A major international crackdown has frozen over $12 million in suspected criminal proceeds and exposed more than $45 million in cryptocurrency fraud, targeting approval phishing scams that victimized over 20,000 people. The joint operation by US, UK, and Canadian law enforcement agencies represents one of the most significant coordinated strikes against crypto-enabled financial crime to date, signaling a new era of regulatory and enforcement scrutiny on the digital asset ecosystem.

A Cross-Border Sweep Vs. Phishing

Operation Atlantic was run in March and brought together the NCA, the US Secret Service, the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ontario Securities Commission.

The NCA said the effort focused on people who had already lost crypto, or were at risk of losing it, through approval phishing, a scheme that tricks users into handing over wallet access without meaning to.

That method has made scams harder to spot because the victim is often the one who authorizes the dangerous action. Instead of sending coins directly to a thief, users are pushed into signing a malicious approval that gives scammers permission to move assets out of the wallet later. Binance described that kind of fraud as one of the most damaging scams aimed at crypto users.

The NCA said the operation identified victims across the UK, the US and Canada, and one UK victim was thought to have lost more than £52,000.

Officials said the public-private effort helped law enforcement act while some funds were still traceable, with private firms helping identify victims in real time and trace suspicious transactions.

What Binance Said It Did

Binance said its Special Investigations team supported the operation on site in London, where staff helped with live account screening and scam intelligence. The company also said it identified scam websites that were still active during the operation and passed along information that could help with asset seizure efforts.

The exchange said no funds were frozen on Binance accounts. That point matters because it suggests the criminal proceeds were being held elsewhere when the sweep took place, even though Binance still played a role in tracing the wider scam network.

Officials from the NCA said the operation is now being followed by further analysis of the intelligence gathered during the crackdown. The agency also told victims to watch out for recovery scams, warning that criminals often return under a new name and promise to get stolen crypto back for a fee.

Featured image from Unsplash, chart from TradingView