Crypto Recovery Scams – how does it happen?

This one is fairly common and in my purview the most intrusive and addictive type of scam which a victim falls into trap of recovery which in the blockchain world isn’t quite possible. Most of these scams are run from Nigeria, USA, Russia, Korea, China, India and some Asian countries.

Most of the scammers claim to recover USDT, BTC, Ether currencies.

How To Tell if a Crypto Recovery Service Is Legitimate: 6 Warning Signs

Almost all crypto recovery services are scams — especially those that promise to return crypto that you don’t own anymore. If you see any of these warning signs, there’s a very good chance that you’re dealing with a scammer: 

1. They ask for an upfront fee before you receive any help. This is the hallmark of an advance payment scam and a good sign that you’re dealing with a fraudster. Some scammers will ask for a seemingly small deposit upfront but will increase the frequency and size of payment requests over time. 
2. They claim to have “special access” to crypto exchanges. A crypto exchange is a digital marketplace where you can trade cryptocurrencies. Scammers often claim to have backdoor access to an exchange via “connections” or some hacking capability that will enable them to track down whoever scammed you and return your money. This is all a lie.
3. They ask for your passphrase or other sensitive information. If someone asks for this kind of information, it means that they are trying to steal your identity or gain access to your accounts.
4. They ask for your bank account or crypto wallet password and details in order to deposit your “recovered” crypto. As above, a scammer will ask for access to your bank or crypto wallet in an effort to steal more funds from you. 
5. They don’t list a physical address, or the company is located outside of the United States. Scam companies often don’t list a business address. If they do, it’s usually outside of the United States, isn’t a real address, or doesn’t look like a real place of business. In these cases, it’s safe to assume that it’s a fraudulent business.
6. They don’t have a phone number, only communicate via messaging platforms, or have an unprofessional email address. A legitimate business person will be happy to discuss their services over the phone and are unlikely to conduct business via apps like Telegram or WhatsApp. These apps are generally used by scammers to maintain anonymity and avoid the chance of being caught by law enforcement agencies.

Keep Your Crypto Safe: Watch Out for These 5 Crypto Recovery Scams

Crypto recovery scams are constantly evolving. If you see any of the following claims, you’re dealing with a scam. 

1. “Success stories” from clients on Reddit, Quora and social media

Crypto recovery scammers often create fake Reddit accounts (or use hacked accounts) to describe invented “success stories” promoting their own services. They offer sob stories claiming that they lost their life savings but were saved by a recovery service.

Don’t Get Scammed! Look Out for These Red Flags

• Scammers often refer to “experts” on Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram, and similar messaging apps. This is an immediate red flag — real professionals are far more likely to use a combination of emails and direct calls to conduct business. 
• The accounts used to post the “success stories” are brand new, have very few posts, or show signs of being stolen from a previous user.
• The “success stories” all follow the same template with very few details about charges incurred or methods used to recover the crypto. They use emotional language to target distraught people who are desperate to recover their lost investments. 

💡 Related: The Latest Instagram Scams You Need To Watch Out For →

2. Fake emails and forged receipts showing “recovered” crypto

If contact is made with a crypto recovery scammer, they’ll likely send fake emails designed to convince you that they really have found your lost crypto and that it’s on the way – as soon as you pay. 

For example, they might send a picture of a crypto wallet (likely photoshopped or ripped from the internet) that shows your purported balance. They will then charge you for the delivery of the funds, which will never occur. 

Don’t Get Scammed! Look Out for These Red Flags

• Scammers often use free email service providers (such as Gmail or Yahoo!). 
• Scammers may use stock photography, fake names, and false credentials, which can be double-checked with a simple Google search in many cases. 

3. “Ethical Hackers” offering to get your crypto back

“Ethical hackers” offer to hack the original scammers and steal back your cryptocurrency in return for a fee or percentage of the returned funds. However, it’s usually impossible to find a real-world identity from information available via cryptocurrency transfers. 

Even if it were possible to discover the original scammer’s identity, it’s highly unlikely that a Robin Hood figure would hack and return your crypto out of goodwill. If they have the ability to hack and steal other people’s crypto, they would most likely steal yours. 

Don’t Get Scammed! Look Out for These Red Flags

• Any claim to be able to hack back your crypto, reverse a transaction, or brute-force a private key should be an immediate red flag. There is no way to reverse a transaction once it is confirmed on the blockchain. Likewise, it’s next to impossible to discover the identities of scammers in order to target them. 
• Often, scammers won’t ask you key questions about whether it’s possible to recover your crypto. Instead, they will lather you with promises while making suspicious requests for information or payment.

4. Crypto recovery services asking for an upfront fee (or personal information) 

This is the most common type of digital asset recovery scam and involves the scammer asking for a (normally quite large) upfront fee before returning the recovered crypto. In almost all cases, the scammers will ask for additional fees as time goes by, citing several excuses for not returning the crypto. 

Don’t Get Scammed! Look Out for These Red Flags

• Advance payment scammers often submit odd demands like upfront fees, “donations,” and requests for payment or your personal information. 
• The scammers provide reasons why the fees can’t be paid after the money is recovered. 
• Scammers often ask for payment in cryptocurrency (especially smaller, lesser-known currencies) to ensure that the transfers are untraceable and unreturnable. 

5. Recovery “gurus,” lawyers, or law enforcement on social media

In these scams, criminals pretend to be so-called experts like lawyers, investigators, or law enforcement officers and promise to recover stolen funds for you. 

