Question about the secret exponent. Fresh out of can

[larry_vw_1955]

i won't stop untill i find it before someone else because i saw that people drain adresses like mine with balance in it, which for me can be double edged sword if someone drain it i can find the person legally, but if noone try to, im sticking to ian coleman tool with big hopes to find the priv key.

if you don't know the private key then ian coleman is not going to help at all. also, no one is going to drain your address. if that could happen then bitcoin would be broken.

[1714506319]

1714506319

[1714506319]

1714506319

[1714506319]

1714506319

[Debilsumda]

i won't stop untill i find it before someone else because i saw that people drain adresses like mine with balance in it, which for me can be double edged sword if someone drain it i can find the person legally, but if noone try to, im sticking to ian coleman tool with big hopes to find the priv key.

if you don't know the private key then ian coleman is not going to help at all. also, no one is going to drain your address. if that could happen then bitcoin would be broken.

Can i ask why coleman tool wont help, because i found a way to derive adresses starting with or similar to mine im looking for, can say i see glimpses of hope. Also yes im aware it's very minimalistic chance, but still what else should i do, i can't just ditch them and move on after i found out i have a survived and untouched adress in the chain

[larry_vw_1955]

Can i ask why coleman tool wont help, because i found a way to derive adresses starting with or similar to mine im looking for,

just because 2 addresses start out with the same 8 or 7 letters that doesn't mean their private keys are related in that same way.

but still what else should i do, i can't just ditch them and move on after i found out i have a survived and untouched adress in the chain

have you considered getting hypnotized? i heard that sometimes help people remember small details they otherwise would never have been able to. thing is, if you never saw the private key with your eyes then that won't work.  

[Debilsumda]

Can i ask why coleman tool wont help, because i found a way to derive adresses starting with or similar to mine im looking for,

just because 2 addresses start out with the same 8 or 7 letters that doesn't mean their private keys are related in that same way.

but still what else should i do, i can't just ditch them and move on after i found out i have a survived and untouched adress in the chain

have you considered getting hypnotized? i heard that sometimes help people remember small details they otherwise would never have been able to. thing is, if you never saw the private key with your eyes then that won't work.  

Hypnotised no, but i was and still i am much traumatised im open about it, not only because i lost around 3k btc, but all the stress and the jail time for just semi big farm, i can't say i didn't learn lessons from this experience, but it do affected my life big way. Anyway my pdoctor, did suggest that mushrooms can help, they actually did, but nothing really that helped me. I have ptsd and before all this to happen so my brain is kinda unable to be controlled by substances and etc, its like im alert 24/7 even when i do sleep. Still can't complain, because things wont change anyway, so im focused on solutions over problems. Big off topic sorry. If i find the exact same adress in coleman tool, key is the same tho right? I mean exactly the same adress 33 characters lenght, should be mine one? If yes, im ready to lose all the time im able to, because its not like i relate only on the btc inside, but still money is also a tool that i need, it don't buy happiness, but it do help a lot. Im not greedy person had much, had nothing, but its much essential to have money, especially when btc is raising very well, i can use the value of the coins in way to ensure my future, family, to do things that i missed while was like a caged bird. For sure atleast 5 coins are to sue even more the authorities about doing me this, and etc.. Again off topic but its hard to sleep man

[o_e_l_e_o]

Its just the hash in hex form starting with 00, base58check shows my adress name, but i do it online and in in the browser version? You think gonna show diff results if i download it from the repository and run it offline? Because now it shows completely different things

As BlackHatCoiner has said, it sounds very much like you have simply decoded your address to the pub key hash (or maybe not even got that far since you appear to still have the 0x00 network byte at the start). Can you tell us how many characters you have?

I'm afraid knowing the public key or the pub key hash is useless to you. If either of things made it possible to recover your private key, then bitcoin would be completely insecure and the whole network would have collapsed years ago. Further, finding other addresses similar to yours is equally useless. There is absolutely no correlation between two similar addresses, and their private keys will be just as different as any other two private keys.

The only way you are going to recover your coins is remembering the words/phrase/string you used to create the brain wallet in the first place.

[Debilsumda]

Its just the hash in hex form starting with 00, base58check shows my adress name, but i do it online and in in the browser version? You think gonna show diff results if i download it from the repository and run it offline? Because now it shows completely different things

As BlackHatCoiner has said, it sounds very much like you have simply decoded your address to the pub key hash (or maybe not even got that far since you appear to still have the 0x00 network byte at the start). Can you tell us how many characters you have?

