Topic: A known enemy can easily be defeated (Read 317 times)

Those scammers already have lots of experience dealing with any methods they used to deceive newbies and they know how to catch the interest of those people that's why even if we know the methods used is obvious scam there are still lots of newbies fall since they know that their methods is interesting and newbies will pay attention on it.

This is the reason why a newbie should do a lot of research since its very hard for them to determine which is scam and which is not at first that's why they need to be knowledgeable on the attempts or methods use by the scammer so they can easily eliminate the thoughts to entertain it and go away on those potential schemes that can possibly make them lose their money.

Scammers are so smart that's why we need to me more smarter than them and we could do that if we are always paying attention on the discussion about scam and use the experience of other people so that those same events will not happen to them.

The core question of this incident is, how did the person behind the phone know that your sister had lost her coins? This trick is commonly used by fraudsters to trick potential victims, sending a wallet address to a fraudster is a wrong action, they can trace all transactions that have been carried out and in the worst case scenario they can take all the assets stored in the wallet.

Ignoring the call or trying to take action as you suggest is a form of prevention from the fraudulent tricks they use. Many people have become victims of fraud in different ways in the crypto world, hopefully your sister is not one of them.

Actually without being told is obviously a scammer perhaps that's another way for them to know how much money someone has on there wallet, is actually annoying that some individuals will just be there striving for people they will scam of there money they have laboured so hard to get, the thing is that people should just be very careful with the kind of information they share with anybody or via online because scammers are just there waiting for an opportunity to strike, that's why I always advise people to be very careful especially with anything that has to do with connecting of wallet because many people has falling a victim of that.

However in terms of your question I don't think he will be able to hack your brothers account through his wallet address because even if he gave him his real wallet so long as he did not attach his private keys to it the scammer can only see what your brother has inside but can never have access to it, actually I just feel that the scammer wanted to see if there is money inside before he can start asking for more other details.

Not sometimes, scammers are usually smarter than us, especially if we are newbies in the industry and don't have much experience and knowledge about these things. Scammers know the vulnerabilities of newbie users in any industry and they trap them using those vulnerabilities because it increases the chances of them getting a higher success rate in what they do because newbies often don't understand and comprehend things quickly.

This is one of the reasons why it is important for everyone to stay vigilant and understand that they aren't supposed to entertain anything coming from an unknown source over the internet because almost 99% of these things are scams and they are only here to get your money and run away.

Suppose we go to war and we are soldiers of the same camp and our knowledge of those against whom we have to fight and their position surely means that we are likely to win that war. If we know their position we can attack them from the safest side and if we know about them we will definitely know about their weakness and we can attack according to their weakness. But if two or three soldiers from the camp we are in are from the enemy's side, then we will lose the battle because those two to three soldiers will tell all our plans to the enemy. So it goes without saying that knowing about the enemy is easy to defeat.

Tracking his transactions is the first step they will do so as to know his worth and probably check the current balance in his wallet; if that is achieved and the feel they can get something from him, they will start playing their games as scammers in which if your brother is well knowledgeable, he can escape from them. They will probably ask of his private key with time by saying they will use the key to access his wallet in order to track and recover his lost coin.
If you never lose any coin before by sending to the wrong address, no need to bother, and if you know that Bitcoin transaction is not reversible, then you are also free from scammers.

You don't have to believe the scammer because it seems that he also wants the victims to fall into his trap. He contacted your cousin to get his missing coin back, that sounds like a trap, you guys don't have to believe him because who knows if he is responsible for the stolen coin, and he wants to check the wallet if he has another coin that he may steal. However, it is impossible to recover the lost coin, maybe this is another method to fall into their trap. We need to be very careful with those who are close to us, you and your brother want to believe a stranger whom he received an unknown call, if your brother continues to contact the person, he should block him immediately for his safety. He didn't have to submit his wallet because the person was a scammer with no means to recover the stolen coin.

