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Recovery scam

Published · updated · 6 min read

Checked by The Proofmark editorial team against our methodology before publishing

Recovery scam

Your phone rings. The man on the line knows which platform you paid. He knows roughly how much. He says he can get it back.

Then he asks you for a fee.

That is a recovery scam. It is the second scam, and it goes to the people the first one already hit.

The UK watchdog, the FCA, puts it in one line. Fraudsters go to people who have lost money and offer to get it back "for an upfront fee."

It works for one reason. The first loss was a choice you made. The second one is hope.

How does he know so much?

The call often comes soon after a platform goes quiet. That is not luck. It is a list.

Australia's anti-scam centre says it plainly. Criminals "keep and sell information about individuals they have exploited."

So your name is on a list. The people who took your money kept it, or sold it on. The FCA says the same thing.

That is why he knows the platform. It is not proof he is real. It is proof of where he got your number.

There is never just one fee

There is a first fee. Then there is a reason the first one was not enough.

Each payment is explained as the last one. Recovered at each stage: nothing. A processing fee to open your case A withholding tax before release A legal retainer for the court filing One final payment the money is waiting There is no last payment. The ladder ends when you stop climbing it.

Reconstruction · not a screenshot

The FCA describes the pattern. Recovery rooms "insist on being paid a fee or transaction charge before carrying out any services."

The fee always gets a respectable name. A tax. A lawyer. Admin costs. And it can end up larger than the sum you lost.

Who they say they are

Almost nobody says "I run a recovery firm." They borrow a name you already trust.

A watchdog. In July 2023 Australia's ASIC warned about a site called payback-recovery.com. It gave people fake papers with the ASIC logo on them. It claimed to win back 95% of what victims had lost.

The police. On 20 July 2026 the FBI warned that criminals were posing as its own staff. They called people who had reported a fraud. They said the money had been found. The FBI called it what it is — a trick to "revictimize" people who had already paid once.

Two months later the FBI put a number on that kind of fraud. Between January 2025 and July 2026 it logged about 61,000 reports of people posing as police or officials. The losses came to more than $1.6bn.

A lawyer. A crypto expert. A charity. Australia's consumer watchdog listed the disguises: "government agencies, lawyers, or even charities."

The websites look real. The FCA says recovery rooms run "professional-looking" sites, claim a London office that does not exist, and write to you from a free email account.

One rule, and you need no expertise to use it

You do not have to work out whether the caller is real. You only need to know one thing.

Nobody who can truly get your money back asks you to pay first.

Your bank does not charge you to try. A watchdog does not charge you to look at a complaint. The ombudsman is free. The police do not send a victim a bill.

The FCA says it about itself, in writing. It "would never propose that consumers should make payments to recover lost funds."

So the fee is not a detail to argue about. The fee is the scam. The case number, the papers, the website showing your money waiting — all of it is built around that one request.

The question that ends the call

Say this out loud:

"How did you get my details?"

There is no good answer to it. A real official can tell you which report and which case. He will also be happy for you to hang up and ring back on a number you found yourself.

A recovery room cannot survive that question. The true answer is that your name was on a list.

Then do what the FCA says. If you are asked for a fee or for your bank details, "end all contact immediately."

Two more things they ask for. Neither is a fee, and both are worse.

They ask to take over your computer or phone "to help". And they ask you to open a new crypto wallet "to receive the funds". Say no to both.

What can really be done

We would rather tell you the truth than leave a crook as the only person offering you hope.

How you paid decides most of it. A card payment can often be reversed. A bank transfer can sometimes be recalled. Crypto rarely comes back.

How long ago decides the rest. These windows are counted in days.

The real routes are free. Your bank's fraud team. Your card company. Your national fraud line. The ombudsman, if a licensed firm was involved. The watchdog itself.

And sometimes the answer is no. Money that went through an unlicensed platform and then through crypto is often gone. A recovery room is the only party who will promise you otherwise. That promise is the thing they are selling.

When this tends to happen

It starts when a platform goes quiet.

We wrote up XBO Invest — four watchdogs in three countries, and then all four of its websites simply stopped existing. On that day, everyone who had paid in became a fresh list.

The same follows every unlicensed platform that folds, and every clone firm warning.

If someone is calling you about money you lost, that call is the warning sign. Send it to us before you answer it — the message, the name, the number, the website.

We will tell you what we can see. It is free. We will never ask you for a fee to get your money back. And if we cannot help, we will say so — which is the one thing a recovery room will never do.

Sources

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