Canadian, American and British law-enforcement agencies have frozen more than US$12-million of fraudulently obtained funds during a week-long blitz aimed at tackling cryptocurrency investment scams.
Dubbed Operation Atlantic, the initiative also identified another US$33-million that the agencies believe is linked to investment fraud schemes and that they plan to look into further.
During the week-long enforcement blitz which started March 16, the U.S. Secret Service, Britain’s National Crime Agency, the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ontario Securities Commission worked together to tackle what are known as “approval phishing” scams in real time.
In these situations, victims are tricked into clicking a pop-up or alert that gives scammers access to their cryptocurrency wallets. The criminals then transfer funds out of the victims’ wallets, making them difficult to recover because the transactions are irreversible.
Fraud has surged in recent years, and its increasingly global nature has made it challenging for law enforcement to combat.
Victims reported more than $704-million in losses to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre in 2025, up from $645-million in 2024. The centre estimates that only 5 per cent to 10 per cent of fraud is reported.
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Operation Atlantic also involved the RCMP, the City of London Police, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority regulator. Private-sector partners such as cryptocurrency exchanges also participated.
Miles Bonfield, deputy director of investigations at the U.K.’s National Crime Agency, called the operation “a powerful example of what is possible when international agencies and private industry work side by side.”
“We know that fraudsters operate globally and, together with our international partners, so will the NCA to target them wherever they are based,” Mr. Bonfield said in a statement.
Investigators also identified more than 20,000 cryptocurrency wallets linked to fraud victims in more than 30 countries, including Canada, and disrupted more than 120 web domains used by scammers to conduct fraud schemes.
Brent Daniels, assistant director for the U.S. Secret Service’s Office of Field Operations, said the initiative demonstrates the need for international collaboration to tackle cryptocurrency fraud.
“Through this operation, investigators prevented millions of dollars in fraud losses and disrupted millions more in fraudulent transactions, denying criminals the ability to prey on innocent victims,” Mr. Daniels said in a statement.
The initiative followed a 2024 operation called Project Atlas, working with international law-enforcement partners, that was led by the OPP and prevented more than $70-million of fraud losses.
The federal government is in the midst of consultations for a cross-sector, national anti-fraud strategy that is expected to address the issue of liability for fraud losses.
Bonnie Lysyk, executive vice-president of enforcement at the OSC, said enforcement activity in the cryptocurrency fraud space will continue beyond the week-long blitz.
“We will continue to pursue bad actors, deepen cross‑border collaboration and apply advanced enforcement techniques to identify and disrupt crypto‑enabled fraud,” Ms. Lysyk said in a statement.