There is a second industry built on top of fraud: one that targets people who have already lost money. It is usually called recovery fraud, and it works because it arrives at exactly the moment victims are desperate for good news.
We want to be direct about something uncomfortable. ChargeBack operates in the fund-recovery support space, and that space contains bad actors — some of them outright criminal, some merely willing to sell false hope. This article is written to protect you from all of them, including anyone in our own industry who behaves in the ways described below. If anything here describes an interaction you are having with us, walk away and report it.
How recovery fraud works
After a scam, your contact details often end up on lists that fraudsters trade among themselves — sometimes politely called "sucker lists". In many cases the people running the recovery scam are connected to the original fraud, which is why they can describe your case with unsettling accuracy: the platform name, the amounts, the dates.
The approach is warm and plausible. Someone claiming to be an investigator, a law firm, a regulator's agent, or a specialist recovery company says your funds have been located — frozen at an exchange, held by a court, sitting in a suspense account. There is only one obstacle: a fee. A tax clearance, a legal filing, an anti-money-laundering release charge. Each payment leads to another obstacle, and the "recovered" money never arrives, because it was never found.
The red flags
No single sign is absolute proof, but each of these should sharply raise your suspicion, and several together should end the conversation.
- They contacted you first. Legitimate organisations do not cold-call, email, or message fraud victims with offers of help. If they found you, ask yourself how — the honest answers are all alarming.
- "We have found your money." Nobody can locate your funds before examining your case, and in most fraud cases nobody can promise the funds are recoverable at all. Certainty this early is a script, not a finding.
- Upfront fees framed as taxes, legal costs, or release charges. This is the core of the scam. No genuine tax, court, or bank process requires you to pay a stranger before your own money is returned to you.
- Payment in cryptocurrency, gift cards, or wire transfer only. These methods are demanded because they are hard to trace and hard to dispute. A professional firm can accept ordinary, disputable payment methods.
- Guaranteed recovery. No honest service can guarantee any outcome, because outcomes depend on banks, exchanges, police, and courts. A guarantee is not confidence; it is bait.
- Impersonation of law firms, regulators, or agencies. Scammers borrow the names of real lawyers, real regulators, even real police units, with cloned websites and forged letterheads. Verify independently: find the organisation's official contact details yourself and call them — never use the phone number or link the person gave you.
- Pressure and deadlines. "The freeze expires Friday" exists to stop you thinking and checking. Genuine processes survive a few days of due diligence.
- Requests for credentials or remote access. Anyone who asks for your passwords, seed phrase, private keys, one-time codes, or remote control of your device is attempting to rob you, whatever their story.
How legitimate services behave
The contrast is not subtle. A legitimate case-assessment or dispute-support service:
- Waits for you to approach it, and accepts a "no" without pressure.
- Defines its scope in writing — assessment, documentation, report preparation, complaint support — and is explicit about what it cannot do. No private company can reverse blockchain transactions, freeze accounts, issue legal orders, or act with the authority of a bank, regulator, or police force.
- Makes no promises about outcomes, and puts that in writing too.
- Has a verifiable identity: a real company registration you can look up yourself, named people, a physical address, and a consistent history.
- Is transparent about fees before you commit, charges for defined work rather than for "releasing" funds, and accepts ordinary payment methods.
- Never asks for passwords, seed phrases, private keys, one-time codes, or full card numbers. ChargeBack never requests these, and neither does any honest organisation.
- Encourages you to use the free official channels — your bank, the police, your national regulator — rather than positioning itself as a replacement for them.
These are also the standards we hold ourselves to, and you should hold us to them. If any service, including ours, will not put its scope, fees, and limitations in writing, do not proceed.
If you have already paid a recovery scammer
Treat it as a new fraud in its own right. Stop all further payments, contact your bank or card issuer immediately to ask about stopping or disputing the payments, and report the incident to the police or your national fraud-reporting service with the details of both the original scam and the recovery approach. Then expect further contact — victims who pay once are contacted again, sometimes by "investigators" offering to recover the recovery fee. It is the same wheel turning.
There is no shame in having been caught twice. These operations are professional, patient, and armed with real details about your case. What protects you from the third attempt is the rule that protects you from all of them: no legitimate organisation contacts you out of the blue about found money, and none asks you to pay before returning what is yours.
This article is educational information, not legal or financial advice. For decisions about your specific situation, contact your bank, the police, your national regulator, or an independent lawyer.