$160,000 gone. $15,000 about to follow. How the crypto recovery scam works.

I spent the last hour on the phone with a woman in Perth, talking her down from sending $15,000 to scammers in the UK. She had already lost $160,000 to them. She was at a travel agency when I reached her, booking flights to London so she could hand the next $15,000 over in person.

The only reason that flight didn’t happen is that the travel agent thought the trip sounded off, called me, and asked for a sanity check. We got to the victim before the booking did.

This is a public service announcement, and a walk through one of the most damaging scam patterns running today. If you have a parent, a grandparent, a client or a customer who fits the profile, please pass it on.

Chapter one: the crypto investment scam

Most people who lose money to crypto recovery scams have already lost money to a crypto investment scam first. The pattern is consistent. It starts with one of three approaches:

• A cold call from a “broker” with an opportunity that sounds too good to ignore.
• An email or social-media message from someone with a track record they want to share.
• An AI-generated advert featuring a well-known face (Elon Musk is a favourite) endorsing a “guaranteed return” platform.

Once you’re hooked, you make a small investment, maybe $1,000 or $2,000 to “test the waters”. You’re directed to a website that looks like a real trading platform. The numbers tick upwards. Your $2,000 grows to $20,000, then $200,000.

The website is a fake. The numbers are a fake. The platform doesn’t exist. You’re looking at a number on a screen that the scammer can set to anything.

You realise it’s a fake the moment you try to withdraw. There’s always a new reason. The withdrawal window doesn’t open until next Tuesday. The trade failed, try again next month. There’s a tax to pay first. Pay the tax and you’ll get the funds the same day.

That tax is the hook. Your $2,000 is now “worth” $200,000. Pay 2% to release it, just $4,000, and the $196,000 net is yours. So you transfer $4,000. Then there’s another fee. Then a verification deposit. Then a regulatory hold that needs another $10,000 to clear.

Eventually you stop sending money. You write off the loss. You feel ashamed and you don’t tell anyone.

That’s chapter one. You’re now on a list.

Chapter two: the crypto recovery scam

Six to twelve months later, you get a different call. Different voice. Different organisation. They tell you they specialise in helping people recover money lost to crypto scams. They’ve got your file. They’ve found your funds. In fact, the original $200,000 has appreciated, and is now worth $650,000. They can return it to you.

They just need a transfer fee first. Or a “release tax” of about 3%.

This is the second scam. Same scammers, fresh costume. They know who fell for it the first time, they know the round number that was lost, and they know exactly how badly you want to make it whole.

This is where I came in for the woman in Perth. She had lost $160,000 in the first scam, written it off, and now believed she was about to recover it. She was about to send $15,000 to a UK address to release the recovered funds. The flight to London was so she could collect the cheque in person, allegedly.

The hardest part isn’t the technical detail

It’s getting the victim to admit they’ve been tricked.

I almost lost her on that call. Not because she didn’t understand what I was saying. Because she didn’t want it to be true. Accepting that the recovery offer is a scam means accepting that the original $160,000 is genuinely gone, and that you fell for two cons in a row.

What worked was patience and proportion. Australia lost around $2.74 billion to scams in 2023, according to Scamwatch. She wasn’t an idiot. She was one of tens of thousands of Australians targeted by an industry that has spent years refining exactly these techniques on people exactly like her. Once she could place herself in that group, rather than as a sole failure, the conversation became possible.

By the end of the call she understood the scam. She didn’t book the flight. She didn’t send the $15,000.

What to actually do

A few practical things to know, and to share with anyone you think might be vulnerable:

No legitimate broker cold-calls you about an investment. None. Not in 2025, not ever. If the contact came to you out of the blue, it’s a scam.

No legitimate withdrawal requires a tax to be paid up front. Tax obligations are owed to the ATO, by you, after you’ve received the money, on your tax return. They are never paid as a condition of release.

No legitimate fraud recovery firm reaches out to you. Recovery firms exist, but you find them, not the other way around. If they call you with news that they’ve located your stolen money, it’s the same scammers.

The “outside opinion” check works. The travel agent in this story was the only reason the call to me happened. If a relative is making a financial decision that feels off, ask them to talk it through with a person they trust who isn’t part of the deal. Scammers are very good at coaching victims to lie to their family. A neutral third party often breaks the spell.

Report it. Not because reporting recovers the money, but because the National Anti-Scam Centre uses report data to track and disrupt the operations. Scamwatch is at scamwatch.gov.au. For cybercrime more broadly, ReportCyber is at cyber.gov.au/report.

For people who don’t believe scams happen at this scale

The streamer Kitboga has built a public archive of these scams in operation, including extensive coverage of the crypto recovery cycle. This particular video is a clear walkthrough of how the second scam runs. If a relative needs to see this happening to other people before they can accept it might happen to them, it’s the easiest place to start.

If you’ve got someone in your life you’re worried about, or if you suspect you’re being targeted yourself, please talk to someone. Family, a trusted friend, a financial adviser you already know, your IT provider. Anyone whose income doesn’t depend on the deal closing.

If you’d like to talk it through with us, get in touch. We won’t bill you for that conversation.