The GUARD Act authorizes State, local, and Tribal law enforcement agencies that receive specified Department of Justice grant funds to use those funds for investigating elder financial fraud, pig butchering schemes, and broader financial fraud. It lists eligible grant streams, enumerates allowable expenditures (hiring, training, tools, a financial-sector liaison), and requires recipients to report how funds were used and what impact they had.
The bill also directs Treasury and FinCEN—working with other federal regulators—to produce two congressionally required reports: a near-term joint review of enforcement and recommendations, and a broader biennial-style assessment estimating the scope and cost of scams (attempted and successful), attribution to overseas actors/organized crime, and enforcement outcomes. Finally, it explicitly authorizes federal law enforcement to assist state, local, Tribal agencies and fusion centers in using blockchain and related tracing tools, formalizing technical support that many local agencies currently lack.
At a Glance
What It Does
Permits recipients of enumerated DOJ grant programs to spend grant dollars on personnel, training, software, tabletop exercises, data reporting, and a financial-sector liaison specifically for investigating elder financial fraud, pig butchering, and general financial fraud. It requires recipient agencies to report use and impact to the granting agency, and it orders multiagency reports from Treasury/FinCEN with prescribed metrics and public comment solicitation.
Who It Affects
State, local, and Tribal law enforcement agencies that receive the named DOJ grants; the Department of Justice as a grantor and coordinator; Treasury and FinCEN as reporting agencies; financial institutions and nonbank financial providers that will interact with designated liaisons; and vendors of blockchain intelligence and investigative software.
Why It Matters
The bill channels existing federal grant money toward crypto-enabled and elder-targeted scams while creating new data streams for policy and enforcement. It narrows a technical gap between local law enforcement and sophisticated financial criminals by authorizing both purchases of analytics tools and federal technical assistance for blockchain tracing.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The GUARD Act creates a straightforward permission structure: if a State, local, or Tribal law enforcement agency receives funds from one of the listed DOJ programs, it may allocate those funds to investigate elder financial fraud, pig butchering, and related financial crimes. The statute defines key terms—'elder financial fraud,' 'pig butchering,' 'scam'—to fix the scope of permitted activities and to remove ambiguity about whether crypto-enabled investment frauds and social-engineering schemes fall under grant-funded activity.
Allowed uses cover people, training, and technology. Agencies may hire analysts and specialists, fund training that explicitly includes coordination with federal partners and instruction on items from the National Science and Technology Council's Critical and Emerging Technology List, and buy software and other technical tools used in tracing funds or conducting digital-forensic work.
The bill also encourages exercises to improve coordination with financial institutions and requires grantees to name a financial sector liaison to improve real-time information sharing.Accountability is built into the statute: any agency that spends eligible grant funds on these activities must report back to the federal grant provider within one year, describing how much it spent, the purposes, basic jurisdictional statistics about the frauds addressed, and an assessment of deterrence capacity. At the federal level, Treasury and FinCEN must produce a joint report (within a year) with recommendations on these fraud types, and a broader report on the state of scams is required with specific metrics—estimated counts of attempted and successful scams, dollar losses, attribution breakdowns, and an overview of enforcement actions and resources expended.
The law also directs federal grant-providing agencies to pass grant-level reporting to Congress annually.Finally, the bill authorizes federal law enforcement to assist state, local, Tribal agencies and fusion centers in using blockchain tracing and related technology. That provision formalizes an operational relationship—technical assistance, not a change to criminal procedure rules—intended to close a capability gap for jurisdictions that lack sophisticated analytic capacity.
For practitioners, the immediate compliance tasks are tracking eligible expenditures, assembling the granular data the statute requires, and building the liaison and institutional relationships the bill expects to be in place.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill lists five eligible federal grant sources (DOJ Economic/High-Technology/White Collar/Internet Crime Program; DOJ Information Sharing TTA; DOJ Internet of Things TTA; VAWA section 1401 Local Law Enforcement Grants for Cybercrimes Against Individuals; and the COPS Technology and Equipment Program).
Recipients may use grant funds to hire specialists, purchase blockchain intelligence and forensic software, fund training (including on technologies named in the Critical and Emerging Technology List), run tabletop exercises, improve data collection, and designate a financial sector liaison.
Each grantee that spends eligible funds under the Act must report to the grant provider within one year with: amounts spent and purposes; jurisdictional statistics on elder, pig-butchering, and general financial fraud and an analysis of the funds' impact; and an assessment of deterrence capacity.
The Secretary of the Treasury and FinCEN, consulting with DOJ, DHS, and federal banking and functional regulators, must submit a joint report within one year with efforts and recommendations, and separately produce a comprehensive report estimating scam counts, dollar losses, attribution to overseas actors/organized crime, enforcement action summaries, and agency expenditures; the Treasury-led report must solicit public comment from consumers and private-sector actors.
Federal law enforcement agencies are explicitly authorized to assist State, local, and Tribal law enforcement agencies and fusion centers in the use of blockchain tracing and related technology tools, formalizing cross-jurisdictional technical support.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Short title
Names the bill the 'Guarding Unprotected Aging Retirees from Deception Act' or 'GUARD Act.' This is administrative but helpful: practitioners and grant administrators will see this name on guidance and notices to connect operational rules back to the statutory authority.
Key definitions
Defines critical terms that delimit the Act's scope—'elder financial fraud,' 'pig butchering,' 'general financial fraud,' 'scam,' and 'eligible Federal grant funds.' The explicit inclusion of 'pig butchering' and a definition focused on cryptocurrency removes doubt that crypto-investment scams are covered. Listing eligible grant programs (several DOJ programs and a VAWA-related grant) narrows which grant streams can be repurposed under this authority.
