Someone has offered to recover crypto you lost. This tells you what you are dealing with and why, because being told it is obviously a scam rarely helps when you badly want it to be true. Tick what applies to the approach you received.
This page will never ask for a seed phrase, a private key or a wallet connection, and nothing you type here leaves your browser. It all runs on your own device. If any site, person or app asks for your recovery phrase in order to help you, that is the attack, not the help. There is no legitimate reason for anyone to need it, including support staff, wallet developers, exchanges, police or a recovery service.
The short version. If someone has offered to recover crypto you lost, it is a scam. Not probably, and not usually. There is no legitimate industry doing this, because a blockchain transaction cannot be reversed by anyone at any price. This page exists to give you the specific reasons, because being told something is obvious rarely helps when you badly want it to be true.
When crypto leaves a wallet it is recorded permanently and there is no mechanism, authority or technology that undoes it. There is no chargeback, no ombudsman and no reversal. Anyone claiming to have one is describing something that does not exist. Investigators can sometimes trace where funds went, which is occasionally useful to law enforcement building a case, and tracing is not recovery. Seeing an address is not being able to move what is in it.
You are not being contacted by coincidence. Operators monitor public posts where people describe losses, scrape support forums and Reddit threads, and buy lists compiled by the original scammers. Being scammed twice is not bad luck: the first scam produced a record showing you have money and can be persuaded, which is exactly the list the second one buys.
Stop sending money immediately, however far in you are. The pattern is a sequence of fees, each described as the last one needed, and it continues while payments continue. Do not send a final payment to unlock the rest, because there is no rest. Report it, keep every record, and if you paid by card or bank transfer contact your bank now, since those routes occasionally do have recourse where crypto does not.
For reversing a transaction, no, because it cannot be done. There is no mechanism, authority or technology that undoes a settled blockchain transfer. What does exist is blockchain analytics used by law enforcement and, in very large cases, by litigation teams to trace where funds moved. That is tracing, not recovery, it is pursued through courts and police over months, and it is never sold to an individual by direct message.
The image may even show a genuine address, because every address and every transaction is public and anyone can look at them. Seeing where funds went is not the same as being able to move them, and it requires no skill at all. The screenshot exists to justify the fee.
There is never one fee. The pattern is a sequence, each described as the last obstacle: a gas fee, then a tax, then an unlock deposit, then a verification payment. It continues for as long as payments continue. People have lost more to the recovery than to the original theft, which is why stopping at any point is better than paying one more.
Because they were looking. Operators monitor public posts and forums where people describe losses, and buy lists compiled by the original scammers. Being approached within hours is not a coincidence and it is not luck. It is a signal in itself.
Stop paying immediately, whatever stage you are at and whatever they say is outstanding. Do not send a final payment to unlock the rest, because there is no rest. Report it to your national fraud body, keep every record, and if you paid by card or bank transfer contact your bank now, because those routes sometimes have recourse where crypto does not.
Report it to your national fraud body directly, which is free. Keep transaction hashes, addresses and dates. Check whether the loss is deductible in your jurisdiction, which is one of the few things that genuinely returns value. Secure whatever remains. And if the amount is large enough to justify it, instruct a solicitor you found yourself rather than one introduced by whoever contacted you.
We seal the list every week and keep re-checking every token on it, so you can see what actually happened to them rather than only what is trading today.
