Topic: My experience recovering funds after suffering a phishing scam (Read 352 times)
Thank you so very much for sharing this experience, and making us to know more about this forum, I'll say these are the reasons so many persons like myself are scared of engaging in any online business or deals, the scam on the internet is just too much, people getting scammed, duped, ripped on a daily, trust me not every one on this forum understands the forum actually, no insults, but I'll urge the experts to try and drop more experiences for we the newbies to catch up and understand. All thanks to BTC for this wonderful forum, I'm learning more in this forum everyday instead of wasting my data doing nothing. I sincerely say thank you to all who have shared their experiences and have contributed one way or the other... Blessings
February 20, 2022, 04:10:16 AM
Bit Club Network is a Ponzi scheme. The organizers have been indicted. https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/bitclub
That is a classic scam. Do not send them any money. You will never get any money back from them no matter what they say.
...I was told in order to release those balances I had to deposit 45% of the value of the balance.
I was not going to take that risk, and I did not have that kind of funds anyway.
I was not going to take that risk, and I did not have that kind of funds anyway.
That is a classic scam. Do not send them any money. You will never get any money back from them no matter what they say.
February 19, 2022, 01:46:53 PM
Several years ago I invested with bitclubnetwork.com
and I could pull out the odd US$ from time to time.
After letting it run for about 2 years without checking
I recently checked and found the website disappeared.
I researched and found out it was a scam,
and the owners were arrested and sentenced.
I did however find bitclubnetwork.org and contacted them
via their WhatsApp support sevive.
They claimed that they could reactivate my bitclubnetwork.com balance,
I had to only create a new account with them with the same
usermname and email address I used before.
I had 3 personal accounts and I was managing a fourth account for someone else.
The total balance of the 4 accounts I had accumulated to nearly $60,000.
I was told in order to release those balances I had to deposit 45% of the value of the balance.
I was not going to take that risk, and I did not have that kind of funds anyway.
After a lot of arguments, the 4 accounts I managed was put together into
an new account that I created.
I activated a new deposit and was promised and guaranteed that I could withdraw.
The deposits are released after 3 days and then one can redeposit even
using the funds in the account balance. I did that a few times and tried
to withdraw. No luck. The withdrawal was cancelled by the company.
They never gave me the full story. It did sound too good to be true and it was!
I followed the instructions of support exactly I redeposited a few times
using new funds and every time I was assured that my withdrawal will be issued.
The following happened:
I was notified that a withdrawal was sent, but it NEVER could be found
on the blockchain. The address the said they sent it to was mine. It was a lie.
Next the sent a withdrawal to a foreign address which did not belong to me,
nor was it in my profile.
After that my withdrawal was always cancelled.
They asked me every time to deposit fresh money and threatened
that if I did not, they would seize my funds and deactivate my account.
I have also found several offers on the internet claiming they can get a
refund from bitclubnetwork.
Others say they alre also fraudsters.
I cannot find anything about bitclubnetwork.org on the internet.
Does anybody here been able to retrieve funds using such a service?
Does anybody here have experience of bitclubnetwork DOT ORG (not dot com or dot co.uk)
Can anybody share experience?
and I could pull out the odd US$ from time to time.
After letting it run for about 2 years without checking
I recently checked and found the website disappeared.
I researched and found out it was a scam,
and the owners were arrested and sentenced.
I did however find bitclubnetwork.org and contacted them
via their WhatsApp support sevive.
They claimed that they could reactivate my bitclubnetwork.com balance,
I had to only create a new account with them with the same
usermname and email address I used before.
I had 3 personal accounts and I was managing a fourth account for someone else.
The total balance of the 4 accounts I had accumulated to nearly $60,000.
I was told in order to release those balances I had to deposit 45% of the value of the balance.
I was not going to take that risk, and I did not have that kind of funds anyway.
After a lot of arguments, the 4 accounts I managed was put together into
an new account that I created.
I activated a new deposit and was promised and guaranteed that I could withdraw.
