Consumer Protection Tuesday: Following the money. Stopping the scammers.

Scam networks don’t operate on a single platform, and stopping them takes more than a single company. Criminals use social media to find potential victims, messaging services to build trust, digital infrastructure to run their operations, and financial services to move stolen funds. Disrupting these networks means connecting the dots across that entire chain.

That’s why Coinbase joined the Tech Against Scams Coalition, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA), the US Department of Justice's Scam Center Strike Force, and international law enforcement partners for a joint disruption week in London from October 6–9. Together, participating teams shared real-time intelligence and took coordinated action against criminal scam networks operating in West Africa.

For Coinbase, the mission was clear: follow the money, help disrupt illicit financial activity, and give law enforcement actionable intelligence to pursue the criminals behind these schemes.

As law enforcement and industry partners intensify their efforts against scam compounds in Southeast Asia, criminal networks are expanding into other regions, including West Africa. These operations target people around the world, using deception and carefully cultivated relationships to steal their money.

The London disruption week focused on preventing these networks from establishing lasting footholds. Hosted by the NCA in partnership with the US Department of Justice’s Scam Center Strike Force, the operation brought technology, telecommunications, and financial companies together with law enforcement to target the infrastructure, accounts, and payment systems that sustain scam operations.

That coordinated approach matters. Removing a fraudulent account can interrupt a scam, but targeting the services and financial networks behind it can help disrupt the broader operation.

Coinbase’s Global Intelligence team worked alongside industry and law enforcement partners to connect financial intelligence with evidence from across the digital ecosystem.

By sharing intelligence in real time, teams can connect seemingly separate signals: a fake profile, a messaging account, a website, or a blockchain transaction. Together, those signals can help reveal the network behind a scam and support faster, more targeted action.

Coinbase’s contribution focused on tracing illicit financial activity, supporting efforts to freeze assets tied to scam networks, and sharing information that could advance law enforcement investigations.

“When we disrupted scam compounds in Southeast Asia earlier this year, we proved that coordinated action across industry and law enforcement works. As criminal networks try to reestablish in Africa, Coinbase’s Global Intelligence team is following the money, freezing assets, and sharing intelligence in real time so law enforcement can act. This is what sustained pressure looks like.”

— Leah Bressack, Vice President, Coinbase

The networks targeted during the operation used tactics including fraudulent cryptocurrency investment schemes, impersonation of law enforcement officials, and fake video-call “arrests” designed to pressure people into transferring money.

These scams may begin in different places, but they rely on the same underlying advantage: gaps between platforms, services, and jurisdictions.

Tech Against Scams helps close those gaps. By bringing companies together across sectors, the coalition helps partners share intelligence and coordinate responses to threats that no one company can fully address alone. Working alongside law enforcement turns that shared picture into opportunities for disruption and accountability.

Our goal is to help protect people before they become victims, interrupt scams already underway, and support real consequences for the criminal organizations responsible.

Coinbase will continue working with Tech Against Scams and law enforcement partners to keep pressure on these networks, wherever they try to operate next.