First of all, how did that unknown caller that your brother had a lost coin, and what are the background of your brother and how he lost his coin? personally, I don't entertain any kind of information that someone might help you to get free money or even give your money back because most of the time its their strategy to get your attention to get manipulated with your emotions and urge to have your money back. If you just give your address to them and track down the transactions that's all they can do but seeing who is the owner is not possible that's the essence of the blockchain to make it more secure.

If you have hints that you are talking with a scammer, then the best thing to do is to get rid of him instantly. Don’t act as if you can take advantage of him instead by biting his own offer, scammers can sometimes be smarter than us and may left us falling into their traps instead. Besides, lost coins are someone’s ownership already and not yours anymore, so just forget it and move on. And don’t let scammers have in contact with you, you’ll never know what’s running in their heads and they can easily locate you if you fall on their traps.

Op your topic and the content is having some differences, there is no coherent in them. You said "A known enemy can easily be defeated* and I thinking that one if your close relatives has done you something that you detect the person very fast but the content is not having the meaning of the topic. And if  someone called your brother to send him his bitcoin address to receive his lost coin and he knew well that has not lost anything then definitely it is a scam call and if he has lost it and the person called him then he has to think about to whom he has discussed such.

Using public address and private address is different so if someone asks you your public address, you don't have to worry much, and as you said you can give the person an address your have not used which is empty. And to see what the person would do and ask again.

Is it really necessary? Why waste your time doing all this? You know the person is a scammer, so I see no reason why you should even communicate with him. If I am your brother, I will just ignore the person because I know it’s totally a waste of time, and the person will make me keep on remembering my past. I do say that anyone claiming to help you recover your coin is just trying to scam you, they want to increase your loss, so stay away from them. It’s better you just accept your loss and move on rather than trying to recover the coin.

I don’t know what the scammer will be doing with the wallet address, but I am sure after asking for the wallet address, the scammer will also request the wallet private key, and if your brother can also provide that, then anything remaining in the wallet will be moved.

A nice idea you got here too. You don’t need to engage with them furthermore when you know it’s impossible to get your coins back, so it is better to ignore them so that it doesn’t lead to something else we can’t see it coming since this is a new trick so as not to fall victim of circumstance.
[/quote]

If we are Telegram users, we will receive a lot of messages containing invitations to buy coins, whether they are new or we have never heard of at all. once we serve, 10 others will enter with the same pattern with different discussions.

Personally, if I find a model like that, I block it and delete it, just add a notification. Yes. We have to be careful and not be easily taken in by their persuasions.

What I think they’ll do is that, they’ll go through the account and check his worth then after that, maybe can send some dust coins into it that will prompt it to click on some phishing links to get access to his account and cater away with all the money in the wallet. You really did well by sending another wallet address that has no money in it, so they can’t do anything to the account when they plan to go on dust account. Asides this, I don’t think there’s any other way to have access to his wallet and steal from it.


A nice idea you got here too. You don’t need to engage with them furthermore when you know it’s impossible to get your coins back, so it is better to ignore them so that it doesn’t lead to something else we can’t see it coming since this is a new trick so as not to fall victim of circumstance.

Those that are looking to recover their assets are often desperate, they most times won't heed to reasoning, and this is the vulnerable spot that scammers capitalize on to scam their victims. It is good that the OP brother confided in him for advice, if he had not, he could have sent them a wallet address that probably contains substantial amount of coins. The lesson for me in the story is not to make hasty decisions when we want to recover something that is lost, so that you don't lose more in the process of trying to recover the lost asset.

How did he lose his coins? If he lost his wallet, all he needed to do was to download the appropriate wallet application and recover his coins using his  seed phrase. But, if the coins were actually stolen by scammers, do not be deceived, such a transaction remains irreversible unless the scammer sends it back (which is rare).

Your brother should beware of friendly strangers who try to establish relationships just to get to their prospective victims. I sense a kind of romance scam coming up. If he's asking for a wallet address now which is not harmful, he might be asking for more like some coins to activate the recovery process, some money or even your seed phrase. Your brother  has already made a mistake once that led to the loss of his coins, he should not make same mistake twice.