Permitted uses of grant funds
Authorizes grantees to spend eligible Federal grant funds on personnel (analysts, agents, experts), training (including coordination and technology-specific training), software and technical investigative tools, data collection and reporting improvements, tabletop exercises with financial institutions, and a designated financial sector liaison. The section is practical: it creates explicit permissible budget categories rather than leaving such decisions to agency grant terms alone.
Grantee reporting to grant provider
Requires each law enforcement agency that uses eligible grant funds for these purposes to report back to the federal grant provider within one year. Reports must quantify funds used, explain specific purposes, provide jurisdictional statistics and an analysis of how the funded activities affected those statistics, and offer an assessment of deterrence capacity. For grant administrators and auditors, this imposes a short-term monitoring and documentation requirement and creates a feedback loop for future grant-making.
Treasury/FinCEN joint report
Directs the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of FinCEN—consulting with DOJ, DHS, and banking regulators—to submit a joint report within one year on efforts and recommendations related to general financial fraud, pig butchering, and elder fraud. This mandate centralizes cross-agency policy thinking and is likely to influence regulatory guidance, enforcement priorities, and future resource allocation.
Report on the state of scams with public input
Requires a detailed report estimating numbers and dollar losses for attempted and successful scams, identifying attribution to overseas actors and organized crime, quantifying impersonation and synthetic-identity incidents, summarizing enforcement actions (counts, effectiveness, penalties, link to SARs), and cataloging agency funding expended on these problems. It also requires Treasury to solicit public comment from consumers, social media platforms, email and telecom providers, and financial institutions—introducing private-sector input into federal estimates and potentially highlighting reporting gaps.
Annual reporting from grant programs to Congress
Mandates that each federal agency that provides eligible grant funds must transmit an annual report to the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking Committee containing the information they received from grantees under Section 3(b). This creates a congressional oversight channel and aggregates local reporting at the national level for legislative and appropriations scrutiny.
Federal assistance for blockchain and related tracing
Authorizes federal law enforcement agencies to assist State, local, Tribal law enforcement and fusion centers in the use of blockchain and related tracing tools. Practically, this formal authorization is intended to smooth operational cooperation—training, tool access, and technical guidance—across jurisdictions that lack in-house capabilities, but it leaves unchanged the underlying rules governing investigations, warrants, and evidence collection.
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Explore Finance in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Elder and disabled victims: the statute directs more investigative resources toward scams and exploitation that target older adults, potentially increasing detection, recovery, and victim assistance.
- State, local, and Tribal law enforcement agencies: grants can now explicitly fund hires, specialized training, and purchase of blockchain analytics and other investigative tools that many jurisdictions currently lack.
- Financial institutions and nonbank providers: the required financial-sector liaison and encouragement of tabletop exercises aim to streamline information-sharing and speed bank responses to suspected scams.
- Federal enforcement and regulatory agencies: the new reporting requirements create richer national data on fraud patterns and enforcement outcomes, improving cross-agency coordination and policy design.
- Vendors of blockchain intelligence and digital-forensics software: expanded permitted uses create a clearer procurement pathway for analytics products and training services.
Who Bears the Cost
- Grant-providing federal agencies (DOJ, COPS): they will have increased oversight and reporting obligations, and must digest and forward grantee reports to Congress, which requires staff time and administrative processes.
- Local law enforcement agencies that accept funds: grantees must compile detailed one-year reports and may face ongoing costs for software licenses, training refreshers, and sustaining new positions after grant periods end.
- Other public-safety priorities: jurisdictions with limited grant dollars may reallocate funds toward financial-crime capabilities, potentially reducing funding for nonfinancial public-safety needs.
- Privacy and civil-liberties stakeholders and communities: expanded use of blockchain tracing and related technologies raises risks of increased surveillance, data sharing, and potential mission creep without accompanying oversight mechanisms.
- Financial institutions: banks and nonbank firms can expect increased coordination demands, more information requests, and participation in exercises and liaison activities, which carries operational costs.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is urgent and practical: the law pushes resources and technical assistance toward protecting older adults from sophisticated, often crypto-enabled scams, but doing so expands law enforcement’s technical reach and data-sharing without parallel safeguards, sustainable funding commitments, or standardized measurement—forcing a choice between swift capability-building and slower, more controlled growth that protects privacy and ensures accountability.
The bill addresses a capability gap—local law enforcement often lacks in-house crypto and digital-forensics expertise—but it does so by authorizing expenditure rather than appropriating new funds. That distinction matters: implementation depends on grantees' existing awards and budgetary priorities, so the statute can increase capabilities only to the extent agencies redirect or receive sufficient grant dollars.
Sustaining personnel and recurring software subscriptions after a grant year will be a common operational headache.
The reporting mandates are ambitious in scope but face real data constraints. Estimating attempted versus successful scams, attributing schemes to overseas actors or organized crime, and counting synthetic identities all require standardized definitions and reliable data flows from banks, platforms, and consumers—data that is often incomplete or inconsistently coded.
There is also a tension in the statute between encouraging collaboration with financial institutions and demanding public reporting; banks may be reluctant to share granular information for fear of reputational or regulatory consequences.
Finally, formalizing federal assistance for blockchain tracing raises civil-liberty and constitutional questions in practice. The bill authorizes assistance and use of tracing tools but does not set privacy safeguards, standards for tool validation, or limits on data retention and sharing.
It also does not resolve how evidence produced by proprietary analytics will be validated in court or how cross-border tracing will interact with foreign law enforcement and mutual legal assistance processes.
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