crypto wallets

• What private keys and seed phrases actually mean

• Crypto ATMs — yes, apparently those exist

• Transfers and cash withdrawals that could signal cryptocurrency activity

• How forensic experts trace crypto transactions

• Why the blockchain can actually help investigators follow money

• When your divorce attorney may need to subpoena an exchange

• How to decide whether pursuing suspected crypto is financially worth it

• Cryptocurrency and dissipation of marital assets

• What happens when someone loses the password to a crypto wallet

• Why hidden crypto may still be discoverable after divorce

• Why you should NOT confront your spouse if you suspect they’re hiding cryptocurrency

One of the biggest takeaways from this episode?

You do not need to become a cryptocurrency expert.

If something doesn’t look right, gather the financial information you have lawful access to, document what you’re seeing, and bring it to your divorce attorney. Let your attorney decide whether additional investigation, subpoenas or a forensic expert are necessary.

And if your lawyer doesn’t have much experience dealing with cryptocurrency in divorce? Ask them. You have every right to know whether the team handling your divorce understands the assets that may be involved.

Because going on an unnecessary financial “truffle hunt” can cost you money — but walking away from tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars that should have been part of your marital estate can cost you a whole lot more.

ABOUT OUR GUEST

Jason Wright is a Managing Director in the Disputes, Compliance & Investigations group at Stout. He works with attorneys and clients on complex financial investigations, including tracing cryptocurrency and digital assets.

We’ll link Jason’s information below so you and/or your attorney can contact him if his expertise is needed.

Jason Wright / Stout: https://www.stout.com/en/professionals/jason-wright

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You’ve got this. And we’ve got you.

SEO KEYWORDS

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All right, I feel like cryptocurrency is pretty much designed to terrify somebody going through a divorce. Because I feel like if my husband had a secret bank account, at least I would know that it's a bank account. I know what a bank account is. But if he moved $100,000 into crypto, I don't even know that I would know what the hell I'm looking for. But friends, fear not, because we are breaking down crypto in this episode of How Not to Suck at Divorce.

today we're answering a very specific question. If you think your spouse is hiding money in cryptocurrency, can they actually get away with it? And how the hell do you find it?

we brought on this special guest because crypto is kind of taking over. It's the new hot topic, it's the new discussion point. And a lot of clients think that there's a pot of gold potentially out there because a lot of clients believe that one spouse is hiding money.

We today are bringing on Jason Wright He's a managing director in the disputes, compliance, and investigations group at Stout. And he gets right to the heart of crypto. Thank you, Jason, for coming on our podcast.

So happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

let's go to the very basics where the hell do we start? I don't I don't know about crypto. I always thought of it as like something that kind of exists, but it kind of doesn't. And people are always talking, you know, can you pay me in crypto or Bitcoin? And I'm like, scammer. So explain to me and all the other people out there.

What the hell is crypto? Pretend I'm five.

Yeah. So I I think the easiest way to describe crypto is it's a digital form of money and value that is exchanged over the internet. and you don't need a central bank or a a government to control it. it it's accessible to anyone and everyone so long as they can get on the internet.

But is it are we talking like monopoly money or it's real money? That's the part that I don't get. Like, can you just be like, I decided this is twenty thousand in crypto? Like are these arbitrary numbers?

think of and I don't want to get too esoteric here or into like the economics of currency, but in the same way that you have a dollar in your bank account at Chase that you can see on you know chase dot com, w what gives it that value, right? The willingness of others to provide a good or a service for that dollar, right? So

In other words, the participants in the market are what give the legitimacy to the value. And that's

Okay, I can

s I can see Andrea's face. And for those of you who are not watching this podcast, Andrea's face is like somebody hit her with a bus. She's like complete confusion. I'm watching Jason. He's in a beautiful office, but behind his office

Is a shelf full of liquor and I'm about to start breaking it open and drinking it because that's what we're gonna need to get through this. But I'm gonna lighten it up. Okay.