Many hackers are now using so many methods to steal from their victims. We need to be wise and ready to safeguard our crypto portfolio. People are making money on a regular basis due to ignorant and not understanding they pattern they that be used to steal their coins. What does a scammer to hacker has to do with someone's wallet address? They would have to go through series if transactions and try to know here the transactions were coming from and where they are going.
It is very important for us to get to know their tricks so we don't later fall for it.

There's no point for your younger brother to submit an empty wallet because it is purely a scam, a lost coin that he cannot remember the process to access the wallet again, then the coin is lost almost forever.
Scammers will always tell you stories just to keep your hope alive, but the good thing is that you already know their trick.
However I won't say your a fool, maybe your just playing along with the scammer to make them think or feel comfortable just so that you can  apply delay tactics and frustrate them at the end of the day, but then i believe you should tell your brother to stop communicating with the scammer, possibly block him, because it might get to a point the scammer might ask for some else from your brother and he may not let you know about it, so it's better they stop communicating.

Sharing our wallet address (public key) wouldn't possibly make us lose our bitcoin unless your brother has been a spy by those scammers who called him. Maybe they just want to create a means that would make your brother interact with their philsing link so they could get access to your brother's wallet. It is good that you asked your brother to submit a random wallet address to avoid any possible scam that would make him lose his bitcoin. We shouldn't trust anyone online that we don't know asking us to send our wallet address for a giveaway we didn't apply for. If there is such a thing, just know that it's a scam.

In this case, it's just the beginning, providing wallet address will help nothing.
Later the scammer will probably do something like your friend need to login on X platform or create an account for them to get his lost coins back and so many more reasons.
First, did your friend just lost his coins? Where the hell the scammer get his number, did he have a transaction from hacked exchanges? I would be wary using that number anymore, because some reason this mobile number will be included on scammers network, they can give or sell it to another scammers or company that needs crypto related people.

Yes, instead of biting the offer of the suspected scammer, just ignore the cold caller completely to get rid of it so you won’t also put your future transactions in danger even if you give him the empty wallet address. You should not just think about what’s going to happen at the present, but be mindful for the future as well. Keeping in contact with the scammer might help him trace your location and with that, if he can’t scam you online, he’ll do it offline which is more scary to think.

Did your brother lose coins in the past, or did the scammers just randomly call him about lost coins? I ask you this because whenever newbies lose coins, they are usually too devastated and they post about it in different platforms and also post their contact details for people who can help to reach them, not knowing they are setting themselves up for a second scam.

To add to what other users have already said about the possibility of a second scam, the scammers can also carry out a dust attack on your brother, or an address poisoning scam, were the scammer sends your bro a very small amount of coins with an address very similar to his, and if your bro is someone who copies addresses from transaction history, he can easily fall for it and be scammed again.

One thing I get to wonder about stuff like these when they come up is,

How random can this really be? Was his coin ever lost and even so, how did you get to know and what business is it of yours fo poke nose in my business and lost coin. It doesn’t really add up but, given the fact that I don’t know this person and I don’t know what his got on me to want my public address, I just wouldn’t key in by giving the caller anything related to an address of mine.

What you did isn’t exactly bad, it’s just another way of telling them, they are looking in the wrong hole and when they realize that, wasting all efforts, they would know better to take your details off their log.

Enemies has time limit though it's tough to fight them without courage what many many loss while fights enemies is because of lacking courage but a full courageous person always have victory at the end because enemies can't overwhelmed you instead you do.

Many things is required in the crypto space is all about smartness though the may be smart but you as the real man need be smarter than the enemies you need learn ahead of the strategy they will deploy to treck you before it comes your way and and block them before occurrence.

The saying of those that waiting to the end shall laugh is always a song of any one who surmond courage to fight against enemies because untill you sit up to fight the enemies keeps gaining more strength over you.

Scam is a long process and the first thing they do to a victim is to initiate a trust and that is too blind you from seeing any red flag especially if you are naive and ignorant about blockchain and how transaction works on the network.

