Safe or scam? Recovery Scams

Unfortunately if you’ve fallen victim to a scam such as a crypto or investment scam you become a target for recovery scams.

It may be the original scammers pretending to be a recovery company in order to steal more funds from you, or they have sold your information on to other groups of scammers. 

These scams typically begin as a cold call, email or message from fraudsters claiming to have located lost funds and want to help return them to you. It may have been a very small initial investment that you’ve previously made which they claim to have located large profits from. 

They often pose as professional investigators, recovery firms and cryptocurrency exchanges. The fraudsters will often ask for an upfront fee and these can be for a number of reasons including, but not limited to:

• Providing liquidity

• Tax

• Withdrawal fees

• Reversal fees 

• Commission 

These scams are usually highly professional and they often know a lot of information about you and previous investments. They often pretend to be legitimate organisations (such as Blockchain or the Financial Conduct Authority) and the fraudsters are sometimes able to provide ‘proof’ of the funds in the form of signed documents and fake tokens. 

Unfortunately these are fake and making payment will only result in further financial loss. 

So, how do you check if it is SAFE or a SCAM?

Here is a summary of the red flags to look out for if you are contact by someone suggesting they can recover your lost money: 

🚩 You need to pay an upfront fee

🚩 They’ve contacted you out of the blue and know information about you or a previous investment you’ve made 

🚩They’re asking you to download remote software (e.g Anydesk or Teamviewer) 

🚩The profit’s that they’ve ‘located’ are much higher than any initial investments you’ve previously made 

🚩You’re being asked to make payment via cryptocurrency 

🚩You’re being told to lie to the bank about the purpose of the payments 

Checks you can do if you are unsure if the company you are dealing with is genuine: 

• Check the FCA Register to see if they’re regulated - https://register.fca.org.uk/s/ as claims management service are a regulated activity

• Check the FCA Warning List of Unauthorised Firms - https://www.fca.org.uk/consumers/warning-list-unauthorised-firms 

• If they’re claiming to be solicitor, check the Solictor’s Register - https://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/register/ 

• Check that person is contacting you from the company they claim to work for. Scammers often pretend to be legitimate companies, for example The Financial Conduct Authority, Blockchain and Binance. Most of these companies will not cold contact you but if in doubt call or email the company directly.

• Scammers also pretend to be legitimate recovery firms (such as Refundee) - a legitimate recovery contant will never contact you out of the blue. To be sure that you’re speaking to the genuine company, check that the contact details on the FCA website match the phone number/ email address you’re communicating with them on. 

• Check reviews on Trustpilot and Google (Be wary as fraudsters often use fake reviews) 

If you are ever unsure whether the company who is claiming they can get a refund for you is genuine, call the number on the back of your bank card and speak to your bank’s fraud team.

If you have lost money to this type of scam, Refundee can help you get your money back from your bank and you can fill in our fraud refund claim form for a free consultation. Our fee is 15% plus VAT on anything that we get back, and we don't charge anything if we are not successful. For larger cases, the fee is subject to a maximum of £10k plus VAT per case.   

Remember, you don’t need to use a company like Refundee - you could work your case yourself for free! If you’d like to get a refund yourself. You can do this by following the ‘Claim Yourself’ guide here: https://www.refundee.com/claim-yourself.