Receiving a Big Payment made to my Electrum Wallet

[winsoft]

Hello, my dear Community Members, I started using ELECTRUM wallet on Dec.13, 2023 and therefore I have very little knowledge of how it works!
Someone has recovered 1.3 BTC of my funds after my crypto account in Hong Kong was hacked a few years ago - and said it was sent to my ELECTRUM wallet using the BTC address I gave him for the Electrum Request.
He also told me that I need to deposit/send $5000 BTC (about 10% of the BTC funds he sent) to my Electrum wallet - to show HISTORY in my wallet BEFORE my funds can be verified by Electrum and PAID into my account (and Request Status to change from UNPAID to verified?). Is that correct, or is he trying to fool me and keep my recovered funds for himself?

[OmegaStarScream]

He's definitely trying to scam you. You shouldn't send him any funds. No wallet or exchange would ever ask you to send such a ridiculous amount of money (or any amount really) to "verify" your account. I'm guessing whatever Electrum wallet you are using was not downloaded from Google play or from the official site either? https://electrum.org/

[Charles-Tim]

He also told me that I need to deposit/send $5000 BTC (about 10% of the BTC funds he sent) to my Electrum wallet

Do not make it confuse you. He will likely ask you to send coins to his wallet address. If you send it, he has just scammed you, not only that he fooled you. Do not pay him any money. Recovery services are scam.

[Nwada001]

Lol
I believe you might have come across all these online scammers who promise to help recover a lost fund in your wallet or any crypto account, but one thing that you have to ask yourself is: if they actually help you recover that money, why didn't they use money from the BTC recovered to pay the fee they are requesting you to pay?? 
 
It's just a total scam, as they want to use your lost funds to scam you more and more, and no payment is ever needed for you to view a deposit in your wallet. Everything happens in the blockchain, and if truly there is money in that wallet, you can see it yourself from blockchain Explorer.

[jrrsparkles]

It's an old book scam, but why does involve electrum? If it is your electrum wallet you can verify the ownership via signing a message so no need to deposit any dime into it.

TX status should be either unconfirmed or 'x' confirmations which means the wallet you are using is not an actual electrum, get rid of it ASAP.

[Zaguru12]

It’s a scam and he is still trying to fool you, there is nothing like been verified or unverified. Once a transaction is sent to your address even if it is not yet confirmed you will still see the same unconfirmed transaction in the wallet. So if it is sent you must see it. I hope he doesn’t have the keys or seed phrase to that address this one that he asks you to send some funds there. I will even advise you to ditch that entire wallet and create another one by yourself.

[Orpichukwu]

Is that correct, or is he trying to fool me and keep my recovered funds for himself?

He is trying to fool you, and he also doesn't have access to your funds yet. There is no way he could be able to recover that, and he still needs $5k from you.
 
Their wallet was never recovered in the first place, and I also don't think you have any wallets from the past, as what I think you had back then might have been an account with a centralised platform. Just don't send anything to anyone; Sending money to him will make you the fool he wants you to be, so it's better you avoid him entirely before you get fooled.

[Churchillvv]

There is no hacker out there that can help you recover your lost funds without you knowing them face to face. I believe the person you are talking to is just a social media scammer and i know for sure you have never met him or her in real life.

There is no such thing about viewing your history before anyone can send you any bitcoin to your electrum wallet. It just a strategy to scam you.
If he or she has the fund recovered he should be able to take a the service fee from the recovered funds. And how the heck can someone recover a 1.3 Bitcoin for you without your present or never seen you before imagine the the amount it worths now so it can never be real.

Don't fall victim.

[Stalker22]

~
Is that correct, or is he trying to fool me and keep my recovered funds for himself?

What do you think about this? Honestly, since you are asking such questions, I assume you have your doubts. Scammers may be dumb, but they still manage to scam because there are people who are even dumber.

Be smart, do not fall for such bullshit stories!

[BitMaxz]

Someone has recovered 1.3 BTC of my funds after my crypto account in Hong Kong was hacked a few years ago - and said it was sent to my ELECTRUM wallet using the BTC address I gave him for the Electrum Request.

Did you contact him and ask for help to recover your BTC and deal with a 10% fee?
Did he send the recovered BTC to your Electrum wallet?
Check carefully you should be able to see the transaction under the Electrum history tab.

