My experience recovering my funds after suffering a phishing scam

[greenmint]

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!

[TomPluz]

Wow. congrats for getting your funds back. Yes, we have to be always careful when we "invest" in cryptocurrency and always look around first for possible accusations of scams or frauds.  Now, you are right those recovery services online are big scams themselves and they prey on people who are getting hopeless. This is my first time to know of these firms which really provided legit services to victims of frauds and I think we need more of them especially in countries where scams and phishing using cryptocurrency are really rampant. The time has come for the victims to fight back. And thanks to Binance for making an action because they are centralized...am not sure if the same can be accommodated if the cryptos were sent to a DEX. Thanks for sharing your story, man.

[gurunanakji777]

You fight with positivity and did not lose the patience and linked up with the right guys so you were able to trace your funds otherwise it's hard to track and generally, the majority of the people lose the money when hacked or frauded. I would like to ask the website link you provided for legal assistance Are these people provide legal assistance to all the country's people or it is only for USA or UK people only and We should avoid clicking the random links click only when you receive it from the reliable resources.

[Evgenklm]

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!

it's amazing that you were able to get some of your funds back, it's just luck. In this case, experienced users make mistakes and therefore you need to be very careful, especially if you have such huge sums, I am amazed at the scammers every day they have new schemes, with such that anyone can get caught.

[UNIVERSE]

Firstly, that is a very worthy experience.
We really know that scammers are everywhere and they will be always around us, watching us for every second we may be careless. This case is about the phishing scam, which is also very often happening. We may click some links provided likely by official sites, but it will drive our assets to be gone. That is why everywhere, always be careful with somelinks.

Second, you are very lucky and the scammer is a little bit stupid.
Commonly. scammers will not convert their asset of scamming to certain exchanges especially directly. They will send it to another wallet or send it to a certain mixer so that they can mix it and make Noname transaction and it will not be able to detect.
But they sent it to Binance. Well, that is why you can track and get them back. You are so lucky because most of the victims will lose their money forever.

[greenmint]

You fight with positivity and did not lose the patience and linked up with the right guys so you were able to trace your funds otherwise it's hard to track and generally, the majority of the people lose the money when hacked or frauded. I would like to ask the website link you provided for legal assistance Are these people provide legal assistance to all the country's people or it is only for USA or UK people only and We should avoid clicking the random links click only when you receive it from the reliable resources.

I'm not from the UK or USA, so I think they work with clients worldwide. Yes, since I had this issue I'm now triple-checking every single email address and URL...

[Hometown]

Thank you so much for recovering your hacked money. Usually hacked money is not easy to recover but you have accomplished this impossible task. It is undoubtedly an important task to keep your valuable assets secret from hackers.

[Fawpac2]

Wow, I should have greeted you in advance. Thank you so much you did a very good job. In fact I have tried a lot from phishing sites before but I have not found any benefit.If my account is phishing then I hope you can get a big benefit from it.