Denis Banchero

Overview

Denis Banchero is the Director of Blockchain Investigations at A.M. Barbara, where he leads blockchain tracing and forensic analysis in matters involving cryptocurrency fraud, asset recovery, money laundering, and complex digital-asset transactions.

His work combines blockchain intelligence, financial investigation, open-source research, and traditional investigative methods to reconstruct the movement of digital assets and develop evidence-based findings that can support legal and investigative action.

Government investigations and digital-asset seizures

Before joining A.M. Barbara, Denis served as senior official of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Unit for the Investigation of Cybercrime in the Judicial Department of San Isidro, Argentina. His work involved complex cybercrime and financial investigations concerning cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, money laundering, and the movement and concealment of illicit proceeds.

Denis earned his law degree from the University of Buenos Aires and is admitted to practice law in Argentina. His investigative experience includes helping lead Argentina’s first judicial seizure of cryptocurrency during the execution of a search warrant, as well as subsequent digital-asset seizure operations involving complex wallet structures, multiple blockchains, and coordinated investigative procedures.

Working with blockchain evidence

Denis’s investigative work includes cross-chain asset tracing, transaction reconstruction, wallet and address analysis, exchange and service-provider identification, open-source intelligence, and the analysis of laundering and obfuscation techniques.

At A.M. Barbara, he works closely with counsel to distinguish verified attribution from analytical inference, identify actionable investigative leads, and translate complex blockchain activity into a clear forensic record capable of supporting law-enforcement engagement, forfeiture proceedings, litigation, and asset-recovery efforts.

International training and professional leadership

Denis served as a member of the Southern Cone cohort of the U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division’s Western Hemisphere Cryptocurrency Working Group, an initiative led by the Department’s International Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (ICHIP) program and focused on cryptocurrency investigations, blockchain analysis, and cross-border law-enforcement cooperation. He has also completed the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) Roswell Cyber Financial Crimes Executive Policy and Development Symposium.

He has worked with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime on money laundering, virtual assets, and the freezing and seizure of cryptocurrency. In May 2025 he was the panellist appointed to facilitate the discussion of international cooperation to freeze and confiscate proceeds of crime held in virtual currencies before the working group of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime in Vienna.

Denis has trained more than 700 investigators, prosecutors, judicial officials, and other professionals in cryptocurrency tracing, digital-asset seizure, and blockchain forensic analysis, across programs in Central and South America, the Caribbean, and Asia, incorporating real investigative matters and live blockchain-tracing demonstrations. He serves as an instructor with TRM Labs and as Co-Director of the International Diploma in Practical Investigation of Cybercrime and Cryptoassets at Universidad de la Marina Mercante, and lectures regularly on blockchain investigations, cryptocurrency tracing, anti-money laundering, cybercrime, and digital-asset seizures.

Selected Public Record

June 2026. Tracing methodology, La Nación. Denis was quoted on the technical constraints facing the $LIBRA investigation and on conducting on-chain tracing without premium tooling, noting that investigators should work across multiple tools because each offers a different view.

December 2025. United Nations Convention against Corruption, 11th Conference of the States Parties, Doha. Denis presented on cryptocurrency investigations, decentralized-finance fraud and on-chain forensic analysis, drawing on case material and technical methodology, as reported by Universidad de la Marina Mercante.

August 2025. International training, Uruguay. Denis led sessions for prosecutors, judges and police on cryptocurrency investigation, tracing, money laundering and digital-asset seizure. Búsqueda reported his remarks on the conversion of fiat-origin fraud proceeds into digital assets as a laundering method.

May 2025. United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, Working Group on International Cooperation, Vienna. At the time serving in the Specialized Prosecutor’s Unit for the Investigation of Cybercrime in San Isidro, Argentina, Denis was the panelist appointed to facilitate the Working Group’s discussion of agenda item 4, “Exchange of good practices in international cooperation to freeze and confiscate proceeds of crime in the form of virtual currencies.” The Working Group’s report records his remarks at UN Doc. CTOC/COP/WG.3/2025/5, paras. 37–40.

February 2025. First judicial return of seized cryptocurrency to a victim in Argentina. Forbes Argentina reported the return of assets seized in the June 2023 operation, an investigation and recovery process in which Denis participated.

June 2023. Argentina’s first judicial cryptocurrency seizure. Denis participated in the prosecution unit’s investigation that produced the first judicial seizure in Argentina of criminally derived virtual assets, executed under a search warrant. His role in the unit’s cryptocurrency work is described in TRM Labs’ case study on the UFEIC, Argentina’s specialized cybercrime prosecution unit, and the operation was reported by Todo Noticias.

Descriptions above summarize cited public reporting and institutional records. They do not imply endorsement by any publication, institution, or government body, and prior matters do not guarantee or predict the outcome of any future matter.