I'm afraid knowing the public key or the pub key hash is useless to you. If either of things made it possible to recover your private key, then bitcoin would be completely insecure and the whole network would have collapsed years ago. Further, finding other addresses similar to yours is equally useless. There is absolutely no correlation between two similar addresses, and their private keys will be just as different as any other two private keys.

The only way you are going to recover your coins is remembering the words/phrase/string you used to create the brain wallet in the first place.

Yes i fully understand this, i have converted the pubkey with the prefix, that's why it shows mine adress but, can show the wif. And im not looking for similar to mine adresses, im looking exactly for mine, because its there, somewhere, it just matter of time to find it, even if it take monthss, years, i really don't mind because ones found, the whole game changes, now is lets say worth of 3mil, in the meantime while im looking for it can grow as value, even if its decrease i do not mind, i still do have couple coins, but its not the same when u once had 500x over that u have now. Sadly especially me, im consumer, because i learned my self this way, but i also had less than i have now, so i will get used to it while trying to get to the real treasure kf mine, or i will make this what i have now even more, its just a pity that i know the feeling of having much more than i really needed, but its in human nature to be like this, nothing is impossible, once done can be repeated or if not, it is what it is. 

[o_e_l_e_o]

Yes i fully understand this, i have converted the pubkey with the prefix, that's why it shows mine adress but, can show the wif.

A WIF is just a different way of encoding the private key. You cannot convert from the public key to the private key in any format. All you can do is convert back and forth between the address and the pubkeyhash, but that doesn't help you whatsoever.

And im not looking for similar to mine adresses, im looking exactly for mine, because its there, somewhere, it just matter of time to find it, even if it take monthss, years, i really don't mind

The earth will be consumed by the dying sun before you find it. That's not an exaggeration. There are 2¹⁶⁰ possible addresses. Even if you could somehow check a trillion addresses every second without ever stopping, then by the time the earth is consumed by the sun in 5 billion years, you will have checked approximately 0.00000000000000001% of all addresses.

As I said above, the only way you can recover it is by remember the brain wallet. If you have a rough idea as to what it might be, then you might be able to attempt to brute force it, but you'll need something to go on.

[Debilsumda]

Yes i fully understand this, i have converted the pubkey with the prefix, that's why it shows mine adress but, can show the wif.

A WIF is just a different way of encoding the private key. You cannot convert from the public key to the private key in any format. All you can do is convert back and forth between the address and the pubkeyhash, but that doesn't help you whatsoever.

And im not looking for similar to mine adresses, im looking exactly for mine, because its there, somewhere, it just matter of time to find it, even if it take monthss, years, i really don't mind

The earth will be consumed by the dying sun before you find it. That's not an exaggeration. There are 2¹⁶⁰ possible addresses. Even if you could somehow check a trillion addresses every second without ever stopping, then by the time the earth is consumed by the sun in 5 billion years, you will have checked approximately 0.00000000000000001% of all addresses.

As I said above, the only way you can recover it is by remember the brain wallet. If you have a rough idea as to what it might be, then you might be able to attempt to brute force it, but you'll need something to go on.

I agree with everything you said, but im not checking every adress available, i derive only the ones who are similar to mine idk how many adresses start with 16 or 13 for example, but this somehow tightened the range of adresess, although about the bruteforce, i never attempted it, i know that some coding languages can decrypt the rsa key, but keep in mind that im far from hacker, i have zero knowledge how to run such a script or whatever to be able atleast to derive something that could help me. I know lt isn't so hard to run a sll or javascript the most simple ones, but still. For sure i know the feds have this knowledge and can do it with ease, they did drained all my funds in a day max two, but this is no option. And still i wont leave these coins hanging like thiss, maybe when i get tired and finnaly accept that is no way back i will give up. But how you give from such a thing? If you was on my place would you give up, because i assume you're more in depth with these kind of hacking things, probably everyone here is, i just lost time that i had plans to teach my self, time that i can't return. Its such a paradox

[o_e_l_e_o]

I agree with everything you said, but im not checking every adress available, i derive only the ones who are similar to mine idk how many adresses start with 16 or 13 for example

This changes nothing. You cannot know what an address starts with until you derive it, by which point you have already done all the computationally expensive parts. It doesn't matter if you set up a vanity generator to only search for an address which exactly matches yours. Even with all the computing power in the world, the human race would be extinct before it even came close to finding a match.