The deposits are released after 3 days and then one can redeposit even
using the funds in the account balance. I did that a few times and tried
to withdraw. No luck. The withdrawal was cancelled by the company.
They never gave me the full story. It did sound too good to be true and it was!
I followed the instructions of support exactly I redeposited a few times
using new funds and every time I was assured that my withdrawal will be issued.
The following happened:
I was notified that a withdrawal was sent, but it NEVER could be found
on the blockchain. The address the said they sent it to was mine. It was a lie.
Next the sent a withdrawal to a foreign address which did not belong to me,
nor was it in my profile.
After that my withdrawal was always cancelled.
They asked me every time to deposit fresh money and threatened
that if I did not, they would seize my funds and deactivate my account.
I have also found several offers on the internet claiming they can get a
refund from bitclubnetwork.
Others say they alre also fraudsters.
I cannot find anything about bitclubnetwork.org on the internet.
Does anybody here been able to retrieve funds using such a service?
Does anybody here have experience of bitclubnetwork DOT ORG (not dot com or dot co.uk)
Can anybody share experience?
November 08, 2021, 01:56:08 PM
You are VERY lucky.
You could have lost these $35k for good, it was due to the scammers' stupidity that you recovered them. I don't know anything about Stellar and where you can deposit it, but having stolen XLM in an exchange is surely not an option unless you want to get caught. You will, sooner or later.
It's good that you fought for it, but I don't want to seem optimistic. When you're a victim of such cyber theft you shouldn't waste your valuable time for so long. Nevertheless, here's an example that suggests otherwise.
Anyway, lessons are expensive and are usually paid. That was a narrow escape.
You could have lost these $35k for good, it was due to the scammers' stupidity that you recovered them. I don't know anything about Stellar and where you can deposit it, but having stolen XLM in an exchange is surely not an option unless you want to get caught. You will, sooner or later.
It's good that you fought for it, but I don't want to seem optimistic. When you're a victim of such cyber theft you shouldn't waste your valuable time for so long. Nevertheless, here's an example that suggests otherwise.
Anyway, lessons are expensive and are usually paid. That was a narrow escape.
November 05, 2021, 03:55:42 PM
I'm so glad you got your money back, first of all I want to thank you for sharing this painful and happy experience with us at the same time, it's never easy to lose your life savings but thank god the end was happy.
I learned two things from this story:
First:
Whatever you do, never hire a “cryptocurrency recovery company”, it is a complete scam, and it will make you lose your hard-earned time and money.
This is a very important point because in such cases, many people turn to cryptocurrency recovery companies thinking that they will return their money. In addition, cryptocurrencies are illegal in most countries, so people prefer to resort to these companies rather than resorting to lawyers or the police.
Secondly:
You were able to get your money back with IC3 and crypto lawyers and that's something I didn't expect to be frankly possible, but this experience will be helpful for many to follow your steps to get their money back.
Congratulations on getting your money back and I wish you good luck.
I learned two things from this story:
First:
Whatever you do, never hire a “cryptocurrency recovery company”, it is a complete scam, and it will make you lose your hard-earned time and money.
This is a very important point because in such cases, many people turn to cryptocurrency recovery companies thinking that they will return their money. In addition, cryptocurrencies are illegal in most countries, so people prefer to resort to these companies rather than resorting to lawyers or the police.
Secondly:
You were able to get your money back with IC3 and crypto lawyers and that's something I didn't expect to be frankly possible, but this experience will be helpful for many to follow your steps to get their money back.
Congratulations on getting your money back and I wish you good luck.
October 29, 2021, 05:20:04 AM
but this post reads a bit as if it was an ad 
Based on my findings, I have a strong feeling that might be the case here:- @greenmint first shared a simplified version of that experience on Aug, 27 [in the MetaMask community]:
- After 50 days, he/she decided to share a detailed version of it in "another forum [archived]" and three days later, in here!
