British Columbia’s securities regulator says a recent two-day operation to identify victims of a specific type of cryptocurrency fraud has found 89 people who were drained of more than $4 million in assets.
The B.C. Securities Commission says the agency brought together regulators, police, crypto trading platforms and an analysis company in March for “Operation Avalanche,” an initiative to find compromised wallets on a cryptocurrency site where owners may have unknowingly had assets withdrawn by fraudsters.
The commission says the operation targeted so-called “approval phishing,” where victims were tricked into giving criminals access to their cryptocurrency wallets, without them knowing they were being robbed.
The commission says the operation is meant to identify and contact victims to help them “take steps to prevent further losses.”
The 89 victims identified have been contacted and the commission says the project also helped regulators and police gain information that could help in future efforts to fight online investment fraud.
Lori Chambers, the commission’s deputy director of enforcement, says in a statement that taking such steps is necessary because scammers are often “organized crime groups operating in other countries” where traditional law-enforcement methods wouldn’t work.
“So, we’re finding new ways to disrupt their activity,” Chambers says. “One way is proactively alerting victims, often while the con is still unfolding, interrupting the scheme and preventing the bad actors from getting the stolen funds.
“Even if we don’t catch the perpetrators, anything we can do to make their life harder is worthwhile.”
Among the parties involved in the operation are securities and financial market regulators from Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, as well as the RCMP, police departments in Vancouver and Delta, B.C., and the U.S. Secret Service.
A number of crypto-trading platforms such as Netcoins, Ndax and Coinbase also participated in the operation, the commission says.