God, my face is

basically like I'm sitting in a calculus class and I was a musical theater major. Please help me, Morgan.

right,

you got it. I'm gonna ask you questions that normal clients ask about crypto, and maybe we can get to the bottom of what it is. And then on this podcast, we're also gonna work with Jason to think about if you think there's crypto out there, there might be. How do we locate it? All right, number one, Jason, a client would probably say, How does crypto differ from traditional assets?

Sure.

So well, let's start where I think everyone's comfortable, which is like traditional assets. So bank accounts, brokerage accounts, 401ks, retirements, right? Stocks, bonds. those all run through like a a regulated custodian, right? And they generate statements. they're reachable by subpoena.

You know, they they are the intermediary between you and whatever asset you hold. Right. everyone can pull up their account on, as we said earlier, Chase.com, or they can go to Fidelity and say, look, there's my stocks and bonds that I own. and the distinguish feature there is that there's another institution or organization that is

For lack of a better term, managing that, right? And you get to provide those assets to them and they they hold them for you. Right? Now, crypto, on the other hand, can be self-custodied. You don't need those institutions. You don't need the bank, you don't need a broker, you don't need a third party holding the asset. so long as you have the private keys.

to your crypto, there's no need for that institution.

So private

keys are really what people are kind of calling the password, right? For lack of a better term, it's you need the password in order to find your crypto online. Is that the way to break it down?

That's a great way to say it. And there's kind of the saying that that that controls the seed phrase, the password is that that controls the cryptocurrency.

Okay, we're gonna talk about how to figure out the passwords coming up, but tell us, let's keep with basic right now. How does somebody buy or access crypto currently?

Yeah, so there's a couple ways. I think the way that most individuals are familiar with it are through an exchange. So think Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, you know, all those companies that you see running ads on NFL games or other sports events.

Okay, let me stop you there. So for instance, if somebody, my client, we always talk about our fake couple on this podcast, Chad and Brenda.

So let's just say Chad is looking through Brenda's bank statements and we see some money flowing out to Kraken. Is that a first indicator that there might be some crypto out there?

That's a

Or she's

got a really bad name for her drug dealer.

That's a that's a really good indicator. yeah, and you know, like I said earlier, the traditional assets, you know, they have these institutions. crypto also has some of these institutions that facilitate and make it easier for individuals to get their traditional assets into the cryptocurrency space, right?

Okay,

another easy question for you, not for me or Andrea probably, but somebody's talking about a wallet. What exactly is a wallet?

So, a wallet is a piece of software that records or facilitates the movement and ownership of your cryptocurrency. So that is the piece of software that stores your seed phrase, your password, and interacts with the blockchain. Think of it as your

Bank account.

So we're thinking of the wallet as a bank account. Here's a question for you. We're talking about Kraken and all these other providers. And the way that I think about those providers is it is kind of like a bank. It's just a bank for crypto, right? a wallet. Do you have to have a wallet through one of those platforms? Or could you have your own wallet outside of that platform?

You can definitely have a wallet outside of the platform and and that's what we refer to as kind of a non-custodial wallet. And that is where the kind of pseudonymous or anonymous nature of the blockchain and crypto comes into effect.

I'm just gonna jump to the end game for our listeners, which is this is why crypto is this kind of thing in the clouds, this an you said anonymous, but to me it's kind of like the thing you almost don't want to talk about because it might be out there, you're not quite sure. And this is why crypto could be harder for one one spouse to see if it's not on a platform like Kraken or Kraken, however you say it, right?

My God, stop saying Kraken. Okay.

I love it because I can

keep saying seeing your face.

Crack.

let's just say that there's not a single person listening to this episode who wants to become an expert on crypto, me included. I think everybody wants to know. Sine if my if my wife or my husband is playing with money in the clouds and they're cracking, how would I know about it?

So if my wife has eighty thousand dollars somewhere that's not currently being looked at as marital assets, what Jason would be a trigger? Like what would make Chad be suspicious of Brenda?

Sure.

Well, Morgan's already identified a a big tell, right, which are transfers from traditional assets or bank accounts or brokerage accounts to an exchange, like Coinbase or Kraken. you know, they don't have to be large, they can be small. right. They just they're trying to get that what we call on ramps and off ramps from traditional finance to crypto.

