What To Do If You're a Victim

If you recognize your experience in this guide, the most important thing is what you do next. The steps below are designed to help you stop further losses, preserve evidence, and decide whether a meaningful recovery effort is realistic.

Immediate First Steps

Your priorities in the first hours and days are to stop the bleeding and lock down as much evidence as possible.

Stop sending money immediately. Do not make any additional “tax,” “unlocking fee,” or “security deposit” payments, even if the platform or scammer insists your funds will otherwise be lost.
Cut off contact. Block the scammer on all apps and channels once you’ve captured enough screenshots. Continuing to engage often leads to more pressure, new scams, or emotional manipulation.
Secure your accounts and devices. Change passwords on your email, exchange accounts, and banking apps; enable two‑factor authentication where possible. If you shared remote‑access tools or suspicious files, consider having your device checked by a professional.
Preserve what you can see right now. Before chats disappear or accounts are closed, take screenshots of conversations, platform dashboards, deposit addresses, and error messages. Save copies of any emails, invoices, or “agreements.”
Write a quick timeline. While details are fresh, jot down key dates, approximate amounts, platforms used, and how the contact began. This will make later reports and legal consultations much easier.

Even if you’re not ready to talk to anyone yet, doing these things now can dramatically improve your options later.

Evidence Checklist

Good evidence doesn’t have to be perfect; it just needs to be organized and complete enough that an investigator or lawyer can follow the trail.

Chats and profiles. Export or screenshot message histories (with visible timestamps and usernames), scammer profile URLs, and any photos, voice notes, or videos shared.
Platform and transaction data. Save website/app URLs, login pages, deposit addresses, transaction hashes, and any “account statements” the platform generated—even if you believe they’re fake.
Exchange and bank records. Download CSVs or PDFs of relevant transactions from your exchanges and banks, including fiat deposits/withdrawals linked to the scam.
Identity and KYC records. If you uploaded ID documents to the fake platform, note exactly what you shared (e.g., passport, driver’s licence, selfie) and when.
Communications with institutions. Keep copies of emails or tickets with exchanges, banks, or police, including reference numbers and dates.

You do not need to sort or interpret everything yourself; having the raw material preserved is often enough for a professional to start work.

Where to Report

Reporting serves two goals: protecting others and creating an official record that may help with recovery.

Your exchanges and banks. Notify any legitimate exchanges and financial institutions you used to fund the scam accounts. Ask them to flag the transactions as fraud, note the destination addresses, and confirm what internal reporting or account‑freezing options exist.
Local law enforcement or national cybercrime units. File a police report in your home jurisdiction, even if the scammer is overseas. Many countries have cybercrime or financial‑fraud units; in the U.S., for example, victims often report to the FBI’s IC3 portal in addition to local police.
Consumer‑protection and financial regulators. Where applicable, report to agencies that oversee investment fraud and online scams in your country. Multiple complaints about the same domains or platforms can accelerate action.
Specialized legal counsel. Once you have basic evidence preserved, consider a consultation with a crypto recovery lawyer or cybercrime lawyer who handles pig‑butchering cases. They can help you understand whether your case meets the thresholds (amounts, timing, traceability) for a viable recovery effort.

You should be wary of anyone—especially online “recovery companies”—who guarantees full recovery for an upfront fee or pressures you to act immediately.

When You Can Recover Funds

Not every case can be turned into money back, but certain patterns make partial recovery or leverage more realistic.

Funds touched regulated choke points. If stolen assets passed through major exchanges or service providers with strong KYC rules, there may be accounts and real‑world identities to target with legal tools.
Losses are substantial enough to justify action. Because cross‑border tracing and litigation are resource‑intensive, most serious efforts focus on significant losses, or on patterns that link multiple victims together.
You moved quickly. The shorter the time between your last deposit and your first preservation/reporting steps, the higher the odds that relevant data and, in some cases, assets are still within reach.
Your evidence is usable. Clear transaction records, URLs, and chat logs make it much easier for investigators to trace funds and for lawyers to build a coherent story for courts and counterparties.

In these situations, a tailored strategy—often combining on‑chain tracing, exchange requests, and targeted legal action—may give you more leverage than you expect.

When You Cannot Realistically Recover Funds

There are also hard limits, and understanding them can help you avoid wasting more time or money on false promises.

Funds are deeply laundered into uncooperative venues. If assets have long since moved through multiple mixers, cross‑chain hops, and unregulated platforms in non‑cooperative jurisdictions, the chances of recovery may be very low.
The amounts are too small for the tools available. Unfortunately, the cost of competent tracing and cross‑border legal work can exceed what’s realistic for modest‑sized losses.
Evidence is minimal or missing. If there are no transaction records, URLs, or chat logs—only memories—it becomes much harder to trace funds or convince institutions to act.
Secondary “recovery scams.” If you’ve already paid supposed “recovery agents” who delivered nothing, that money is typically gone as well; they are often part of the same ecosystem as the original scammers.

A candid assessment from a qualified professional should include both possibilities: where there is real traction, and where there is not.

Note: We provide a separate, downloadable "Victim Response Checklist" that turns this section into a one‑page, step‑by‑step action plan you can refer to offline.

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