Possible scenario, they will asked for your wallet address just to prove they are starting to work only to come back later and ask for payment to buy some software packages to use to help you recover your money. If you send them, that's the beginning of your nemesis because they will request another one from you continuesly until you come to your senses.


I have always seen hundreds of same complaints of the same scams in chain abuse, they complain everyday of the scam and this is to tell you that people just want to invest into crypto but has zero understanding of the safety about their coins and this how they lose money all the time. Ignorance is a big threat to security and that's why too simple scams are paramount everywhere.

It can be a new trick of cheating, cheaters change their tricks all the time. I don't understand how to get back the coins which are missing from our wallet. If there is such an expert then he can try another way but why would he want personal information of the wallet to get back those coins. We must be careful about this because if we do not understand the deception of the deceivers, we will easily be deceived. You should try as much as you can, before taking help from others, you must think about the previous and subsequent issues and then take help. Many may have already been duped by this new scam but those who have not yet been duped beware.

This may not actually be about you this time around, but you can agree that so many have been attacked through related means by many of these fraudsters, we just need to be careful and being observant as well as not to be greedy, also know that we cant have our transaction reversed once it was made, and no recovery service for such.


They cannot do anything only with the use of the wallet address, unless they have the private keys with them, another thing they may try to do is in attacking using a dust transaction method, whereby they will make a deposit later to that same address from a similar one and then wait for such perfect timing that will make them strike an attack the moment he made a mistake of sending through the transaction history wallet address to a wrong identical one from them.

I will rather he should ignore it, that could be a scam. And if he should summit any wallet I guess any transaction with that wallet could be traced. Because it is strange to get a call from a stranger asking you to send something valuable, because that could be another ridiculous way of stealing something most valuable from you, if you aren't being very careful.

I experience this kind of traditional fraud mode almost all the time by sending SMS or telephone calls. For those who do not understand what they are doing, they will be trapped and successfully deceived.
The conclusion that can be drawn is that things related to money have big risks. If Bitcoin is quite careful in public spaces and always ensures that the private key or seed is not stored on an internet-connected storage device.

There are other tricky paths that will lure one into losses but with taking precautions in every single steps, we should become safer on both sides. Your brother should be careful because there's a whole lot of ugly incident outside these walls when it comes to cryptocurrency. On a second thought, he might be a newbie and have no hefty information regarding the space, we just have to do what's right and the pending projects we know or don't have clue about, it's advisable to abstain from them because indulging in them will definitely make one record loss which is the basic thing we're preventing from happening. 

Sending small transactions that is fake to your wallet, would have sounded better like what a scammer would do, that's knowing that when you do see the alert you will be forced to open the wallet and check and may be asked to provide further details in the process thinking recovery of the lost coins is possible.
Well, good advice is free and our OP's brother sure too one well and even if it may prove too difficult and impossible to recover the lost coins, there's always the possibility of a miracle happening and at such, he should avoid such cold calls that have no honest details both in the future and present.

I will advice you tell your brother to disagree with the information that comes from them, because is obvious that those people happens to be a scam, if I May ask did your brother complained to them about his Lost?  How did they get to find out about the Lost? Before you should think of providing the wallet address this are things that need to be considered. is obvious that they intend to do something with it before they ask your brother to provide his wallet address I'm pretty sure they must have planned on what they're going to use it for, of which I don't know their intentions but you just need to tell your brother to be extremely careful.

There can be two things, they will surely look the wallet for transactions and balance as a first thing, and then they will probably try to persuade the wallet owner to send them money or maybe the seed phrase so that they can recover his money. An experienced person wouldn't fall for this because they would know it's a scam, but you can't think the same for a newbie who might have lost some money earlier in a scam or something.

These scammers are pretty good at making you feel like they are your friend and well-wishers so that you believe whatever they say, this is the reason why they become successful in scamming newbies most of the time. The good thing is that your brother didn't hide this and followed their instructions and informed you about it.

Your brother did well and you gave a good advice to him but if he gives his real wallet address so they can

- Look at his transactions to see how much money he has or find other people to scam and after they will find a way to grab that money.
- Try to get into his wallet and steal his money.
- Send fake transactions or small amounts of cryptocurrency to confuse him or even can give fake coins so while swapping that coins he may lost all the money.