If you see a transaction and it's not confirmed yet with a very low fee don't send him the 10% fee yet until the transaction has 3 confirmations because he can cancel the transaction and send it back to his wallet while it's not confirmed yet.
Most scammers do this to make it look legit be careful not to send BTC except if it was confirmed and if you can able to send these funds to your new wallet.

[sovrynaut(RSK)]

With this post I want to ask about receiving feature in Electrum. Why it actually exists? I have a list of my adresses in "Adress" tab so I can just copy any of them and send BTC from any other wallets/accounts. Why then is there this "Receive" tab? What's the difference anyway?

[hosseinimr93]

With this post I want to ask about receiving feature in Electrum. Why it actually exists? I have a list of my adresses in "Adress" tab so I can just copy any of them and send BTC from any other wallets/accounts. Why then is there this "Receive" tab? What's the difference anyway?

If you go to "Receive" tab and create a request, you can be sure that you haven't given that address to someone else before. This is useful for protecting your privacy.

With using the "Receive", you can also set an expiry time for your request and add a description. In this way, you can know which address you gave to whom and whether the payment has been made before the deadline or not.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Someone has recovered 1.3 BTC of my funds after my crypto account in Hong Kong was hacked a few years ago

Is it your account on an centralized exchange?
Is it only your account hack or that exchange hack in general?

and said it was sent to my ELECTRUM wallet using the BTC address I gave him for the Electrum Request.

First you must know, Bitcoin transaction is irreversible so no one can recover bitcoin for you if it was already sent to a hacker wallet.

Second, you have to check a transaction hash to see it was actually sent to your wallet address and was it confirmed by Bitcoin miner. I believe it is a scam but the advise is for you to check Bitcoin transaction generally and help you to avoid scam in future.

Irreversible transactions

[nc50lc]

Why it actually exists? I have a list of my adresses in "Adress" tab so I can just copy any of them and send BTC from any other wallets/accounts. Why then is there this "Receive" tab? What's the difference anyway?

Firstly, the 'Address' tab isn't displayed by default so the 'Receive' tab is necessary to request for unused addresses of your wallet by default.
Your question only arises once a user enabled the tab due to curiosity or specific purpose.

Here's some perks of using the 'Receive' tab:
Aside from tracking purposes as already mentioned, it can generate "Bitcoin URI" which contains the amount and description that's supported by some wallets.
Another is it's for lightning invoice, Electrum isn't just for on-chain transaction but supports lightning as well.

It also provides some functionality that can only be done in the console via command like generating addresses beyond the gap limit;
In the Receive tab, you can generate address past the gap limit if you need more than 20 unused address.

[SatoPrincess]

Is that correct, or is he trying to fool me and keep my recovered funds for himself?

You’re being scammed. It’s impossible to recover lost bitcoins or in your case stolen bitcoins. I know it’s hard to let go of such a huge amount of money but that person is only trying to scam you. Also he doesn’t have your 1.3btc. If he did, why would he hand them over to you?

I have so many questions; How did you come about this person who’s an expert in recovery? And what wallet were you before that got hacked? Did you check your wallet address on blockchain to see where the bitcoins were moved to?

Your story reminds me of this thread that was posted some days ago, I guess this is the latest tactic used by scammers to swindle their victims.

[capedbaldy]

snip

I have read your post several times, but you missed some important things to explain about your case, let me summarize the explanation from this thread:

- You are new to electrum on December 13, 2023 and you claim to have 1.3 btc in your wallet, the price of bitcoin on December 13 was 41,450 dollars and your accumulated assets at that time was 53,885 dollars, I assume you are a new crypto user as every Bitcoin user know Electrum as a trusted wallet application and not easy to hack, unless you are very careless.

- You said your account was hacked in Hong Kong, the explanation is very unclear but we tried to assume that you were using an exchange account from Hong Kong, but unfortunately you didn't explain any details about that exchange and we can't judge the reputation of that exchange.

- someone claims to have recovered assets of 1.3 btc, he is "X" and you didn't explain anything about that person, how did you get information from that person and found out that you have lost assets on the exchange.

I can't give you the exact solution before you complete my analysis explanation, but a temporary solution is don't believe anyone can recover electrum wallet even professional programming says there is a small chance to recover addresses using wallet hardware and if your exchange account has been hacked or you using on exchange scam, then there is no hope of getting back 1.3 BTC.