Can I recover crypto lost to a scam?

A recovery scam is a form of advance-fee fraud. You are asked to pay upfront for the promise of a much larger sum later. The payment disappears and no funds are recovered.

These scams target people who have already been defrauded, because those people are known to be willing to pay and are motivated to act quickly.

• Victim lists are bought and sold. After a scam, your details are often resold, including your name, contact details, which scam caught you, and how much you lost. Some fraudsters keep the information and return months later to run a second scam themselves.
• They approach you first. Contact comes by phone, email, text, social media or letter. You may also find them yourself: fake recovery firms advertise, publish testimonials and five-star reviews, and place articles on legitimate-looking news sites through press release distribution services.
• They appear in scam discussions. Fraudsters monitor forums, comment sections and social media groups where people describe being scammed, and approach them there.

• Claiming to be a lawyer, a law firm, a government official, a regulator or a recovery specialist.
• Claiming to work with, or to have been given your case by, a law enforcement or government agency.
• Naming real banks, exchanges and money service businesses to sound credible.
• Referring to regulators that do not exist. Check any agency name you are given.
• Knowing the exact amounts and dates of your earlier transfers, and the company you sent funds to.
• Telling you that you are on an official list of scam victims and can recover your money through legal channels.
• Producing documents on what appears to be a real law firm’s letterhead.

Treat any of these as a reason to stop:

• You are asked to pay before anything is done. Any upfront fee is a red flag, whatever it is called: retainer, processing fee, administrative charge, tax or donation. Requests often start small and increase.
• You are told the fee can’t be taken from the recovered funds.
• You are asked to pay in cryptocurrency, gift cards or a wire transfer.
• You are asked to move the conversation to WhatsApp, Telegram or a similar app, or placed into a group chat with people described as bank processors or attorneys.
• You are asked for your bank details so that recovered funds can be deposited.
• You are asked for identity documents or account credentials to verify your ownership of the funds.
• You are told your money is held at a foreign bank and asked to register an account there to withdraw it.
• No credentials are provided. They will not show a license, will not appear on camera and will not take a video call.
• You are asked to pay a third party, such as an unrelated trading or services company, for secrecy.
• The contact is unsolicited, particularly if you have not reported the crime to anyone.
• The business has no verifiable address, or an address that does not appear in map searches.
• Payment is requested by someone claiming to be law enforcement or a government agency. Governments do not charge for investigating crime.

We can’t:

• Reverse, recall or cancel a completed cryptocurrency transaction.
• Recover funds sent to a scammer.
• Retrieve funds from another platform or wallet on your behalf.

We can:

• Investigate activity on your own Kraken account.
• Help you secure your account if it has been compromised.
• Respond to lawful requests from law enforcement, including requests to freeze funds where those funds are identified and held with us.

If you are contacted by someone claiming to be from a Kraken recovery, asset recovery or fund release team, it is not us. Kraken has no such team. Verify any contact claiming to be from Kraken before responding. See Is this email from Kraken?

• Stop paying. If you have already paid a recovery scammer, do not send more, whatever you are told about funds being close to release.
• Keep everything. Save transaction IDs and hashes, wallet addresses, dates, amounts, screenshots, emails and messages. Record names, phone numbers and websites used.
• Report it. Report to your local police and your national reporting body. In the US, that is the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and the FTC.
• Tell us. If the scam involved your Kraken account, or someone impersonated Kraken, report it so we can investigate.
• Verify independently. If you are contacted by someone claiming to represent an agency, court or firm, find their contact details yourself and call them. Do not use a number, link or email address supplied by the person who contacted you.
• Secure your accounts. Assume the data used to contact you is circulating. Review your email security first, then your password manager, then your exchange and wallet accounts. See My account is compromised, what should I do?

• FTC: Refund and Recovery Scams

• CFTC: Don’t be Re-Victimized by Recovery Frauds

• FBI IC3: Fictitious law firms targeting cryptocurrency scam victims

• NASAA: Crypto Recovery Room Scams

• Protect yourself from scams