When someone suddenly shares such experiences with "those gaps", in most of the cases it's just an ad [I do know there's a small chance that I could be wrong] + @greenmint tends to ignore his/her posts and threads a few days after their creation [with a little exception for the first one (Seen 2 hours), since he/she at least visited that platform recently]:
- AltcoinsTalksQuote from: https://archive.fo/sZPRN#selection-675.0-679.29Last Active: October 19, 2021, 04:15:17 PM
- BitcoinTalkQuote from: https://archive.fo/w0eDQ#selection-363.0-367.29Last Active: October 19, 2021, 02:22:53 PM
October 29, 2021, 02:29:13 AM
Whatever you do, NEVER, hire one of those “crypto recovery companies” they are a total scam, they would only make you lose your time and your hard-earned money.
What you need to do (As soon as possible):
1 - Report to the IC3 if you are in the US (action fraud if you are based in the UK).
2 - Seek legal assistance, the best crypto solicitors I found are the following:
Silver Miller Law: silvermillerlaw.com
Crypto Legal: cryptolegal.uk
Roche Fredman: rochefreedman.com
Upon checking the options and the fees for their legal services, I decided to go with Crypto Legal, communication was great, they trace the funds, basically, the scammers have converted my XLM into BNB and have sent it to Binance.
The solicitors manage to flag the funds as stolen and freeze the scammer account in Binance, it took some time, around 6 weeks, but I'm happy they have managed to recover most of the stolen assets.
What you need to do (As soon as possible):
1 - Report to the IC3 if you are in the US (action fraud if you are based in the UK).
2 - Seek legal assistance, the best crypto solicitors I found are the following:
Silver Miller Law: silvermillerlaw.com
Crypto Legal: cryptolegal.uk
Roche Fredman: rochefreedman.com
Upon checking the options and the fees for their legal services, I decided to go with Crypto Legal, communication was great, they trace the funds, basically, the scammers have converted my XLM into BNB and have sent it to Binance.
The solicitors manage to flag the funds as stolen and freeze the scammer account in Binance, it took some time, around 6 weeks, but I'm happy they have managed to recover most of the stolen assets.
Care to mention which of the so-called crypto recovery companies are total scams, as opposed to the ones you're claiming to have used? Awesome if it worked out for you, but this post reads a bit as if it was an ad
question are u pay the investigator? is the scammer get caught
i hope the first option availabe on country that allow crypto :')
Lawyer or legal assistance isn't non profit business it's profit business of course you'll pay it, the fees are vary from each lawyer and it cost a lot to hire them. But usually they charge the fees after they successfully recover the funds, so it's better to pay few % fees than losing it all.i hope the first option availabe on country that allow crypto :')
You could seek legal advisor in your country but if they can't help you, you could seek global lawyer/ legal assistance as mentioned by @OP
So good that you were able to recover the stolen funds, I think yours is the very first case where I have encountered that you were able to recover most of the funds that was stolen. Never even knew there are some crypto solicitors which focus their entire law practice in Cryptocurrencies. I also think that you were lucky in some aspects, one was that the scammer was from US itself or kept the funds in Binance US, and Binance recently has been under radar of authorities for dirty money which is why they even responded to your issue. Anyways whatever happened best part is that recovery even in such cases is possible if you follow the right procedure.
question are u pay the investigator? is the scammer get caught
i hope the first option availabe on country that allow crypto :')
phising website is really tricky sometimes back on 2014 i lost all of my fund that i hard earned from bitcoin faucet because email that says free faucet that give 0.05 BTC
but know is good to check the URL first and phising getting smart you can see on bscscan or etherscan that people giving away free token but when u approve that your coin in wallet will be gone
i hope the first option availabe on country that allow crypto :')
phising website is really tricky sometimes back on 2014 i lost all of my fund that i hard earned from bitcoin faucet because email that says free faucet that give 0.05 BTC
but know is good to check the URL first and phising getting smart you can see on bscscan or etherscan that people giving away free token but when u approve that your coin in wallet will be gone
He probably did pay the "crypto recovery companies" so he lost more money for their useless services. If you mean the legal assistance I believe he did but he mentioned 3 of them which I guess he must be vouching for these 3.