Are there typical amounts that people start? Like is it something that's like done in hundreds? Like what what's something typical that you would see? Or can it truly be like a slow little drip here and there?

Yeah, I I think for individuals that are just getting into crypto, there's tendency

to do some like test transfers initially. I mean, if you're going about it in an educated way, right? You want to make sure that what you're doing is is on the up and up before you start putting significant funds into it. So you might see a few five, ten, fifteen, twenty dollar transactions and then ramp it up from there.

I'm guessing that these people are pretty savvy and it's not as simple as, well, yeah, dummy, you've got crypto because here are all of these transactions from our marital bank account that you're putting in your kraken. So what's going on here? Help me understand.

You're right. The majority of cases they're disclosing. I have crypto or I have this amount of Bitcoin and

They are okay.

and they they are disclosing it. Where things get funky is exactly what you're saying. So where this is why we bring in somebody like Jason, we see all these cash withdrawals going on. We don't know where they're going. Or maybe we get a copy. Let's just say they're stupid enough to keep it into in the Kraken account, but we're seeing all these things flying in and out of there.

We don't know what because you can buy things with with crypto. And I think Jason, at one point in your career, you had a case where somebody was buying prostitutes with crypto. So those are things that can happen in and out of the in and out of the count. So you want to bring in someone like Jason. But there is one thing that I recall you saying, Jason, that I'm not super familiar with, but that you've looked into, which is buying crypto almost at like a crypto ATM.

Can you describe what that is to us?

Yeah, so long as Andrea can recover from the prostitute reference.

She can't.

Just thinking,

I if I were a prostitute, I don't even know that I would accept crypto because I wouldn't know what to do with it. I'm like, they're like, can I pay you in crypto? I'm like, could could you Venmo instead? Would you mind?

I mean, I'm just saying, like if you if you're a sex worker and you are taking crypto, you're doing something right. So, you know, more power. Okay. What?

The question was about crypto ATMs. And this is where, for instance, you might be seeing a big chunk of money coming out of your bank account and it's just gone. You don't know where it went. There are such things as crypto ATMs. And Jason, tell us about

Yeah, so this is another on ramp and off ramp into the the crypto world. you literally can take cash to an ATM, put money put that cash into the ATM, and it will credit whatever account or wallet address you provide to the ATM. in the same way, you can access your wallet at the ATM and pull cash.

Out of

Where are these ATMs? I've never seen one of these unless I I don't even know. I don't think I've ever seen one of these walking the streets.

That's because you're not a prostitute. If you were a

prostitute, you would know exactly where the crypto ATMs are. I'm adding this to my to-do list.

So there are websites out there that track locations of these crypto ATMs. you could just put it into Google Maps and say, you know, crypto ATM and it'll pull up the nearest one.

All right, Andrea, you and I are going to go to the nearest Chicago crypto ATM and meet our listeners.

that's gonna be our next meet and greet. okay. So this is what I'm gathering so far. If somebody wants to be sneaky, er, they're gonna take they're gonna just take cash out of the account. They're gonna then take that cash and put it into Coinbase or whatever so that there's not a direct transfer from a bank account into crypto. Is that

So one clarification there I think, they're not gonna put it into Kraken or Coinbase, they're gonna put it into one of those non custodied accounts that's not at Coinbase, right?

So

then Jason,

how do you track it? if somebody's like, I think something's going on, but if it's in this anonymous account in the cloud, what the hell do you do?

Yeah,

if we do see, a higher level of cash withdrawals from a bank account or ATM withdrawals from a bank account, that can raise suspicions. We can have a conversation with the the spouse and say, Hey, what do you think's going on here?

have you seen any reference to, you know, crypto anywhere? Have you seen thumb drives that have ledger on it or anything that gives suspicion to crypto being anywhere in the the marriage or otherwise?

So besides somebody saying, in passing, when the marriage is good, I'm going to get into crypto. What do think about this? You know, et cetera, how would they even know about that? I mean, most people are not just seeing random thumb drives at their house and plugging them into computers. I mean, what would be some tells?

