Dubbed “Operation Atlantic,” the effort brings together law enforcement from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada to target cryptocurrency-related phishing and fraud, raise public awareness, and recover stolen funds.
The US Secret Service, UK National Crime Agency and Canadian authorities—including the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ontario Securities Commission—announced the cross-border initiative, which focuses on detecting people at risk of losing crypto and identifying victims who have already been defrauded through “approval phishing” schemes.
“Approval phishing and investment scams cost victims millions in financial loss each year,” said Brent Daniels, deputy assistant director for the US Secret Service’s Office of Field Operations. Authorities say the operation aims to identify and disrupt these scams in near real time.
Approval phishing, as described by blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, involves tricking a user into signing a malicious blockchain transaction that grants a scammer’s address permission to spend certain tokens in the victim’s wallet, enabling the scammer to drain those tokens at will.
Operation Atlantic builds on the Ontario Securities Commission’s Project Atlas, and on an initiative launched in 2024 by the Ontario Provincial Police with the US Secret Service to target crypto fraud networks. The broader effort will also coordinate with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the City of London Police, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority.
Phishing scams typically impersonate legitimate services to trick users into granting wallet access. Reports show phishing activity can spike month to month: crypto intelligence platform Nominis reported a sharp increase in phishing attacks in February, even as the total value stolen in crypto-related scams and exploits fell from $385 million in January to $49 million in February.
Chainalysis previously launched Operation Spincaster in 2024 to combat approval phishing; its research found such scams led to approximately $2.7 billion in crypto losses between May 2021 and July 2024.
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