Crypto recovery scams

Why this category exists

Crypto fraud produced $11.4 billion in reported US losses across 181,565 complaints in 2025, according to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center. Behind those numbers is a very large population of people who have lost money, know they have lost it, and would do almost anything to get it back.

That population is a market. Victim lists circulate — sold between criminal groups, or simply retained by the group that ran the original fraud. A person who fell for one scheme has demonstrated both that they hold crypto and that they can be persuaded, which makes them considerably more valuable than a cold contact.

Recovery fraud exploits three things at once: desperation, the technical opacity of blockchain to most people, and the entirely reasonable assumption that if something was stolen there must be some way to get it back.

How the approach works

A particularly harmful variant impersonates government: someone claiming to be from the FBI, the FTC or a state attorney general, saying recovered funds are being distributed and a processing fee is required to release yours. No government agency operates this way, and no legitimate restitution process asks a victim for money.

Red flags

The last item in the left column deserves emphasis. A "recovery service" asking for your recovery phrase or exchange credentials is not trying to help you recover anything — it is trying to access whatever you have left. Never share those with anyone, for any reason.

When recovery is genuinely possible

It is not never. It is rare, and it happens through a small number of specific mechanisms — none of which begins with an unsolicited phone call.

Speed at the platform. If funds went to an exchange or through a kiosk operator and have not yet been moved on, the platform can sometimes freeze them. This works in hours, not days, which is why our advice everywhere is to report immediately. Occasionally a kiosk operator has intervened on funds not yet swept from a hot wallet.

Law enforcement action. The FBI and other agencies have seized substantial sums of stolen crypto and, in some cases, returned funds to victims. This is slow — often years — and depends on the case being part of a larger investigation. It is also the single strongest reason to report even when recovery seems hopeless: your complaint may be the data point that connects a case.

Civil action. Where the perpetrator can be identified and is within reach of a court, civil recovery is possible. This requires a real attorney, real costs and an identifiable defendant with assets, which excludes most cases.

Platform error or insurance. If a loss resulted from a platform's own failure rather than your action, the platform may make you whole. Different from theft, but worth pursuing.

Legitimate technical recovery — a narrow case

One category is real and worth distinguishing, because conflating it with recovery fraud does people a disservice.

Specialist firms exist that recover access to your own wallet in specific technical situations: a recovery phrase where you know most of the words but not all, a forgotten passphrase on an encrypted wallet file, a corrupted wallet backup, or an old wallet format that modern software cannot read.

This is a genuine engineering problem with genuine solutions. The firms that do it well share several characteristics: you find them rather than the reverse, they conduct a technical consultation before quoting, they are honest that many cases are impossible, they typically work on contingency, and they never ask you to send them your assets or your full recovery phrase.

Note the crucial distinction. This is recovering access to a wallet you still control the hardware or file for. It is not recovering funds that were stolen and moved to someone else's address. Those are completely different problems, and only the first is technically solvable.

If your phrase is genuinely gone with no partial knowledge, nobody can help. That is the design. Our wallet guide covers the backup practices that prevent this.

What to actually do after a loss

Keep everything: transaction IDs, wallet addresses, receipts, the phone number that called, messages, screenshots of any platform involved, and a written timeline while it is fresh. Those details are what turn a complaint into a case.

And then, difficult as it is: stop paying anyone. Every additional dollar sent to a "recovery" service is a second loss on top of the first, and the pattern of escalating fees is designed to run until you have nothing left.

The Nevada position

Two Nevada-specific points matter.

There is no statutory refund right. Several other states enacted laws in 2024 and 2025 requiring crypto kiosk operators to refund fraud victims who report within a defined window. Nevada licenses operators as money transmitters under NRS Chapter 671 and has not passed kiosk-specific consumer protection legislation. Our kiosk regulation page tracks the position.

Licensed operators do have a regulator. The Financial Institutions Division supervises money transmitters in this state and has pursued unlicensed crypto operators previously. If an operator behaved improperly — as opposed to a third party defrauding you through it — the FID is the right escalation.

Nevada's exposure is structural: dense kiosk corridors in cash-heavy neighbourhoods, large retirement communities, and a transient population. Adults over 60 reported roughly $257 million in US crypto-kiosk fraud losses during 2025, the largest share of any age group.

Living with it

A short section that does not fit neatly anywhere else but that we think belongs here.

The shame around this is enormous and it is the single biggest factor keeping the numbers understated. People do not report because they feel foolish, and they feel foolish because the fraud was designed by professionals to make intelligent people act against their own judgement.

The schemes that work best are not crude. They involve months of relationship building, technical infrastructure that costs real money to run, scripts refined across thousands of attempts, and psychological pressure applied by people who do this full time. Falling for one is not a character flaw.

Reporting matters even when recovery is unlikely. The FBI's data exists because people file, and seizure actions that have returned funds to victims began with complaints that seemed pointless at the time. Telling family members matters too — it is how the next person in your household learns to recognise it.

Recovery questions