So I think, in the marital spectrum, you out you go out with with couples, right? Or other individuals and friends, family. typically someone's gonna be talking about crypto at some point. It comes up, right? I I had one case where the spouse was telling his buddies that, you know, he had like

quarter million dollars of crypto and that it was going up and up and up. that was the only indication that the the wife had that crypto was in play. So it's you know it's it's kind of being a a little bit of a detective on your own and just being aware that it could be out there. that's that's my best advice until you know we get

subpoena power or something like that that that helps us dig into that stuff.

from a divorce lawyer's perspective, we're seeing two areas where issues really pop up. One is let's just go back to the Kraken account that's more simple because it's almost like a bank account. You can get transactions in and out. Where do we see problems there? The transactions in and out. You can't really figure out where they're going at times. That might be where you need somebody like Jason. The other thing, the bigger issue is exactly what we're talking about.

There's a wallet out there that's not attached to effectively one of those platforms, the Kraken's, et cetera. It's just out there. So, Jason, let's focus on that one because that's the one that's really giving everyone, a little anxiety. Let's just say, yes, I agree with you. Couples go out, especially if they're into crypto, there's usually one guy bragging about it or one woman bragging about it. So where do you start if you think that there's something out there, but we don't really know?

we'll do a little bit of digging with the help of of counsel typically in in the subpoena world, right? And we'll look at bank statements, we'll subpoena the the exchanges. and that's typically the way that folks get money into crypto is the exchanges. That's the high the highest conduit I think for

the on ramp. what we do then is take the the returns, like the the the transaction histories that the exchanges provide us and we put them into typically two or three different tools that allow us to trace the actual transactions on the blockchain. And that's the beautiful thing about the blockchain is that once they get it out of the exchange

It is open and public and anyone can see it.

Okay, so if you're just hearing for the first time the blockchain, it sounds way scarier than it is. It's basically just a ledger of transactions. And that is what Jason, and it's totally open. So that's kind of what Jason's focusing on in the tracing. So it just sounds like a scary word. It's not, but there's a lot of ledgers at transact.

transactions in crypto. So, you know, there's, I don't know, millions, hundreds of millions that actually Jason's focusing on trying to trace everything.

Can I ask a question for the people? How do you know as a layman that this is worth the truffle hunt? Like, how do I know if I suspect that Chad has crypto, how do I know that it's worth it to get the dogs on leashes and say, that's it, we're going hunting for crypto? Morgan, if somebody comes to you and says, I suspect this, what

discerning questions are you asking to know is this worth the chase or are we

Yeah.

gonna spend so much fucking money to come up with, well, I don't know, he might be.

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, the first thing I'm going to say to them is tell me about it. Why do you think there's crypto out there? Second thing I'm going to do is look at the estate. How big is the estate? If there's if it's big money, then it might not matter to go down the truffle hunt. The third thing I'm going to do is say, okay, maybe the estate's not big enough to warrant this, but do you see any huge transactions flowing out of bank accounts that you're like, what the heck is this?

At that point, what I would usually do is reach out to somebody like Jason and say, Hey, got this issue. Here's what I know. What would you suggest we do? And what would be the starting out kind of pricing to maybe kind of like give a little bit of a sniff? Not so much of a full hunt, but maybe we sniff a little bit. Jason is amazing, and so are you know his colleagues about that.

Where it's not just, you know, spend a million dollars and we might come up with zero, because that could certainly happen. It's more about like here could be a starting few steps. Do you want to go further?

I want to make sure that everyone hears me right now. If you if you see something, say something. If you suspect something, you need to tell your attorney. And here's why. It's your attorney's

Job to keep a mental ledger and a written ledger of all of the shit. So if we suspect that your spouse is hiding crypto, what else might this spouse be hiding? Because somebody who hides hides. lets your attorney be the one to determine whether this is worth a truffle hunt, or maybe, maybe it's not really worth it for this.

