The scam that follows the scam: how fake recovery agents hunt crypto victims twice

Losing money to a crypto scam is supposed to be the bottom. For a growing number of victims, it is the opening. A second set of fraudsters is watching the wreckage, and they arrive with a promise the first scam never made: we can get your money back.

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) treats this as a distinct crime — the "recovery scam" — and has issued two public warnings in as many years. The pitch is simple and cruel. Someone posing as a lawyer, a "recovery agent," or a government official contacts a person who has already been defrauded and offers to trace and return the stolen crypto, for a fee paid up front. That fee is the entire scheme. The funds are almost never recovered, and the second loss stacks on top of the first.

How they find you

Recovery scammers work from the debris of earlier frauds. According to the FBI, they operate lookalike websites, impersonate real agencies, and cold-contact victims with claims engineered to sound official.

The bureau's 2025 warning, PSA I-081325-PSA (issued August 13, 2025), documents more elaborate staging: WhatsApp group chats populated by fake "attorneys" and "bank processors," and claims that a victim's name appears on a "government-affiliated list of scam victims." Scammers impersonate both US and foreign regulators, and have invented an official-sounding body — the "International Financial Trading Commission," or INTFTC — that does not exist.

The earlier advisory, PSA I-062424-PSA (June 24, 2024), put a number on the damage: between February 2023 and February 2024, crypto-scam victims who were then exploited by fictitious law firms reported losses of more than $9.9 million, per the FBI.

The money always flows one way

The tell is the payment. The FBI says recovery scammers demand cryptocurrency, prepaid gift cards, or "bank fees," and often tack on "back taxes." They ask for personal and banking information for "verification," then steer victims to fraudulent banking sites.

The scale is now substantial. In its 2025 Annual Report, the IC3 classifies recovery scams — fraudsters posing as law firms, government officials, or even the IC3 itself — as their own category, generating roughly $1.4 billion in losses across 10,516 complaints. That sits inside a broader $11.36 billion in crypto-related fraud the FBI logged for 2025. Seniors, the bureau says, are disproportionately targeted.

Warning signs

A recovery offer is almost certainly a scam if any of the following are true:

• Someone contacts you unsolicited claiming they can recover funds you already lost.
• You are asked to pay anything up front — a fee, "gas," "back taxes," or "bank charges" — before any money is returned.
• Payment is requested in cryptocurrency or prepaid gift cards.
• The contact claims to work with the FBI, CFPB, IC3, or a foreign regulator, or cites a "government list of scam victims."
• You are asked for banking details or personal information for "verification," or routed to a website to log in.

What real help looks like

Legitimate authorities do not operate this way. The FBI states plainly that law enforcement never charges a fee to investigate a crime. No legitimate fund-tracing service asks a victim to pay gas fees or taxes up front to release recovered money.

If you have been defrauded, file a report with the IC3 directly at ic3.gov — the official government complaint site, not a phone number or link handed to you by someone who contacted you first. Do not send more money, and do not share banking credentials with anyone promising a refund.

To date the strongest official response has been the warning itself, not prosecution: the perpetrators remain at large, and the IC3 advisories are the clearest signal victims are likely to get. The recovery scam survives on one bet — that a person desperate to undo a loss will risk a second. The safest move, every time, is to treat the rescue as the next trap.

— Sources: [IC3 PSA I-081325-PSA](https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2025/PSA250813) · [IC3 PSA I-062424-PSA](https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2024/PSA240624) · [2025 IC3 Annual Report](https://www.ic3.gov/AnnualReport/Reports/2025_IC3Report.pdf)