They make exaggerated claims about their successes and try to convince you that they will be able to perform miracles. You should block these users immediately to prevent falling victim to a scam.

Don’t Get Scammed! Look Out for These Red Flags

• This type of scammer sends unsolicited messages offering their “services.” They usually have discovered your name via a social media post or public scam report — and contact you already knowing that you are a potential victim. Real businesses are highly unlikely to send unsolicited messages, especially via social media platforms. 
• These scammers often pressure you into using their services by claiming that if you don’t act fast, you could lose the crypto for good. In reality, the crypto is already lost, so it’s better to cut your losses than fall victim to a second scam. 

Remember: Legitimate government agencies that investigate fraud will never ask you for money and will contact you via a government email address — not through social media. 

Can You Get Your Money or Crypto Back From a Recovery Scam?

The unfortunate reality is that it’s all but impossible to recover stolen cryptocurrency. Only in specific cases of hardware damage or partial key loss is cryptocurrency potentially recoverable (for example, if it’s partly lost or inaccessible in an old storage device). 

If you’ve lost cryptocurrency in a transaction by sending it to an account that you have no control over, there is very little you can do to recover the funds. 

✅ Take action: If scammers have your personal information, they could drain your bank account or steal your identity.

Is There a Safer Way To Try and Get Stolen Crypto Back? 

If you’re the victim of a cryptocurrency scam, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever see your crypto again. However, there are steps you can take to improve your cybersecurity, prevent future scams, and maybe recover your lost crypto.

Report the scam to your crypto exchange

By providing your exchange with important details about the scam, they may be able to identify the scammers and prevent them from perpetrating future scams. 

In rare cases, they may be able to freeze the perpetrator’s account and potentially return the stolen crypto. 

Include as many details about the scammers as you have, such as how and when the scam took place and any transaction identification (TXID) codes. The TXID hash provides critical information about the time, receiving address, amounts, and more.

Here is how you could be easily scammed:

The methods these scammers do is purely based on your emotions and sentiments. In a typical example, once you contact a recovery agent or say scammer/hacker as they claim to be, they would start nicely and ask good questions about how the investment was done and what happened in detail etc. You would then kindly share the wallet addresses you had sent money to. They appear to be nice and very responsive initially, however, its a honey trap! beware. Next stage would be to build or buy a software from Dark Web to start recovery which would easily cost you between 2500 to 10k USD. There will be no receipts or software buy acknowledgement but you must have to send funds to their bitcoin or Eth account.

This will nicely lead to the next stage of recovery of funds which they would pretend is ongoing and would need funds to connect to scammers software wallets and your software wallet which would easily cost you between 10-20k.

Once the pretense of recovery is started, you would be asked to deposit funds into their wallets for transactions to happen or easily lured into sharing your wallet details with them. Once wallet details are shared, there is no looking back. You will be asked to deposit funds into your wallet for safeguarding of recovery funds. You will end up losing easily 50-75k or more on how you much you believe.

After spending few months on recovery, there will be an attempt to sending recovered funds to your wallet, which eventually will fail. There will be several such failed attempts and eventually if you had lost 100k in investment scam, there is a likelihood of losing another 50-100k in recovery scams.

Most of the funds are used for Money Laundering and some illegal activities.

Obviously being a scammer or a hacker, they will not provide any legitimate email/contacts, you will contact them via Whatsapp web (Business account) which is usually a virtual number from any country. Emails will be mostly gmail accounts as they cannot be traced back to sender.

Here is what you MUST NOT do, give access to your wallet as it cannot be revoked unless you create a new wallet!

In simple terms, there is no bitcoin or Eth recovery. The only legitimate way is to report to authorities like Action Fraud in UK who would take this seriously and help track/trace the funds.

Read more about Crypto Recovery scams here

New List of Hackers/scammers/ sites

Below are the list of hackers/scammers sites you will find over the internet and some of the sites they use. Please check my post for list of trading/investment sites.

bestcryptoscammer@outlook.com – Goes under the name Harry from USA, Miami. Claims have recovered over USD 10M on blocktrace sites, however, no evidence provided. No references and some of the sites referred as scammer as Whatsapp numbers are changed quickly.

hirecyberexpert.com – You will get a response in the contact form from Steve (based in India)

Certifiedhackerroy@gmail.com -> was hired by a victim through hireahacker, works on btc recovery, based out of Malaysia. Asks for 10% advances, listed to have duped over 200k on various sites.

hireahacker.com -> Very rarely you will get a genuine hacker from the site, most ask for advances. One of the victims stated hacker took advance and disappeared. So beware of hackers on this site.

professionalhacker227@gmail.com– reported to be in Nigeria on the Dark Web sites. He has published in Quora and many other sites for crypto recovery services. Comms via gmail or whatsapp web only. Few reports available on Quora, however they are likely to be hacked updates. Hackers cannot provide genuine references.

bmggroupvip@gmail.com – belongs to block chain trading group. Lure you into investment and trading by registering on their site. Details are in bmgscam blog. Run by 2 scammers acting as professor and secretary under various names. Allegedly, still running the SCAM for investments. If you have come across BMG, please email me below. Known to create large whatsapp group of investors (pooled from scammed list on Dark web).

investxe.com– another financial investment scam which renamed it’s hosting. Site is based out of US but scams run from Talin, Korea and China. More or less similar to BMG and believed to be part of same scammer group. It is believed that the scammers sale the phone/contacts on Darkweb which then such companies create whatsapp group to lure investors.

You can report any scammers/sites or hackers here – kaihenricks2@gmail.com