Over $300 million in cybercrime crypto seized in anti-fraud effort
More than $300 million worth of cryptocurrency linked to cybercrime and fraud schemes has been frozen due to two separate initiatives involving law enforcement and private companies.
One initiative is the T3+ Global Collaborator Program launched by the T3 Financial Crime Unit (T3 FCU), a joint effort deployed almost a year ago by intelligence firm TRM Labs, TRON, and Tether, with Binance joining as the first official member – all major forces in the blockchain space.
According to intelligence firm TRM Labs, more than $250 million in criminal assets worldwide have been frozen since the program started in September 2024.
This includes a notable $6 million frozen in a joint action with Binance against perpetrators of ‘romance baiting’ scams.
“Since its inception in September 2024, T3 FCU has worked closely with law enforcement agencies worldwide to identify and disrupt criminal networks,” reads TRM Labs’ announcement.
“The unit has analyzed millions of transactions across five continents, monitoring over $3 billion USD in total volume,” the company states.
Since its launch, T3 FCU has assisted law enforcement agencies around the world into investigations on money laundering, investment fraud, extortion, terrorism financing, and other serious financial crimes.
The second initiative is a joint operation between the United States and Canada, supported by blockchain intelligence experts at Chainalysis.
The collaboration resulted in two operations – “Project Atlas,” led by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), and “Operation Avalanche” led by the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC), both entities relying on analytics from Chainalysis to trace scam proceeds.
Source: Chainalysis
According to the blockchain data platform, these investigations have uncovered in the past six months more than $74.3 million in losses linked to various types of fraud, leading to the freezing of large portions of these amounts.
“Driven from Canada but truly global in scope, Project Atlas identified more than 2,000 crypto wallet addresses linked to fraud victims across 14 countries, including Canada, the US, Australia, Germany, and the UK,” explains Chainalysis in a press release today.
“Working directly with Tether, we enabled the blacklisting of more than $50 million in USDT, preventing scammers from moving or liquidating these stolen assets,” the company states.
The two initiatives pair coordinated investigation sprints with structured global collaboration to detect and intervene at the blockchain level, significantly hindering cybercriminals from moving or spending scam proceeds.
46% of environments had passwords cracked, nearly doubling from 25% last year.
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