For sure i know the feds have this knowledge and can do it with ease, they did drained all my funds in a day max two, but this is no option.

Your other coins weren't stolen by someone reverse engineering the private key from the address. This is impossible. They would have been stolen by someone finding a back up, or finding the string you used to generate the brain wallet, or from an insecure brain wallet generator.

If you was on my place would you give up, because i assume you're more in depth with these kind of hacking things

Maybe not give up entirely, but I would give up going down the path of blindly generating addresses or trying to reverse engineer my private key from my address. Again, these things are impossible. The only way you will be successful is by either finding a back up of your private key or by remembering the string used to generate the brain wallet in the first place.

[larry_vw_1955]

I agree with everything you said, but im not checking every adress available, i derive only the ones who are similar to mine

just out of curiosity, how are you doing that?

The earth will be consumed by the dying sun before you find it. That's not an exaggeration. There are 2160 possible addresses. Even if you could somehow check a trillion addresses every second without ever stopping, then by the time the earth is consumed by the sun in 5 billion years, you will have checked approximately 0.00000000000000001% of all addresses.

it could take even longer than that if he's just checking them one by one using some manual tool like ian coleman  

[Debilsumda]

I agree with everything you said, but im not checking every adress available, i derive only the ones who are similar to mine

just out of curiosity, how are you doing that?

The earth will be consumed by the dying sun before you find it. That's not an exaggeration. There are 2160 possible addresses. Even if you could somehow check a trillion addresses every second without ever stopping, then by the time the earth is consumed by the sun in 5 billion years, you will have checked approximately 0.00000000000000001% of all addresses.

it could take even longer than that if he's just checking them one by one using some manual tool like ian coleman  

I use search in page thing xd, also if you put the hash260 in the seed place and it do derive much more adresess, starting with same prefix most of the time, also the derivation path and the compression should be adjust too, but trust me if u do spend much time watching adresess, you either start to learn them all or you think you saw it place, its no good job tho, rn im trying with the vanity thing, experimenting just, no idea what else can man try

[o_e_l_e_o]

also if you put the hash260 in the seed place and it do derive much more adresess

The BIP39 seed is simply the number generated from PBKDF2 using your seed phrase and any optional passphrase. It is in no way related to the RIPEMD160 of the address you are trying to recover access to. All you are doing by feeding the BIP39 seed box with your RIPEMD160 is essentially generating completely random addresses and hoping for a match. As I've explained above, there is literally no point whatsoever in doing this. It is impossible to find a match with any address, let alone a specific address.

starting with same prefix most of the time

There is absolutely no correlation in the distribution of address prefixes here. You are simply seeing what you want to see.

no idea what else can man try

You can stop driving yourself insane and completely wasting your time by generating random addresses, and instead focus on trying to recreate the brain wallet.

[Debilsumda]

also if you put the hash260 in the seed place and it do derive much more adresess

The BIP39 seed is simply the number generated from PBKDF2 using your seed phrase and any optional passphrase. It is in no way related to the RIPEMD160 of the address you are trying to recover access to. All you are doing by feeding the BIP39 seed box with your RIPEMD160 is essentially generating completely random addresses and hoping for a match. As I've explained above, there is literally no point whatsoever in doing this. It is impossible to find a match with any address, let alone a specific address.

starting with same prefix most of the time

There is absolutely no correlation in the distribution of address prefixes here. You are simply seeing what you want to see.

no idea what else can man try

You can stop driving yourself insane and completely wasting your time by generating random addresses, and instead focus on trying to recreate the brain wallet.

