According to a recent report by Financial Review, thousands of wallets owned by Australian cryptocurrency holders have been compromised by bad actors.
The recent discovery is part of Operation Spincaster, which is a global effort to fight crypto fraud, specifically focusing on so-called approval phishing scams.
Approval phishing scams have been on the rise over the past two years, with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crypto funds being stolen. The scam involves tricking the potential victim into granting approval for transferring specific tokens.
The large-scale operation was introduced by prominent blockchain sleuth Chainalysis in order to "disrupt" and "prevent" massive losses to crypto fraud via public-private collaboration.
The compromised wallets were proactively identified as part of the operation. Notably, one victim of an ongoing scam was directly contacted as part of the operation.
The operation spans the U.S., Spain, Australia and other countries with a total of 12 public sector agencies. The operation also involved as many as 17 crypto exchanges.
Alex DovbnyaChainalysis has long been cooperating with government agencies in order to combat crypto crime.
In April, Canadian police also joined forces with Chainalysis to create an investigative training center.
Rampant crypto scams
In 2023, Australians lost a total of $3.1 billion to crypto scams. Notably, crypto accounted for a significant portion of these losses ($221 million).
In June, the official YouTube channel of a popular Australian broadcaster was highjacked by fraudsters in order to promote a cryptocurrency scam with Elon Musk.
In the second quarter of 2024, losses that are related to cryptocurrency scams and hacks topped $573 million.
Arman Shirinyan
Yuri Molchan