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UK-led Operation Atlantic froze over $12M in crypto scam proceeds tied to \u201capproval phishing,\u201d identifying 20,000+ victims and $45M in suspected fraud.<\/p>\n
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UK, US and Canadian law enforcement have frozen more than $12 million in suspected crypto scam proceeds in a coordinated action targeting \u201capproval phishing\u201d schemes that hit over 20,000 victims. The joint effort, dubbed Operation Atlantic and led by the UK\u2019s National Crime Agency (NCA), focused on scams that trick users into signing malicious on\u2011chain approvals, allowing attackers to drain tokens directly from victims\u2019 wallets. Authorities say total fraud linked to the identified infrastructure exceeds $45 million.<\/p>\n
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According to the NCA, Operation Atlantic was co\u2011hosted with the U.S. Secret Service, Ontario Provincial Police and the Ontario Securities Commission, and ran as an intensive, week\u2011long initiative in March. Rather than only tracing funds after the fact, agencies worked to \u201cidentify victims who have lost, or were at risk of losing, cryptocurrency through \u2018approval phishing\u2019,\u201d securing assets before criminals could move them further down the laundering chain. Chainalysis, which supported the operation, described the approach as targeting \u201ca fast-growing threat: approval phishing scams that trick victims into granting criminals permission to drain their wallets,\u201d and noted that the effort \u201csecured and frozen more than $12 million in suspected criminal proceeds\u201d while mapping over $45 million in stolen crypto tied to related schemes.nationalcrimeagency.<\/p>\n
Private sector firms played a visible role. Binance said its Special Investigations team provided on\u2011site support at the NCA\u2019s London headquarters, including \u201clive account screening and scam intelligence\u201d and the identification of still\u2011active scam websites, but stressed that \u201cno funds were frozen on Binance as part of the operation.\u201d In a statement supporting the action, Binance called approval phishing \u201cone of the most damaging types of scams targeting crypto users today,\u201d arguing that Operation Atlantic shows \u201chow effective crime fighting is possible when private and public partners move together to stop fraud at the source.\u201d NCA deputy director of investigations Miles Bonfield said the operation \u201chas led to the safeguarding of thousands of victims in the UK and overseas, stopped criminals in their tracks and helped save others from losing their funds,\u201d adding that fraudsters \u201coperate globally and, together with our international partners, so will the NCA to target them wherever they are based.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the sums recovered are small relative to the broader crypto market, the operation highlights both the growing sophistication of on\u2011chain fraud and the increasing willingness of law enforcement and major exchanges to coordinate in near real time. It also underlines a practical lesson for users: the most dangerous transaction is often the one you approve yourself.<\/p>\n
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UK-led Operation Atlantic froze over $12M in crypto scam proceeds tied to \u201capproval phishing,\u201d identifying 20,000+ victims and $45M in suspected fraud. Summary UK, US and Canadian agencies ran Operation…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25507,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25506\/revisions\/25507"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}