Bitcoin Forum

I'm curious to know. Can a stolen funds be recovered from the  scammer by a forensic experts?

No, stolen funds cannot be recovered because bitcoin transactions are irreversible, no forensic expert or investigator can help you recover your stolen funds, that is why you have to take your security as being paramount, and also to check very well before you make a transaction, so you don't send to the wrong address

It goes without saying that bitcoin is pseudonymous, so even if you can track the address of the stealer, if the person is well versed in the network you'll never be able to link it to him or her personally, there are also mixers and coJoin services that makes your attempt at tracking a thief more difficult.

Experts will probably try to convince you that they can do something, don't believe them, they may scam you through that process, they will collect your money, and would never help you recover the funds.

Hiring a forensic expert to investigate a stolen crypto would just increase your overall costs. Although it might be traced, recovering the money that was stolen is impossible simply due to the append-only nature of blockchain transaction.

Crypto transactions are irreversible so when you lost your fund, you can not get it back.

Chances are when you submit a report to police, government and they help you to find the scammers.
Sometimes you will see white hat hackers stole funds and refund it to projects. I am not sure they are really hack cases or just manipulating ones.

What are the chances? Substantially slim that the government can do anything, then the process to go about it would be something else, because you will have to prove that the funds were in truth, stolen. I can imagine losing $300 worth of bitcoin and going to my local police station to make a complain, i doubt if i will be taken too seriously.

The government can't even do anything, unless there is an address on a centralized exchange that links to the thief, then the government will have to authorize the exchange to provide more info about the thief, what a heck of a process, and i can guess you will have to lose a very large sum of money for the government to do this.

You actually can in some (rare) instances, if you contacted the authorities and have been collaborating with exchanges. Sometimes thieves do dumb things like sending the funds they stole to exchanges where they're KYC-ed.

^ But yea, better to prevent dealing with such problems by having good security to start with. Because if we're talking about probably less than $10,000, it's likely that exchanges wouldn't care to help.

There are some chances , but first you have to show the police and mostly the cyper crime special teams enough evidences for what you complaining.
In case of the Fake Malware downloads for Phonixminer we got there is already enough evidence in a few cases and a investigation is started.
It needs the Hacker address where the coins was sended (if a hack was happend) , the malware you have got and downloaded and few more things.
Connections to somebody that have access to the chainalysis software helps a lot for find services and exchanges.

But for low Amounts of BTC the expenditure mostly is it not worth to investigate.

No, No, No, if anyone contacted you and promised to help you get your lost fund back they are trying to scam you all over again, once you lost a crypto asset to scammers it's not coming back, learn from the mistake and move on.

No how this can be recovered, don't be decieved by those out there promising they can help you recover lost coins, they will rather constitute to your current experience than providing a solution you would have expected from them, and also mkre importantly, you have to take the security of your digital asset with extreme caution, if you didn't let crack on your wall, the lizard wouldn't have penetrated through.

If you can avoid scam, it is the best. To prevent is easy and cheap but to cure is hard and costly, that is also how stolen funds are.

It is possible for you to make use of Chainanalysis for investigation, you can make use of other analystic companies too, but to begin is not easy and very costly. Not suitable if you are scammed with low amount of coins, but if you are scammed in millions of dollars, this would be a very good option to go for.

Scammers are very wise, assuming the scammer make use of Tor and other means the transaction can not be linked to him, it would be very hard for analytic company to know the person, even if the person later got known, it could take months or years before his identity was known. If the bad actor is not known, you would have spent a lot of money.

You may see recovery services online, they will all promise to look for the scammer for you and get back your coins for you, avoid them all, they will only request for money and later nothing would be done, even most of them are also scammers, they will collect money but not leading to any fruition.

Yes, this depends on how much money was stolen. If someone loses less than $10K or maybe just a few hundred dollars then I think the authorities will ignore the case. I think exchanges have a certain amount limit that allows them to handle hacking cases, obviously I think it's hundreds to millions of dollars.