But now it's in your attorney's brain that, okay, Brenda's up to some stuff. Brenda has no qualms not disclosing things that she should be disclosing. Another thing that my brain is thinking of is this can also be used in negotiation, wouldn't you say, Morgan? Chad, you gotta give me this and I'm not gonna touch the crypto stuff. Keep your hidden money.

mean, it could be. if if there's full disclosure on both sides, and let's just say Chad is saying there's no crypto, I've signed off on it, I've signed the affidavit, there's nothing, I've disclosed everything. We always put a non-disclosure provision in our settlement agreements.

If I find something past the date of divorce that you didn't disclose, I'm going to get more than 50% of it. So that if Chad all of a sudden comes out of the gate after the divorce and he's like, whoa, he's driving a brand new car, all these things. And you're like, wait a minute, how did this happen? Well, he had millions in crypto he didn't disclose. Now we have a bigger problem. Most people can't keep their mouth shut on that kind of thing. I think that's what Jason's getting to. It's like, there's always some kind of a

A cent out there if there's crypto.

Yeah, probably because they want to brag that they're doing something that they think is like really cool. So everybody wants to swing their big crypto dick around and, you know, like look what I'm doing. Because it's like a new, cool and I think it makes people feel smart. Jason, do you find that that people think they're really smart if they've got crypto?

Yeah, I I I I tend to agree with you on that. and look, some people really do kind of get into it you know, and and focus a lot on it. but others just, you know, it it's that cocktail conversation that you can have and say, I'm long Bitcoin or you know, I'm short doge, whatever you wanna put into your cocktail conversation.

What is that? So.

That's like the most cringe conversation I've ever heard.

If somebody was out at a cocktail bar with me and said that, I might just get up and walk out the door. Okay, Jason. So

Unless you're

a prostitute. I would say, you know what?

And I was getting

paid in doge, then I might stay. Okay. So Jason, have there been instances where a divorce attorney has hired you, you've gone down the path, you've sniffed it out, and you've found millions in crypto.

Yes.

Have there

fire.

have there been instances where you've gone down the path, you've sniffed it out, and there isn't anything?

Yeah, and you know, I think both instances, I know those are extremes, right? But that gives the the spouse peace of mind, right? That there isn't something there or wow, there is something there and that makes things so much better for us, either way.

And here's the other thing as a divorce lawyer, it's not just do you have crypto and do you have assets sitting there and are you hiding it? There's other reasons you look at it too. It could be for purposes of what we call in Illinois dissipation. You're spending money,

you

think you're a crypto king, Chad. Chad literally can't see his way out of a box, but he thinks he's a crypto king. He's online trading crypto around. And guess what? He's losing his ass on crypto.

And he never did that during the marriage, but now he thinks he's a bro and he's lost all this money. So in my respect, for my purpose as a divorce lawyer, I might say, Hey, this is a dissipation claim. Chad owes a percentage of that money back. That's why I'm using Jason to basically put together how much money has he lost with bad deals.

What's the ratio men to women who play with crypto, Jason?

feels

like a male heavy sport.

So this is obviously very anecdotal, but it has been a hundred percent male.

Interesting because I have

women in crypto. But I do think it's, you know, it's very small percentage from what I've seen.

So let let's paint a scenario here. So let's just say I'm I'm getting a divorce. My my husband handed me what I thought was all of our finances, and I'm looking through all of the accounts. And over the last year and a half, I'm seeing these funky transfers, right? Five grand, seven grand, you know, whatever, to things that I don't recognize. He says to me, Andrea, you're nuts. It's nothing. Or he comes up with things that it is, and I don't really believe him.

Jason, tell me exactly what I do next.

I would ask Morgan to subpoena all of those bank records. once we get those back, we can analyze those to determine where they're going from where he's getting funds, and then as oftentimes happens, that leads to another subpoena, which is trying to understand, right, like that five, ten

seven thousand dollar transfers. Ostensibly we can identify where it went and then we go to that institution or that entity and subpoena them and say, you know, what what's going on here?

the key

there for our listeners is the first place you're going to start is with your divorce attorney. Your divorce attorney can get a lot of bang for your buck by sending certain subpoenas. If you're uncomfortable, because the the reality is not all divorce attorneys are truly up on crypto. That is the reality. But that's why we're bringing on somebody like Jason. So that if, for instance, you're like, I don't know.

you're telling your lawyer you should subpoena all these, you know, platforms and they're they're looking like a deer in headlights, then we have Jason here. So Jason's somebody that your lawyer could consult with if they're a little confused, or Jason could even give them a roadmap of what to do rather than just jumping in all into this crypto realm without knowing if anything's there.

