Coinbase, Singapore Police Block $4.2M in Crypto Scam Losses

Singapore police and seven crypto exchanges, including Coinbase and OKX, prevented more than $4.2 million in scam losses during a joint operation that ran from April 16 to May 31, the Singapore Police Force said.

The operation, coordinated by the Anti-Scam Centre and Cyber Investigation Branch, identified over 145 potential victims before they completed transfers to fraudsters. Authorities used blockchain analytics tools from Chainalysis and TRM Labs to trace suspicious activity in real time.

Scams targeted included government impersonation schemes, investment fraud, job scams, and romance scams – sometimes called pig butchering – where victims are manipulated over weeks before sending funds through fake mobile applications.

Coinbase Global (COIN) acknowledged its role on July 10. The exchange said the operation stopped over 145 individuals from suffering significant financial losses.

A third operation in June saved an additional $2.9 million for more than 130 victims, bringing total prevented losses to over $7 million across a few months.

The seven exchanges that participated signaled they will freeze suspicious transactions and share information with authorities. For scammers, that makes centralized exchanges a less hospitable place to launder stolen funds.

The risk is that scammers adapt. Romance scams and pig butchering operations have already started moving toward decentralized platforms and peer-to-peer transactions because centralized exchanges are getting better at catching them. Funds routed through mixers, privacy chains, or direct wallet transfers are much harder to intercept.