Sigh.. You're right once again, i mean yall are right, I do it irrationally, im also trying now the vanity adresess, tried to calculate the ecds, by  single nonce, by wrong nonce, by signature, i mean i tried it all i guess, except the brute force, but mine equipment start and stop with smartphone, runner some old applications from archives in google queries but couldn't run em, because i do not have gpu or cpu, the phone cannot run then its no way, even the vanity adresess at least a laptop, it's like im bruteforcing but one time per 2 minutes, now all i see is vanity adresess, this lack of sleep and constant worrying for sure do have huge impact on me, i haven't took a nap in 4 days, I realise i have to take a break, but this is frightening me because i think i found algorithm in everything im trying, like a heavy gambler, other incoming bills are worrying me, just can't lose time in sleep rn, because i may end up worse if i do lose time, at least i collect information, might try to arrange the key from the adress, in many different ways, also reverse engineering is next, although about the brain wallet, for each walled I made i did a paper list back up by order, wallet 1 had 30 words passprasse, 2 had 60, and go so on paper 3 x90, and this is if not the thirteenth wallet it's the twelve, i think i stopped at 90 characters by lenght, ahhh fml rlly, thats why i never believed in karma, because my thoughts and all are pure, and its true that nice guys finish last s. I still keep hope in me and if ny any chance i manage to get into the account, everyone who bear with my bs on this particular post is receiving minimum 2 coins. Thank you all, even when u known that i stood minimalistic chamce, you never ignored me. Much appreciated.

[BlackHatCoiner]

im also trying now the vanity adresess, tried to calculate the ecds, by  single nonce, by wrong nonce, by signature, i mean i tried it all i guess

I'm not sure what's "ecds", and why you did all that, but I'm sure you're in total despair right now. Here's what I would do if I were you: stop wasting time doing random things, and focus on explaining in detail what I did at that time with the brainwallet.

i haven't took a nap in 4 days

I'd also take a nap. You need to understand you can't accomplish anything if you can't think.

also reverse engineering is next

You can't think rationally right now. Reverse engineering is not going to help you somehow. Calm down, take a good nap, and come back to this thread later.

[o_e_l_e_o]

this lack of sleep and constant worrying for sure do have huge impact on me, i haven't took a nap in 4 days, I realise i have to take a break, but this is frightening me because i think i found algorithm in everything im trying, like a heavy gambler, other incoming bills are worrying me, just can't lose time in sleep rn, because i may end up worse if i do lose time

This is clearly affecting your mental health. As BlackHatCoiner says, step back, get some rest, and approach things with a clear head. What you are trying at the moment is serving no purpose except to stress you out more and dial up your anxiety levels.

although about the brain wallet, for each walled I made i did a paper list back up by order, wallet 1 had 30 words passprasse, 2 had 60, and go so on paper 3 x90, and this is if not the thirteenth wallet it's the twelve, i think i stopped at 90 characters by lenght

Once you've got some rest, then this is what you should focus on. So you think the passphrase for this brain wallet had 90 characters? Or 90 words? What else can you remember about it? Did you just select random words, or did you take words from a book, a movie quote, a song lyric, etc? What about the paper back ups? Did you only make one copy of each? Where did you store them? Any chance of finding them? If you printed the back up rather than write it by hand, could the file still be saved electronically somewhere? This is your only possible route to accessing your coins. All the reverse engineering you are trying on your phone will get you nowhere. Even with the most powerful supercomputer in the world, attempting to reverse engineer a private key is a futile task.

[larry_vw_1955]

I use search in page thing xd, also if you put the hash260 in the seed place and it do derive much more adresess, starting with same prefix most of the time, also the derivation path and the compression should be adjust too, but trust me if u do spend much time watching adresess, you either start to learn them all or you think you saw it place, its no good job tho, rn im trying with the vanity thing, experimenting just, no idea what else can man try

there's probably alot faster ways to generate random private keys/addresses. you just run a loop like this:

Code:

found=false,

while (not found):
    pvtkey=gen_random_privatekey(),
    address=address(pvtkey),
    if (my_address==address) then found=true

print("Your private key is ",pvtkey),

just keep your computer running 24/7 while you go do other things. check in on it from time to time. you'll know it's done when it prints the private key.

