Crypto criminals are taking rising pain to avoid detection, moving assets between a wealth of blockchain ecosystems in an attempt to throw investigators from their tracks. As many as 20% of complex studies across the chain now span 10 different blockchains, according to new data from blockchain analytic company Elliptic.

Elliptic found that one -third of complex cross -chain studies involved four or more blockchains, and 27% involved more than five.

Jackson Hull, Elliptics Chief Technology Officer, Coindesk told that although the cross chain crime has existed as long as there have been several blockchains, the amount of cross chain crime has risen “rather dramatically” in the last five years, as the cost of changing ecosystems has gone down and the number of opportunities to switch to has gone up.

Although there are plenty of non-criminal reasons why someone wants to move assets between crypto-ecosystems, Hull said it is also a very common veiling tactic for hackers and other criminals who want to whale money and cover their tracks.

Hull said that Elliptic has recently expanded its coverage to support 50 blockchains, which means investigators using Elliptics software are easily able to track funds moving between any of the covered blockchains, or passing through one of the “300 -plus” bridges Elliptics softwar supports. Hull added that Elliptic is able to add a new blockchain to its coverage in as little as three weeks.

“The most important, risky studies with high efforts are the ones where they [bad] Actor tries to launder or hide or obscure the funds, so they jump more and more across these blockchains, ”Hull said.” So that’s really what drives it. “

Elliptic helped US law enforcement in their recent dismantling of sanctioned Russian crypto exchange Garantex, which was popular with ransomware -bands and Russian oligarchs who want to avoid sanctions. After the dismantling, the stock exchange has tried to redirect like Grinex.