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I have an acquaintance that has lost USD 10k - 20k in a Cryptocurrency Investment scam. I strongly suspect he is about to get involved in what in my mind would be a "Crypto Currency Scam Recovery Scam" - which I posit to be a thing.

Although weary, he is now talking about engaging the services of companies that claim they can recover money from cryptocurrency scammers. I've not come across these businesses before, but I'm scratching my head as to what they can really do other then chase a credit card company (which won't help, he didn't pay by credit card). These companies talk a good game, but are very, very light on details as to what they actually do, but https://www.firstoptionrecovery.com/funds-recovery for example claims a success rate of 92%

Has anyone got any knowledge of these types of services, and, short of resources of a 3 letter agency or equivalnet, is there actually a path to recoverying money back (where the funds were not paid via Credit Card and its been longer then a week since the funds were deposited?

davidgo
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    The golden rule on [money.se] is **If you have to ask, it's a scam.** –  May 17 '21 at 07:39
  • Recovering something from a scam is a legal matter. – Overmind May 17 '21 at 08:07
  • @Overmind - The difficulty with looking at it as a legal matter is that you need to identify the perpetrators to the legal system before they can act. I posit that Crypto Scammers actual identities is not typically possible - which is why im looking to the security.se community to confirm or dispell this hypothesis. – davidgo May 17 '21 at 08:15
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    What does it have to do with information security? This is off-topic. I suggest to close this question. – mentallurg May 17 '21 at 09:51
  • Hi davidgo - this sort of thing is not on topic here. Please have a look at our [about] and [ask] pages to understand the scope. – Rory Alsop May 17 '21 at 14:51

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Yes, I believe they are called "recovery scams". If you google that, you will get lots of results. Here's an article that talks about such scams. I have come across scammers that promise to recover lost passwords, lost data, etc. so these kinds of "recovery scams" in general can be applied to a variety of subjects. You can usually recognize a scam because of the obscure practices they use, the lack of professionalism, and their unwillingness to get involved in standard procedures.

I took a look at the website of First Option Recovery, and it appears they are based in a virtual office (90 State Street Executive Suites in Albany, New York). They claim they have been mentioned several times in the press, but it appears to be just stuff they have published themselves on websites that let you submit your press releases. They have a YouTube channel and all of their videos have been published over the last 10 months, all of them talk about scams, and they use text-to-speech software for the voice-over (very unprofessional). There are also several reviews on TrustPilot that say they are scammers and will include a few interesting details (for example they will make you send money to the UAE).

reed
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The first question that comes to mind is: what kind of a scam was it in the first place? Was it an ICO where the people behind it just left with the money they raised? Was he hacked, and had his wallet cleaned out? Or was it some other kind of scam, but where the money was accepted by the scammer in cryptocurrency instead of via Wells Fargo or some other means?

I ask because these all have different avenues of attack from the perspective of a victim. The odds of recovering what is lost is low for all of them, however, and First Option Recovery's stated success rate seems unlikely to be true. If it was that easy to get the money back from scammers, I think they would be running a different kind of scam.

Note: I just finished looking their site over...and their primary business is that they are a debt collector. They also claim to be able to recover money that has been scammed away, but their "success rate" probably refers almost entirely to debt collection.

Rob S
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  • I believe the scam was that they paid money to invest in a system which supposedly made lots of money algorythmically trading cryptocurrencies. Of-coourse, come time to pull out your money the site is gone and the funds along with it. – davidgo May 17 '21 at 09:16