How to spot a fake crypto recovery service

There is a second industry built entirely on top of the first one. It targets people who have already been scammed, and it works because a victim who has just lost their savings is the most motivated buyer in the world.

The FBI has issued specific public warnings about this, including fake law firms contacting cryptocurrency scam victims and offering to recover their funds — see the IC3 alerts from June 2024 and August 2025.

How you get on the list

Your details are already circulating. Scam operations keep records of who paid, how much, and how they responded, and those lists get sold or reused by affiliated crews. Posting publicly about your loss — in a subreddit, a Facebook group, a review site, a YouTube comment — puts you in front of the same people much faster.

The seven signals

1. They contacted you

Legitimate law firms and forensics companies do not cold-call, DM, or comment on your Reddit post offering to recover your crypto. Unsolicited contact about a loss you have not publicly advertised is close to conclusive on its own.

2. Any upfront payment, under any name

Retainer, filing fee, gas fee, tax, bond, verification deposit, court cost, wallet activation, insurance. The wording varies; the structure never does. Real contingency lawyers take a percentage at the end. Real forensics firms invoice a defined engagement, do not ask to be paid in crypto or gift cards, and do not promise an outcome.

3. They guarantee recovery, or quote a success rate

Nobody can guarantee recovery of crypto sent to a scammer. It depends on where the funds went, how fast they moved, and whether any of it landed somewhere a court order can actually reach. Anyone confident before seeing your transaction history is selling.

4. They already know your case

"We are contacting victims of [the exact platform you used]." Knowing your details proves they bought or ran the original list — not that they are investigating it.

5. Fake authority

Claims of working with the FBI, the SEC, IC3, Interpol, or a named bank. Government agencies do not partner with private recovery companies, do not charge you to recover your own funds, and do not contact victims through WhatsApp or Telegram.

6. Credentials that do not survive one check

Take two minutes and verify independently:

• Look up the attorney by name in the state bar directory for the state they claim to practise in — every US state has a free public licence lookup.
• Call the firm on the number listed on the bar directory or the firm's own site found through a search, never a number they gave you.
• Check the domain age and whether the address on the site is a real office. Cloned firm websites with a changed phone number are common.

7. Urgency and secrecy

A window closing today, a court date next week, an instruction not to tell your bank or family because it would "compromise the investigation". Isolation is the tell. Real professionals expect you to take your time and talk to whoever you like.

What a legitimate route actually looks like

• You initiate contact, after finding the firm yourself and verifying its licence.
• Fees are explained in writing before any work starts, in a signed engagement letter with a named, licensed attorney.
• The first conversation is cautious. A real lawyer tells you what is hard about your case and what the realistic range of outcomes is.
• Nobody asks for wallet access. No seed phrase, no private key, no remote-desktop session, ever, for any reason.

Our own position, in writing: CryptoLawyer.com is not a law firm, does not take payment from people who use the assessment, and will never charge you a fee to recover funds. If anyone contacts you claiming to be us and asks for money, it is not us — report it.