Quote
Silver Miller Law: silvermillerlaw.com
Crypto Legal: cryptolegal.uk
Roche Fredman: rochefreedman.com
Crypto Legal: cryptolegal.uk
Roche Fredman: rochefreedman.com
The chance of getting back the money is slim to zero when if it isn't going to the binance. He is just lucky that the scammer is dumb enough to send it to Binance.
question are u pay the investigator? is the scammer get caught
i hope the first option availabe on country that allow crypto :')
phising website is really tricky sometimes back on 2014 i lost all of my fund that i hard earned from bitcoin faucet because email that says free faucet that give 0.05 BTC
but know is good to check the URL first and phising getting smart you can see on bscscan or etherscan that people giving away free token but when u approve that your coin in wallet will be gone
i hope the first option availabe on country that allow crypto :')
phising website is really tricky sometimes back on 2014 i lost all of my fund that i hard earned from bitcoin faucet because email that says free faucet that give 0.05 BTC
but know is good to check the URL first and phising getting smart you can see on bscscan or etherscan that people giving away free token but when u approve that your coin in wallet will be gone
I'm glad you were able to get your money back but you didn't tell us how they managed to track your coins, find the address of scammer, contact Binance, freeze the money and then get it back.
You are also in luck as many scammers are smarter than these users, they mostly mix this coins using and dexs then use bitcoin mixers before send it back to Binance account.
Also, many users will not be so lucky. Therefore, prevention is better than cure, and it is best to avoid any email or tracking/refund services unless they are reliable.
Dont know on why someone be called a scammer if he wont able to erase up his tracks and its just pure on sense that he would be traced up if someone did really make out some investigation initiallyYou are also in luck as many scammers are smarter than these users, they mostly mix this coins using and dexs then use bitcoin mixers before send it back to Binance account.
Also, many users will not be so lucky. Therefore, prevention is better than cure, and it is best to avoid any email or tracking/refund services unless they are reliable.
or he did just do it intentionally and believing that the victim isnt really that desperate on recovering his funds back but this carelessness do really end up to be a mess on his part which is good.
Only a few could able to make their coins/funds back after been hacked or scammed specially that crypto transactions are irreversible but just like on what mentioned above
that these are the things i do like with centralize exchange which they could possibly blocked or lock scammers account.
I'm glad you were able to get your money back but you didn't tell us how they managed to track your coins, find the address of scammer, contact Binance, freeze the money and then get it back.
You are also in luck as many scammers are smarter than these users, they mostly mix this coins using and dexs then use bitcoin mixers before send it back to Binance account.
Also, many users will not be so lucky. Therefore, prevention is better than cure, and it is best to avoid any email or tracking/refund services unless they are reliable.
Poor scammer, he must be so dumb that is why OP managed to recover the lost funds but this may not happen with every scam attempts since scammers became more smarter and knew how to erase the track records while stealing funds from people.You are also in luck as many scammers are smarter than these users, they mostly mix this coins using and dexs then use bitcoin mixers before send it back to Binance account.
Also, many users will not be so lucky. Therefore, prevention is better than cure, and it is best to avoid any email or tracking/refund services unless they are reliable.
Anyone who is looking to make passive income with crypto asset should have a second opinion even though if you managed to find the legit scheme still you are losing the control of your funds.
I'm glad you were able to get your money back but you didn't tell us how they managed to track your coins, find the address of scammer, contact Binance, freeze the money and then get it back.
You are also in luck as many scammers are smarter than these users, they mostly mix this coins using and dexs then use bitcoin mixers before send it back to Binance account.
Also, many users will not be so lucky. Therefore, prevention is better than cure, and it is best to avoid any email or tracking/refund services unless they are reliable.
You are also in luck as many scammers are smarter than these users, they mostly mix this coins using and dexs then use bitcoin mixers before send it back to Binance account.
Also, many users will not be so lucky. Therefore, prevention is better than cure, and it is best to avoid any email or tracking/refund services unless they are reliable.
Indeed 35K USD is a large sum money and congratulations you get almost of your coins back.
