'Operation Atlantic': US and UK Team With Firms to Trace, Freeze Millions in Stolen Crypto

Crypto firms similar Coinbase and Binance, alongside authorities agencies similar the United States Secret Service and the U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA), person flagged $45 cardinal successful stolen crypto funds arsenic portion of fraud schemes, the parties announced connected Thursday. 

In the probe, much than 20,000 victims of support phishing fraud were identified, and $12 cardinal successful funds were frozen successful the hopes of returning funds to victims.

“To instrumentality connected support phishing astatine scale, our Global Intelligence squad joined forces with aggregate planetary instrumentality enforcement agencies and different partners for a focused operational sprint held astatine the National Crime Agency's office successful London,” Coinbase wrote. 

“The extremity was straightforward: place victims, hint stolen funds, and disrupt the infrastructure that makes support phishing possible—as accelerated arsenic we could,” it added. 

The investigative sprint, dubbed “Operation Atlantic,” was archetypal revealed past period and was hosted by the NCA astatine its office successful London. In a week of focused enactment there, the agencies disrupted “multiple fraud networks,” and volition proceed to analyse quality gathered moving forward. Other crypto firms, similar on-chain information steadfast Chainalysis, crypto speech Kraken, and stablecoin issuer Tether, were included arsenic partners. 

"Operation Atlantic is simply a almighty illustration of what is imaginable erstwhile planetary agencies and backstage manufacture enactment broadside by side,” said National Crime Agency Deputy Director of Investigations Miles Bronfield, successful a statement. "This intensive enactment has led to the safeguarding of thousands of victims successful the UK and overseas, stopped criminals successful their tracks and helped prevention others from losing their funds.”

The enforcement run was focused connected crypto investors who whitethorn person been impacted by support phishing, erstwhile malicious actors effort to summation entree to funds via fake pop-up notifications oregon alerts that unsuspecting victims judge travel from trusted parties. 

More than 120 web domains utilized for schemes were identified during the week, according to the Secret Service. 

“With accepted fiscal crimes, this benignant of cross-border, multi-agency coordination would instrumentality months,” Coinbase wrote successful its recap connected the week. “With blockchain technology, we moved from recognition to enactment successful a azygous week-long sprint.” 

The engagement study comes conscionable implicit a week aft alleged North Korean hackers made disconnected with astir $285 cardinal via an exploit of Solana protocol, Drift. The exploit would correspond conscionable a fraction of the funds mislaid to crypto scam past year, with a caller study from the FBI indicating that much than $11.4 cardinal was mislaid to crypto scams successful 2025 alone.