Overview

• A caller posing as a senior UK law enforcement officer convinced a Welsh crypto holder to follow a phishing link and enter their seed phrase.
• The caller claimed the victim’s details were found on an arrested person’s phone, leveraging urgency to push them to “secure” their assets.
• Scammers used the seed phrase to rebuild the wallet and withdraw roughly £2.1 million in Bitcoin within minutes, police said.
• North Wales Police’s Cyber Crime Team is tracing the blockchain movements and believes the victim may have been identified through a prior data breach.
• Authorities warn that genuine officers or companies will never request a seed phrase and urge recipients of such calls to hang up and verify through official channels, noting that recovery remains uncertain.