Jason, typically do you, is it the divorce, is it the attorney who's asked who's contacting you and saying, hey, I need you in on this? Or is it the individual going through divorce? we've had other forensic accountants on our show and they say it's always a red flag to us if the individual themselves sort of goes rogue and says, Hey, I need a forensic accountant. So is that the same for you?

Well, certainly it facilitates and makes things a whole lot easier to interact with the attorneys. someone like Morgan can certainly speak to what's really ne s needed and necessary and has experience in this and has done it, you know, multiple times before.

The reason is a client doesn't do this every day. The listeners on this podcast, you're just going through this hell of a time in your divorce. You don't do this every day. So it would make no sense for you to go directly to Jason because one, you're emotional, two, you feel like maybe something's going on, but you're not quite sure. And three, what we always talk about on this podcast is how do you save money?

You don't save yourself any money going directly to an expert. You save yourself money going to your lawyer who then decides, do we need this expert and kind of manages the expert and the expectations? Because experts are just like lawyers. If you tell us you want the sun, the moon, and the stars and cost isn't an option, we're going to try to make you happy. And so if that's not what you want, we have to really tailor the job that they're doing.

a lot of divorce attorneys, maybe most even, are not super familiar with crypto. So I'm curious to know if we can give our listeners action steps on if their gut is telling them.

that this is something that's going on. And they've got some evidence here. What are the first three things that they do? And how would they know Morgan? And should they ask their attorney point blank, what's your experience with this?

Do a little timeline for your lawyer. You know, on this day we went out with another couple. Chad was bragging about all the crypto.

I see on this date, here's the bank statement that I see this money going out to, you know, Doge or Kraken. Or the money's just going out and it's a big amount and it's going nowhere. Maybe it's in cash. So you give the lawyer a timeline. Then at that point, I think it's fair to ask the lawyer, have you ever dealt with crypto assets? Because I don't know that chat is going to disclose it. What do we do? See what their what their plan is at that point in time.

And then remember this podcast. This is why we bring on these fabulous guests because we have people that know exactly what to do in these situations, like Jason. So that's your plan B. You know that we've talked to Jason. So if your lawyer is like, I'm not quite sure, you can say, Hey, I remember this fantastic guest on the podcast that maybe you could reach out to.

Jason, do you have anything

to add to Morgan's list?

Yeah, I mean the only thing I w two things. The first is gather what you have lawful access to, right? Like, you know, copies of bank statements. let's say you've got a receipt for the purchase of a you know a a hardware wallet from Best Buy or or from Amazon, right? gather that information because that's helpful and that's specific.

can help Morgan build the case that she needs. the second thing like I would suggest like don't confront your spouse, Don't tip your hand. because that's when things can start moving around and concealing.

I know it's so hard because it's so tempting. You want to be like, and I know, Chad, you have crypto and you're busted.

we

feel duped, when you feel like someone is hiding something, it's like that ego in us. We want to tell somebody, you think you're so smart, but you're not. But what you don't

Totally.

realize is in that moment, now you're the dumb one.

Agreed. we're always talking on this podcast about being strategic. This is where strategy comes into play. You have to know that you're being quiet for a reason because you need to get to the bottom of it. The worst thing you can do, and I've seen it, and Jason's seen it. You open your mouth, you do exactly what Andrea says. You just can't control yourself. And guess what? The crypto is missing at that point. It's gone. And now Jason has, you know, 20 more steps to try to find it if you can even find it.

Whereas before, if you get in front of it and you have that perfect strategy, sometimes you can get to a point where not only is it located, but you've tied it up. There's no way it's moving.