Fortunately the scammer is stupid and don't have good knowledge about cryptocurrency and exchanges, otherwise your coins can't be recovered. He though converting his coins will obscure his track, but it won't works. When you convert the coins, there's a hash recorded on the service and it can be traced similar as sending same coin to other wallet.
Even I don't like centralized exchanges, but in some reason centralized exchanges is good to handle to kind issues.
Fortunately the scammer is stupid and don't have good knowledge about cryptocurrency and exchanges, otherwise your coins can't be recovered. He though converting his coins will obscure his track, but it won't works. When you convert the coins, there's a hash recorded on the service and it can be traced similar as sending same coin to other wallet.
Even I don't like centralized exchanges, but in some reason centralized exchanges is good to handle to kind issues.
Hello Forum,
I'd like to shed some light on scams and hack experiences in the crypto sphere.
I recently went through one of the most horrible experiences in my life, I fell for a phishing XLM scam, thanks to the Ledger database leak I've been receiving phishing emails on a regular basis, stupid of me I fell for an XLM staking competition (XLM cannot be staked, even bigger mistake...)
I basically send all my XLM to the fraudsters, the phishing website was a clone of the Stellar website, it was an early Monday morning and I didn't think it properly, just wanted to stake my funds, I lost over 35k USD...
When I realize I had been scammed I freaked out massively, these were my life savings, went to the police (didn't get much help) and then started to contact crypto recovery companies (wrong move).
Whatever you do, NEVER, hire one of those “crypto recovery companies” they are a total scam, they would only make you lose your time and your hard-earned money.
What you need to do (As soon as possible):
1 - Report to the IC3 if you are in the US (action fraud if you are based in the UK).
2 - Seek legal assistance, the best crypto solicitors I found are the following:
Silver Miller Law: silvermillerlaw.com
Crypto Legal: cryptolegal.uk
Roche Fredman: rochefreedman.com
Upon checking the options and the fees for their legal services, I decided to go with Crypto Legal, communication was great, they trace the funds, basically, the scammers have converted my XLM into BNB and have sent it to Binance.
The solicitors manage to flag the funds as stolen and freeze the scammer account in Binance, it took some time, around 6 weeks, but I'm happy they have managed to recover most of the stolen assets.
Lesson learn the hard way... always DYOR before moving your funds or stake them, also you can use this browser extension to check for malicious websites: phishfort
Stay safe out there in the crypto jungle!
I'd like to shed some light on scams and hack experiences in the crypto sphere.
I recently went through one of the most horrible experiences in my life, I fell for a phishing XLM scam, thanks to the Ledger database leak I've been receiving phishing emails on a regular basis, stupid of me I fell for an XLM staking competition (XLM cannot be staked, even bigger mistake...)
I basically send all my XLM to the fraudsters, the phishing website was a clone of the Stellar website, it was an early Monday morning and I didn't think it properly, just wanted to stake my funds, I lost over 35k USD...
When I realize I had been scammed I freaked out massively, these were my life savings, went to the police (didn't get much help) and then started to contact crypto recovery companies (wrong move).
Whatever you do, NEVER, hire one of those “crypto recovery companies” they are a total scam, they would only make you lose your time and your hard-earned money.
What you need to do (As soon as possible):
1 - Report to the IC3 if you are in the US (action fraud if you are based in the UK).
2 - Seek legal assistance, the best crypto solicitors I found are the following:
Silver Miller Law: silvermillerlaw.com
Crypto Legal: cryptolegal.uk
Roche Fredman: rochefreedman.com
Upon checking the options and the fees for their legal services, I decided to go with Crypto Legal, communication was great, they trace the funds, basically, the scammers have converted my XLM into BNB and have sent it to Binance.
The solicitors manage to flag the funds as stolen and freeze the scammer account in Binance, it took some time, around 6 weeks, but I'm happy they have managed to recover most of the stolen assets.
Lesson learn the hard way... always DYOR before moving your funds or stake them, also you can use this browser extension to check for malicious websites: phishfort
Stay safe out there in the crypto jungle!
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