Secret Service and Canadian Authorities Disrupt $4.3M Ethereum Scam in ‘Operation Avalanche’
The United States Secret Service has partnered with Canadian authorities in a coordinated effort to dismantle a sophisticated Ethereum-based scam that defrauded victims of over $4.3 million.
The cross-border operation, dubbed “Operation Avalanche,” focused on combating a rising threat known as “approval phishing.”
Cross-Border Collaboration Targets Ethereum Wallet Fraud
In a statement released Wednesday, the Secret Service announced its collaboration with the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC), Canadian law enforcement, blockchain analytics firms, and several crypto trading platforms. The joint effort aimed to track compromised Ethereum wallets and alert victims who unknowingly granted malicious actors access to their digital funds.
“Once identified, the owners of those compromised wallets are warned that they are victims of a scam, known as ‘approval phishing,’” the agencies said in a joint statement.
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What Is Approval Phishing?
Approval phishing is a form of crypto scam in which fraudsters trick users into approving malicious transactions, granting attackers the ability to drain assets from their wallets. These scams often use deceptive links, fake websites, or social engineering to lure victims into authorizing wallet access.
The wallets targeted in Operation Avalanche were found to have lost millions in digital assets due to such schemes.
Kosta has reported on cryptocurrency markets and blockchain infrastructure since 2020, bringing over six years of hands-on experience in the crypto industry built through daily tracking of markets, trends, and emerging blockchain developments. Specializing in Bitcoin on-chain analysis, institutional ETF flows, and digital asset price action, his work at Coindoo has been cited by other news agencies and consistently covers market developments with a focus on data-driven reporting across Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and XRP. Over the years, Kosta has contributed to multiple crypto media outlets in different regions, authoring over 6,000 articles across the sector. His reporting spans cryptocurrency markets and the broader fintech industry, tracking not only price action but also the technological and regulatory forces shaping the ecosystem. To support his analysis, Kosta actively leverages on-chain data and metrics from leading platforms such as Santiment, Glassnode, and CryptoQuant, enabling deeper, evidence-based market insights. He believes in the power of transparency and the data that underpins the blockchain ecosystem. His academic background in Marketing Management from Denmark further complements his analytical approach, adding a strong understanding of communication strategy and content positioning to his work.