By giving fake wallet address your brother is avoiding these problems. It is great that you are both being careful and warning others about these scams.

Do you know that when he send his address to them they would asked him random questions to know if he knew where he store his key phrase and even if he can't find they could use indirect ways to enter him of more details and as someone who is desperate to recover his coin he wouldn't know when he may reveal important information to them. Just as people keeps saying that they are holding some specific amount of bitcoin or other coin before you knew you began to get some random messages from people., this mostly happened when someone just create a post about having huge amount of money and he would be looking for a way to do some trade to increase his profits at this moments you would see people sending him pm to help him out without knowing that those people has no good intention for him.

Note any coin that is not in bitcoin address is likely to be scam, let say if they asked him of bsc address, ethereum and polygon address there are every possibility that they would likely send scam token and asked him to gas the address and swap coin, immediately he associate his private keys or seed phrase then automatically the address is being controlled by those people.

All people and platforms that offer wallet or lost currency recovery services are undoubtedly scams. Without a doubt, everyone knows that losing the private key, seed phrases, or currencies inside the wallet are matters that no one can help in returning if lost, but requesting a wallet address by any scammer does not pose any threat, and this is what the scammer wants to make you feel at ease and avoid suspicion from the beginning, and eventually trap you in one way or another.

This could be by convincing the victim to pay the full-service fee or the blockchain, or 50% before starting and 50% after completing the service, or by having the victim install software like TeamViewer so they can control the computer and steal sensitive and important data and hack it, or by sending one of the phishing domains to obtain the victim's seed phrases or private key. Then they might use this wallet to send an On-Chain Message to addresses the wallet owner has previously transacted with, which could belong to friends or acquaintances, and then scam them through the owner's wallet or steal the assets that are still present in other blockchains and NFTs that the wallet owner overlooked. There might be even more advanced scamming methods, so it is best to block incoming calls from such strangers and never comply with their requests.

They who? did they provide any details and where he sent the address was there any clue about the organization was it an official or a random source that asked about the wallet because its very concerning if it was not an official authorities call then you need to be careful because maybe someone from your circle or a person who knows about you directly targeting you.

If it was the official call then there might be some other investigations. Hmm anyway mostly ignore such calls if they are unofficial and if they are official contacts for legal assistance because a professional can guide you better in the legal affairs that which details to be provided and which shouldn't.

Getting the wallet address of a person can cause future scam attacks, which means if your brother had shared his wallet address, then that scammer might try different types of scam attacks on him, like address poisoning, or something else, they will try to fish him so that he would caught up in there honey words. And I don't think they would do any strong damage by only knowing your wallet address unless your brighter is a noob.

Means, it was there first demand, after that they would check it on explorer, and might ask you to download some files, or some software so that you could unlock it by yourself, or they might say, we have unlocked your wallet, and in order to get the seed phrase you have to pay us more etc. etc. They will try to scam, so its better to report them, I found a site, don't know the potential it have but dyor before reporting that call here https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

Scammers come up with all kinds of new ways to scam people. There are a lot of ways the scammers can use to steal your money, in this case;

• The scammers can request for personal data and use it for identity theft/fraud.
• They could ask for a fee for their service, and later ask for more fees until the victim is unable to send anymore.

OP, I don’t think this was a random call. You should ask your cousins some questions. Did you lose his coins and how did he lose them? It seems to me that it is the same scammers who stole his coins in the first place that are contacting him for bitcoin recovery service.

I believe that the scammers will want to do anything to gain a victim's trust, so them asking their victim to connect their wallet could be a first step to gain trust, after which they will unfold the second phase of their scam. So I think that it's either of two things, they'll end up asking for outrageous fees, until the victim will get the picture and move on, or they'll coax the victim to unintentionally provide them with sensitive information to hack their wallet. When Bitcoin is sent to a wrong address, it's as good as gone forever, unless the receiver wants to reverse the Bitcoin to the sender, so it's best for the person to move on, instead of contacting these recovery scammers.