If I'm not mistaken, binance previously disclosed the hacker to the authorities until this hacker was caught. But I forgot where this case was discussed and did not find the link in the forum considering I'm currently using Android to post.

If there is one thing I have come to know so far, it is that what is lost or forgotten as regarding passwords or keys or funds, on the BTC network, is almost always impossible to recover, let alone funds stolen.

I do believe in miracles though.

If the stolen funds stored in a centralized exchange and the government has enough power to seize the funds with the help of court then it is possible but when we talk about bitcoin or other coins moved from your wallet to another wallet has no chance of recovery and not even possible to find the identity of the person who stole it from you.

Some tips can help you from hacking your crypto assets

1. Keep your keys safe
2. Keeps the funds in wallet and if possible buy a hardware wallet
3. Beaware of phishing attacks
4. Make sure your devices are safe from any malwares

In most cases, those scammed and stolen funds aren't recovered while the scammer let the funds sleep in the wallet for how many years once the address is reported as a scam.  But I heard that some of the stolen funds have been traced through the help of blockchain analysis, Chainalysis (https://www.chainalysis.com/) a platform that helps to investigate blockchain transactions but of course, it's another cost, and if you're willing to spend another amount for this.

It's a 30% chance that will recover your lost funds, so be careful with it and keep it like you once of your valuable stuff.
Always remember the golden rule in the crypto space, Not your key, Not your coins.

It depends if the currency is central then that money/fund can be recovered,
If it is decentralized like Bitcoin, there are two challenges:

 - First: knowing scammer, which is an easier task than the second, but it depends on who will track him (if it is a country and has resources, the probability of knowing is higher) and the extent of the scammer's experience in concealing his identity.
 - Second: knowing the private key/seed, which makes it impossible to send money without knowing it.

If its from a wallet non custodial then unfortunately not gonna work or seldom I see cases it get recovered especially if theres a mistake on the part of the owner.  If the stolen fund is from centralized exchange and the fault is on them clearly you have a chance to get it.  But often a user makes the mistake then its not.

very rarely can be done, although there can be some procedures that must be done. but are thieves that careless to send funds to an exchange that requires KYC. some scammers usually use Mixer services to eliminate their tracks and make transactions on the black market by sticking with bitcoin or other coins or using exchanges without KYC such as DEX. but still every transaction made will be tracked because it is recorded on the blockchain very clearly.

Your attempt to find your funds by hiring specialists should be commensurate with the amount you have lost. You should understand that this service is not free, besides there is no guarantee of a positive result, so these costs can only increase your losses.

Stolen funds can never be recover, hiring a forensic can only increase your cost, though it can be traced but it can never be recovered because bitcoin transaction are not reversible, that why when making transaction you are advised to recheck the address very carefully. So stolen funds can never be recover on bitcoin

You will get scammed again trying to recover your loss, there are bad experience like this from Reddit users who try to recover stolen wallets and funds in the past, learn how to keep your asset safe and learn from your mistake, everyone on here have their own past bad experience too.

No. But there chance of getting the fund if you hire a blockchain expert, report to the authority, reports the Bitcoin addresses used by the scammer on BitcoinAbuse, and have some luck which will make the scammer use CEX because CEX now confiscated Bitcoin that's sent through the reported scammer crypto wallet.

In my opinion, this will be very difficult. Moreover if we have lack proofs, ilegal crypto regulation, and also fast scammer to respon after stealing. They may be able to send the coins to other wallets or mixers so that we will not able to check the coin itself. Although we will report it to the police or ask for the help from fornesic expert,will it work? Not at all. That is why we should know how to at least secure our assets.because once the asset is stolen, there will be other again that is also stolen.

Recovering a stolen fund is dependent on many factors. If the address is used only once and then moved to an exchange where it is traded for fiat then it will be impossible for any forensic expert to do any recovery but as long as it keeps moving across addresses the behaviour of those transactions can be studied and assumptions can be made. But this process requires time and even more of what was lost to the hackers