[Debilsumda]

this lack of sleep and constant worrying for sure do have huge impact on me, i haven't took a nap in 4 days, I realise i have to take a break, but this is frightening me because i think i found algorithm in everything im trying, like a heavy gambler, other incoming bills are worrying me, just can't lose time in sleep rn, because i may end up worse if i do lose time

This is clearly affecting your mental health. As BlackHatCoiner says, step back, get some rest, and approach things with a clear head. What you are trying at the moment is serving no purpose except to stress you out more and dial up your anxiety levels.

although about the brain wallet, for each walled I made i did a paper list back up by order, wallet 1 had 30 words passprasse, 2 had 60, and go so on paper 3 x90, and this is if not the thirteenth wallet it's the twelve, i think i stopped at 90 characters by lenght

Once you've got some rest, then this is what you should focus on. So you think the passphrase for this brain wallet had 90 characters? Or 90 words? What else can you remember about it? Did you just select random words, or did you take words from a book, a movie quote, a song lyric, etc? What about the paper back ups? Did you only make one copy of each? Where did you store them? Any chance of finding them? If you printed the back up rather than write it by hand, could the file still be saved electronically somewhere? This is your only possible route to accessing your coins. All the reverse engineering you are trying on your phone will get you nowhere. Even with the most powerful supercomputer in the world, attempting to reverse engineer a private key is a futile task.

I use search in page thing xd, also if you put the hash260 in the seed place and it do derive much more adresess, starting with same prefix most of the time, also the derivation path and the compression should be adjust too, but trust me if u do spend much time watching adresess, you either start to learn them all or you think you saw it place, its no good job tho, rn im trying with the vanity thing, experimenting just, no idea what else can man try

there's probably alot faster ways to generate random private keys/addresses. you just run a loop like this:

Code:

found=false,

while (not found):
    pvtkey=gen_random_privatekey(),
    address=address(pvtkey),
    if (my_address==address) then found=true

print("Your private key is ",pvtkey),

just keep your computer running 24/7 while you go do other things. check in on it from time to time. you'll know it's done when it prints the private key.

im also trying now the vanity adresess, tried to calculate the ecds, by  single nonce, by wrong nonce, by signature, i mean i tried it all i guess

I'm not sure what's "ecds", and why you did all that, but I'm sure you're in total despair right now. Here's what I would do if I were you: stop wasting time doing random things, and focus on explaining in detail what I did at that time with the brainwallet.

i haven't took a nap in 4 days

I'd also take a nap. You need to understand you can't accomplish anything if you can't think.

also reverse engineering is next

You can't think rationally right now. Reverse engineering is not going to help you somehow. Calm down, take a good nap, and come back to this thread later.

I was so much sleep depraved that i literally just shutted down. About the adress, it is one of my 13 adreeses, i mean i have made couple in the same day because Satoshi wrote that if anyone sents him a coin he will return 50 in exchange, also that he plan to make the blockchain something close to the amazon structure but with the option buy now. I don't know who remember, but he used different adress starting with 1P, i just recall my memories, with this adress i also received the 100th block reward etc. Its really old one, maybe older than the blockchain as we know now. But i checked the archives, and still can be seen, i mean the transcactions and me describing in gihub how people can take their btc forked rewards. I don't know why i stopped used it, probably because it was hard to keep track of all the adresses i had. Overall i had around 3k+ btc in couple, all adresess were drained except the one im trying to recover now,and one more that have dust only in it. I stopped using it after blockchain was renovated, and moved 90% of my coins in the new adresses, so i can keep track more easily, even remember telling my friends that this one adress should be putted in historical crypto museum, because of this. Younger me didn't cared much about it because i couldn't even imagined the things that happened to me, i was mainly focused on the other adresses, because why should i care about lets say 75 coins when i have this much in my other ones. Stupid of me obviously, its obvious why xd. I did had access to it of course back then. The police raided my apartment around 4 in the morning, shouting and demolishing everything that i had in the room where i used to mine and trade and etc... Couple days later before i get moved in my new room where i spend all 6 and something years, my lawyer said that i lost not only all the coins i had but also my freedom. I can't describe how devastated and shattered inside I felt. The things I write now are so off topic, but that's my memories, and i still hurting, not only because im in position where i can lose even the little i have now, like bed and roof, but that there is huge chance i wouldn't be able to regain access to the coins which i was looking down on them back then. I mentioned how i made the passprasses, and also no the passprasse to this one isn't made like the others, i didn't even rewrite it because i had access before everything to happen and i thought I'd never need to. I think i forgot it even then, bcs the fact i can log in and never thought i might be depending on them, i dont even need them all because that is millions now, but back then when first got them was under a dollar, if i remember correctly i didnt had a million even when was arrested, or maybe i had, the government stealed from me, and no wonder why the poorest country in Europe have the largest amount of bitcoins from all countries. I do assume im not the only one who was robbed. For example how come my motherland Bulgaria hold this enormous amount of btc? Simply because they attacked people like me. Sorry that i use this forum to express my feelings, but it do help me to feel slightly better, because things can get only worse for me, and at least this all will remain it the archives of the web, like i did mention the old satoshi adress who was sending coins, and it's funny this thing because only like 10 people sensed him a coin, of course he immediately send back 50+ the amount. It took some time to be received but was a opportunity that will never occur again. Im going to keep on trying everything, also i do not own a laptop, but while i do have a phone will be looking for a way. And will try and listen all the suggestions yall are giving me.