Start out if your brother has lost his coins. From there, stitches the people that he has talked with and why that random call knows that he has lost it before.

While there's no problem at all if he sends a random fresh wallet address to that guy. But as Lucius said and explained, that's the start of the scam.

Tell your brother to be wise as lost coins if it's with crypto, they're lost forever.

This is what I was thinking too, that the scammers may possibly only be demanding for the wallet address simply just to check how cooperative their victim is,  I agree that it may look like an irrelevant information, but that would just be the first thing they ask, and if you give them audience, once they know they have your attention, they start demanding more and maybe ask you to pay for their services at the end of the day.

Best action for scammers who send you suspicious messages is to leave them unanswered.

Same question by other people on how the caller know that your brother lose his coins? But in the situation like that you should warn your brother not to entertain any claims that they can retrieve back their lose balances since that is a huge risk if you try to see what they can able to do since you don't know what possible actions they will execute so to avoid getting any further issue much better ignore and just forget about that lose balance then move on.

A lot of tricks has been done for many times by those scammers so hopefully your brother didn't try to talk again with those scammers since its dangerous if they get further more details about him since he might receive a lot of scamming attempts or other things that we can't imagine.

The question arises, how does someone know that he has lost coins, and on top of that they are calling him on his phone number? It seems to me that he is being called by the same people who stole his coins and are now trying to pull off a double scam.


I believe that the address is only the beginning and in itself is probably irrelevant. Based on that address, the scammers will "conclude" that it is possible to return the coins, but in return they will demand that your brother pay in advance. Unfortunately, that's why I call it a double scam, and many fall for this cheap trick.

I already sensed some foul play here for holding conversation with them to that extent. The question is did your brother lost some coins in the past? If no, he should completely ignore them and if yes, he should question himself how they get to know that he lost coins in the past. If you can not have answer to that or they can not answer that, quietly end the conversation. The more you keep on entertaining such conversation, the more they know your weakness and in the long run you'll be convinced that they can really help you. Having money to invest in bitcoins is one thing and having the knowledge to manage and protect yourself from scammers is another.


I experienced something like this just last week although it is not crypto related but the traditional banking. The scammer called me and introduced himself as a staff from my bank. Without doubt, I know he's a scammer for calling during the weekend with just ordinary number and not official number but I decide to play along with him. I asked if there's any problem and he said yes and even provide every of my banking information just to make it look real. To cut the long story short, I asked him from which of my bank and he mentioned a bank I don't have account with. Lol! I told him he's still new in the system and should learn more about scamming. He hissed and ended the call immediately.

Some of these scammers are very smart but you have to be calm and question them to the extent of doubting themselves if you think you have the courage but it is advisable to put end to the call if you can not resist their behavior. Op, keep in mind that whenever someone approached to help without you seeking for the help in the first place, it is likely a scam or there's probably a motive behind the help.

The reason they ask your sister to send them the address is because they can return the lost coins only as a method. I wouldn't believe it and thought it was the most obvious trick that they were playing.

Their target is to want people to provide addresses to track because Bitcoin addresses can be information for them to see where Bitcoins are stored.
When they call me to give me my Bitcoin address, I probably won't hand it over for privacy, but if they find my Bitcoin address without my knowledge, I'm not too afraid because my Bitcoin is not in danger considering that what they found was only the public address, not the seed phrase.

This might be a way for criminals to perform $5 wrench attack, your younger brother lives in US where assault weapons is legal, so this is really dangerous.

Not entirely correct, transaction that has confirmation could be irreversible since someone can perform 51% attack, one confirmation has around 62% risk. So make sure you need to wait for many confirmations especially you send a huge amount.

I haven’t experienced this before - but what came to my mind when I was reading your post was; maybe they are asking for a wallet address so as to know how frequently your brother use crypto and also the amount he spends (that’s if he sends an address that he uses all the time) after they are able to determine the way he moves his coin they might now decide to try to scam him through other means that he might not be aware of.

