If you have lost your Ethereum in a scam, you are not alone.
However, you can be one of the few who successfully recover their stolen ETH from scammers. But it won’t happen on its own. To get your stolen ETH back from scammers, you have to take full responsibility and be ready to take action.
Billions of dollars are unfortunately lost to scams every year. Cryptocurrency scams are particularly challenging to recover from due to their decentralized nature.
Scammers understand that cryptocurrency is pseudonymous, so they try to convince innocent investors to send money in crypto. This way, they can hide behind a blockchain address.
But, cryptocurrency is still traceable, and you can recover scammed crypto.
In many cases, you can take legal action, report the incident to the FBI or the police, and sometimes, exchanges like Coinbase and Binance can provide assistance.
However, they do not guarantee your recovery.
The only guaranteed method to recover your stolen Ethereum is to reach out to a specialized Ethereum recovery expert and reverse your transaction. Act quickly before it’s too late.
You can reach out a Eth recovery expert here:
recover@onlineinvestmentscams.com
Some common ETH scams:
Scammers these days are getting more creative with their methods to take money away from people. Although it’s impossible to stop them, we can make them less effective by being aware of the techniques they use. They follow the same pattern, so once you see one, a red flag should go off in your head.
- Never trust anyone
- No one is just going to give you free or discounted ETH
- Your private keys and personal information is yours and no one else’s
Giveaway scam
We all like giveaways, right? Scammers love this about us, and they exploit that desire. The general premise is that if you send them Ethereum to a wallet address they provide, they’ll double it and send it back. It’s also known as the 2-for-1 scam.
They add time limits on top of this. So now people think that they have no time to decide. Through this strategy, scammers take advantage of poor decision-making
Social media hacking
A big example of this happened in July 2020, when multiple Twitter accounts were hacked.
These weren’t just any accounts either; they belonged to celebrities and organizations. Among the tweets made from the hacked accounts was a Bitcoin giveaway. The tweets didn’t stay up for too long after they were posted, and people quickly deleted them.
However, despite how fast people noticed and removed it, the hacker still managed to get away with 11 bitcoins, which is about $500,000 as of September 2021.
The recent example is of Vitalik Buterin’s X account hack. Where scammers accessed his X account and tweeted a scam website.
As a result, people lost over $691,000.
As the posts come from legitimate accounts, so you can’t guess if it’s late. The scammer will also put some FOMO so that they could do everything quickly.
For instance, they can I am giving 10 Eth quickly back to first 100 investors. Oops. You can’t miss this chance.
Celebrity giveaways
If you haven’t seen this before, then you’re lucky. Scammers will take a video or stream recording of a celebrity giving an interview or holding a conference talk and post it on YouTube with a title that makes it look like everything is being done live. During this fake livestream, they’ll say that the celebrity is endorsing some kind of cryptocurrency and that if you send money to a so-and-so address, then they’ll send more back to you.
Usually Vitalik Buterin’s videos are used, but sometimes other big names are thrown in there too, like Elon Musk or Charles Hoskinson. Including someone well known in the scam gives it an air of legitimacy (even though we all know that’s not true).
It’s important to remember, no matter what anyone says online, – never send money to someone if you don’t know what’s really going on.
Support scams
Cryptocurrency is a young and widely misunderstood technology. This has allowed various scams to flourish, like the support scam, where scammers pose as wallets, exchanges, or blockchain help desk personnel.
Discussions about Ethereum mainly happen on Discord. The environment is perfect for supporting scammers. They can search public channels and find people asking questions about crypto; they’ll then send them private messages offering support. Once they establish trust, they’ll trick you into giving away your crypto keys or just have you straight up send them your funds.
If you ever fall victim to one of these, take the following steps:
- Try to recover your stolen assets
- Report the scam to authorities
- Seek guidance from recovery experts
Trying to get stolen ethereum or any other digital currency back is going to be tough, but not impossible. You can keep an eye on the blockchain, though, which will let you track where all your ethereum and crypto assets go. So how do you get your money back?
Losing all your cryptocurrency is rough, but not the end of the world. In some cases, you can even get it back. If you’ve lost access or think you’ve been scammed, here are a few steps that might help.
Fake crypto wallets scams
The other popular way to scam people is using phony crypto wallets. Where scammers design fake crypto wallets that look like real ones to get access to private keys and see phrases of holders.
People have lost billions of dollars in this scam.
Contact the exchange or wallet provider
If your funds are stored on an exchange or a wallet, then it’s best to email them first. Explain the situation and see if they can help you recover it. The account, or the money.
Sometimes, scammers use the same wallet to save their crypto. So those coins could easily be frozen.
For instance, once Binance lost a few millions in a scam. The scammer stored most of their money on Binance. I think they were trying to sell it. But as team noticed it’s the same money, they could easily freeze it.
Sometimes, they have contacts with cryptocurrency owners. If it’s a burn and mint coin, they can freeze the coins and introduce new coins for the similar amount.
Report the incident
Scammers and hackers should never be left alone. Reach out to local law enforcement or cybercrime divisions in your country. They can figure out who did this and track them down so that others don’t make the same mistake.
In most cases, local authorities fall short. They don’t have the resources or skills to investigate criminals that go over country borders or recover cryptocurrency from private wallets.
The best way to investigate still lies with the FBI and the Department of Justice’s shared task forces.
But the issue lies in convincing them to take on a crypto case.
The number of people getting scammed has gone up, so this means there’s more referrals coming in. This leads to a long waiting list, and it’s likely that federal authorities can’t handle all of it.
Threshold loss amounts for investigation have increased. Meaning if you lost $500, then too bad. You may not be prioritized until your loss amount goes into the millions. A case is more likely to be taken if they know the person filing it and have done most of the work.
Check the blockchain
This step takes a little extra if you have an address for your wallet. A blockchain explorer can track any transactions associated with it. Doing this helps identify where your funds went and who took them.
If a crypto address is associated with a public transaction, then people will be able to track it through exchanges and wallets, possibly pointing to who did this.
Authorities could also use subpoena power if necessary. Thieves use effective measures like “mixers,” which scatter traceability, and cold wallets for offline storage, which complicate the process. While tracking is generally legal when done by law enforcement, concerns over privacy do come up sometimes.
Exchanges are improving their security measures even more. In some situations, criminals have been known to steal coins and let them sit in an account for a long time.
Hire a professional recovery service
Hiring an agency like OIS Professional Recovery Service can be a good choice if you are planning to retrieve Ethereum or perhaps any other crypto. They are specialists in crypto recovery and will be able to assist you.
It’s difficult to find trust in companies when it comes to retrieving something so important, but these guys are good at what they do. The team at OIS has a lot of experience and knows the ins and outs of cryptocurrency.
They’ll use this knowledge to get your money back quickly.
Contact OIS’s eth recovery team here:
recover@onlineinvestmentscams.com
The first step they take is evaluation. They have to find where your crypto is before anything else can be done. After that, they’ll figure out how it even got stolen or lost in the first place, so you don’t make the same mistake again. Finally, they’ll find a way to bring back your funds.
However, don’t confuse them with hackers who break laws just as easily as they break into systems. Reputable firms such as OIS follow every law out there. Every case is documented and extensively evidenced to show who owns what. They believe that transparency between them and their clients is key to working together safely after an occurrence.