[o_e_l_e_o]

you'll know it's done when it prints the private key.

It will never be done. The only thing you will achieve with this is burnt out hardware and an electricity bill.

i mean i have made couple in the same day because Satoshi wrote that if anyone sents him a coin he will return 50 in exchange

I'm fairly certain Satoshi never said anything like this. Perhaps you are thinking of someone else, or an early bitcoin faucet? Regardless, any such offer that you see these days is 100% a scam.

Overall i had around 3k+ btc in couple, all adresess were drained except the one im trying to recover now,and one more that have dust only in it. I stopped using it after blockchain was renovated, and moved 90% of my coins in the new adresses

So was the address you are trying to recover created from a brain wallet as you said before, or was it created by blockchain.com? I believe they first offered a wallet service in 2012.

I mentioned how i made the passprasses, and also no the passprasse to this one isn't made like the others, i didn't even rewrite it because i had access before everything to happen and i thought I'd never need to. I think i forgot it even then, bcs the fact i can log in and never thought i might be depending on them

If it is a brain wallet, then I'm afraid that if you didn't make any back ups and you can't remember the brain wallet then your coins are irretrievable.

[Debilsumda]

you'll know it's done when it prints the private key.

It will never be done. The only thing you will achieve with this is burnt out hardware and an electricity bill.

i mean i have made couple in the same day because Satoshi wrote that if anyone sents him a coin he will return 50 in exchange

I'm fairly certain Satoshi never said anything like this. Perhaps you are thinking of someone else, or an early bitcoin faucet? Regardless, any such offer that you see these days is 100% a scam.

Overall i had around 3k+ btc in couple, all adresess were drained except the one im trying to recover now,and one more that have dust only in it. I stopped using it after blockchain was renovated, and moved 90% of my coins in the new adresses

So was the address you are trying to recover created from a brain wallet as you said before, or was it created by blockchain.com? I believe they first offered a wallet service in 2012.

I mentioned how i made the passprasses, and also no the passprasse to this one isn't made like the others, i didn't even rewrite it because i had access before everything to happen and i thought I'd never need to. I think i forgot it even then, bcs the fact i can log in and never thought i might be depending on them

If it is a brain wallet, then I'm afraid that if you didn't make any back ups and you can't remember the brain wallet then your coins are irretrievable.

It wasn't a scam, it was in 2008, satoshi had something like query, where he posted updates and his plans i think, im looking for it right now, when i do find it i will update my post, maybe a month or two after/before releasing blockchain.com, i can't remember with full details where he did this queries, it was long ago. And I will find the adress also it somewhere in the archives i believe. But the adress he used was 1ph*** can't remember, or when i write this i think it really could be somekind of faucet,to be tried the peer to peer system, but on other hand, what value btc had to someone try to scam 1 btc

[BlackHatCoiner]

i mean i have made couple in the same day because Satoshi wrote that if anyone sents him a coin he will return 50 in exchange,

That sounds 100% scam, and no, Satoshi never made such offer.

The things I write now are so off topic, but that's my memories, and i still hurting,

I can hardly comprehend your sentences, your text is a little foggy as you may understand yourself. I'm sorry that you've lost everything, but you're here trying to recover your money, right? So, you do have something (or had had in the past) which you might have chances to get back.


The questions are two. If you can answer both with a yes or no, you can put an end to this painful story, and move on with your life.

• Do you remember the wallet software you used to generate the funded addresses? If no, then you'll have lots to try out. Even brainwallet-based.
• Do you happen to have the corresponded passphrase / private keys? Or anything that could have a slight relation with that wallet (i.e., a file of some kind)?

If both answers are negative, you can't recover the money. If you don't know to answer both questions, then it's highly unlikely that you'll ever recover the money.