I think they are just making preparations for a bigger attack - this stage is to try to get close and possibly even get him to disclose information that are not supposed to be shared with others after which they can have their way with the scam.

Even if he sends a new wallet address, he’ll still one day send whatever he received to his exchange wallet and then the tracking will commence.

You haven't lost anything, so you're calm. But those who have lost and are not very strong in knowledge about Bitcoin will hope for any miracle, and scammers are waiting for these people. I think that they will demand an advance payment, and in the end, they will confuse the client heads so that the person will give them both the advance payment and their seed phrases.

Don’t encourage conversations with scammers because that’s how it starts. When your cousin sends his wallet address, the scammers will check the wallet transactions on the blockchain and get an idea of how much they can skim off him. Then they will probably send a document of his wallet blockchain records making themselves look like technical professionals. They will then ask for a fee to recover the lost bitcoins because they have proved to you that they know where they are, your cousin might fall for the scam if he’s not aware that anyone can do that using bitcoin block explorers.

Of course such proposal is actually a scam one. To start with, Bitcoin is not some sort of private or governmental organization or company that has some sort of customer care unit or customer service help desk that can help you retrieve lost wallets.
When I first went through this post the first idea of possible things they could do is a dust attack. Likewise, the victim in question may probably and unknowningly give out his wallet address to these scammers and easily they can monitor and track the user's transactions via a block chain explorer or the Mempool. If they are able to link it to an exchange account, then they can get more info about the victim to be able to attempt hacking probably via phishing.

This is a very good advice as sometimes in trying to play smart over the scammer, you may unintentionally give out information about yourself and coins that may seem harmless to you however is already a base information for the scammer to work on. So just like fat fork said , avoiding a conversation is best.

Since there is zero chance your brother can get his coins back, I see no point in communicating with the scammers at all. Honestly, I think the best course of action is to completely ignore it.

His style has always been that way. This is a stale old trick that is very effective for new users and is always used by them by offering recovery services so that lost funds can be returned to the way they were before.

If your relative gives the private key to the fraudster, it means that they have the key to your house and they can easily access the potential coins in it after that the account is completely zero.

It's good that you realize it's a scam. But I think there is no need to give any random or empty address. Just totally ignore them. There is no need to contact with scammers. It is best to stay away from scammers as much as possible.

I would not trust this either... A cold call after losing your coins reeks of a scam being set up.

The mere sharing of an address does not sound harmful to me (unless looked at from a privacy perspective), but it could be a way to setup trust. It could be the first step into getting your brother send funds, share his private key or install some piece of malware on his system.

Personally, if it were my brother, i'd tell him to not entertain this cold caller. Transactions are irreversible, there is no way of just getting your funds back. The only way to get your funds back is when the scammer is (forced to) send your money back, and usually this means going trough legal channels. There probably are firms that help you get in touch with law enforcement and help you track scammers down, but those companies don't just cold call victims.

Bitcoin transactions and altcoin transactions are irreversible and exceptions only when the founders or developers of altcoin blockchain want to do this. With Bitcoin blockchain, when a transaction has confirmation, it is irreversible.

I can say your friend was exposed to a scam.

If the submit requires to create an account, be careful because that website can have back doors.

If submit requires to interact with smart contract, that is risky if later your friend use that empty wallet to store cryptocurrency.

After submit it, revoke smart contract access.
How to revoke token approval following Opensea’s latest security episode
https://etherscan.io/tokenapprovalchecker
https://revoke.cash/
https://app.unrekt.net/

Because it is very likely a scam, I suppose to ignore any submission.

I have a younger brother who lives in the US and yesterday he told me about a call he received saying that he can get his lost coins back and all he needs to do is submit his wallet address.

Before saying that I am a fool, I know this is a scam, but I need to ask about what could possibly go wrong if he submit a wallet address? I did told him to submit a random wallet address that is empty with no single transactions in the past though but I can't stop thinking what this could lead to.

If you know their trick you can always be ahead of them and possibly be able to Warn others too, I am just wondering what they could possibly have in mind, I think they will track his transactions to know his worth. Or there is more? What do you think?