Well, okay, I've got one more question before I go back to my career as a kraken prostitute. See what I did there? Jason, are there any major misconceptions about hiding money in crypto

the biggest misconception is that it's completely untraceable. And I I don't think that's accurate. there are certain it can certainly be challenging, but it's traceable and you can find crypto assets given the necessary information and time.

Is it a misconception, Jason, that if you lose effectively your password to your wallet, that basically all the crypto is locked up forever and ever and ever? Amen.

that is not a misconception, unfortunately. Yeah.

ouch.

I've actually been working on a project right now where a client provided a bunch of crypto to a third party to invest on his behalf. And he claimed that the manager of the the assets claimed that his password

generator's password manager was lost in a fire and that he could no longer access the accounts that had his clients' funds in it, his assets. And we're talking upwards of three million dollars. so we have traced the funds to where we think they're housed, but now it's a question of like, can we get the password to access it? And

We haven't been able to.

So I've heard this horrible story, but I think it could be true, where somebody who really isn't a wealthy person invested way early on in Bitcoin. The Bitcoin went skyrocketing. They really had no money outside of that. And then they lost their password. So basically they're out of luck, right?

Yeah, there are some firms out there that will try and crack that password, that seed phrase, and then, you know, their their fee for that is a percentage of whatever's recovered.

So they're cracking the password?

They're cracking into the cracking.

The takeaway here you don't need to be a crypto expert. And do not assume that just because you can't see the money, that nobody can find it. Where there is a will, there is a way. Chad, we're on to you. Jason, thank you so much for coming on our show.

My brain has been cracked open and I I just mind blown

Well it was my pleasure. Thanks for for having me on.

how many times do you think we said crack in this episode? Crack.

I think we should count it. You

know the one thing we didn't say enough of is crypto ATM because my mind is stuck on that.

Crypto ATM. I mean, you know, and this is what I love and I hate about our show. I love that we give people so much information. And I hate that there are so many possibilities because the last thing that you want when you're getting a divorce is to feel like you don't know stuff, right? Like I wish this was so much easier. I wish it was like there's only one thing you need to know.

Do this and then you get to heal and go listen to our divorce meditations and everything will be better by Monday. And unfortunately, that's not the way this cookie crumbles.

I know. And think of it from a divorce lawyer's perspective. When I first started to now, there's so many new things. It's just like it's an ever-evolving issue, the same with AI and the things like that. So the point of this podcast today, is to make sure that you at least know enough to be dangerous. You know enough to say, hey, something doesn't feel right. You that's all you need to know because your lawyer should be taking the reins when you figure out there's something not right.

So if you were overwhelmed at parts of this today, that's okay. That doesn't mean you didn't take something in. And if this gave you guidance, that's exactly what we were hoping for because Jason is a fantastic forensic advisor in the crypto space.

And make sure ask your attorney. Always ask your attorney what their guidance is. And you have every right to ask your attorney, hey, how much experience do you have in this world of crypto? Knowing that this is a relatively newness to the world. You know, that's fine. But if you're dealing with this, you gotta have a team who knows what they're doing. You don't want to go in this thing blindly because.

Yeah, I don't want you to go on a truffle hunt unnecessarily, and I don't want you walking away from thousands and thousands and thousands or millions that that are left on the table.

That's right. So listen, if you like our podcast, please rate and review it. We are going to link in our show notes Jason's information so that you andor your attorney could contact him if and when it's necessary. If you need more private community, we've got it for you. It's totally confidential. It's on Facebook. There's a great group that's always talking about things just like this, maybe something you're going through.

If you need more information, check out our DCC online and or our mediation guide or meditation guides.

If you're new to our show, click that little check mark in the upper right hand corner if you're on Apple Podcasts, so that you can subscribe to How Not to Suck at Divorce because we're here for you. we come at you twice a week. We do full episodes, we do mini episodes. We're here to hold your hand through your divorce. And I promise you, you will have so much more information and you will feel so much more supported.

So please listen to other episodes, take action, do the right thing, and I promise you, you will be okay. You will get to the other side of this. Because my friends, even if you don't believe it, you've got this.

And we, my friends, have got you.