Operation Atlantic: law enforcement and crypto firms move in near‑real time to stop approval‑phishing scams
A new international effort codenamed “Operation Atlantic” has produced striking early results in the fight against crypto fraud — and it’s notable because authorities are acting in near real time to freeze funds before they vanish on‑chain.
Led by the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) and the U.S. Secret Service, Operation Atlantic is a coordinated UK–US–Canada venture that brings together public authorities with private industry partners, including blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. According to Chainalysis, the operation’s goal is to spot victims and compromised wallets as they appear, secure illicit funds before they can be laundered through exchanges or services, produce investigative leads on the fraud networks, and build intelligence for ongoing probes.
Early outcomes
- More than 20,000 victims have been identified and over 20,000 wallet addresses flagged, the NCA reports.
- Authorities say they’ve frozen more than $12 million in suspected scam proceeds so far.
- In total, investigators have identified more than $45 million in stolen cryptocurrency linked to these schemes worldwide.
- The NCA singled out one U.K. victim who lost more than £52,000.
What the scams look like
Operation Atlantic is targeting crypto investment scams and so‑called “approval‑phishing” attacks — in which victims are duped into signing malicious on‑chain approvals that give scammers permission to move tokens directly out of wallets. These fake prompts are often disguised as investment opportunities, TOS updates, or “account security” requests. Because they rely on a user signing a transaction rather than stealing a password, approval‑phishing has become a favorite tactic of organized fraud rings and can be hard for inexperienced users to spot.
Recent incidents and industry responses
- Earlier this month the Solana memecoin platform Bonk.fun was compromised after a phishing page presented a fake “Terms of Service” signature request; anyone who signed the prompt unknowingly allowed their funds to be drained.
- In South Korea, authorities are rolling out a standardized withdrawal‑delay for all exchanges to blunt phishing attacks that exploit speed.
- Social network X has announced a major anti‑crypto‑scam push aimed especially at phishing vectors.
What’s next
Operation Atlantic demonstrates law enforcement’s growing ability to trace and freeze stolen crypto in near real time. That capability both disrupts current scams and changes criminal incentives — expect fraud networks to develop more complex laundering routes to evade detection. For traders, investigators and analysts, that shift will likely mean new on‑chain signals to monitor as scammers adapt.
Cover image from Perplexity. BTCUSDT chart from TradingView.
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