A known enemy can easily be defeated

[Outhue]

I have a younger brother who lives in the US and yesterday he told me about a call he received saying that he can get his lost coins back and all he needs to do is submit his wallet address.

Before saying that I am a fool, I know this is a scam, but I need to ask about what could possibly go wrong if he submit a wallet address? I did told him to submit a random wallet address that is empty with no single transactions in the past though but I can't stop thinking what this could lead to.

If you know their trick you can always be ahead of them and possibly be able to Warn others too, I am just wondering what they could possibly have in mind, I think they will track his transactions to know his worth. Or there is more? What do you think?

[SilverCryptoBullet]

I have a younger brother who lives in the US and yesterday he told me about a call he received saying that he can get his lost coins back and all he needs to do is submit his wallet address.

Bitcoin transactions and altcoin transactions are irreversible and exceptions only when the founders or developers of altcoin blockchain want to do this. With Bitcoin blockchain, when a transaction has confirmation, it is irreversible.

I can say your friend was exposed to a scam.

Before saying that I am a fool, I know this is a scam, but I need to ask about what could possibly go wrong if he submit a wallet address? I did told him to submit a random wallet address that is empty with no single transactions in the past though but I can't stop thinking what this could lead to.

If the submit requires to create an account, be careful because that website can have back doors.

If submit requires to interact with smart contract, that is risky if later your friend use that empty wallet to store cryptocurrency.

After submit it, revoke smart contract access.
How to revoke token approval following Opensea’s latest security episode
https://etherscan.io/tokenapprovalchecker
https://revoke.cash/
https://app.unrekt.net/

Because it is very likely a scam, I suppose to ignore any submission.

[mocacinno]

I would not trust this either... A cold call after losing your coins reeks of a scam being set up.

The mere sharing of an address does not sound harmful to me (unless looked at from a privacy perspective), but it could be a way to setup trust. It could be the first step into getting your brother send funds, share his private key or install some piece of malware on his system.

Personally, if it were my brother, i'd tell him to not entertain this cold caller. Transactions are irreversible, there is no way of just getting your funds back. The only way to get your funds back is when the scammer is (forced to) send your money back, and usually this means going trough legal channels. There probably are firms that help you get in touch with law enforcement and help you track scammers down, but those companies don't just cold call victims.

[DarkState]

Before saying that I am a fool, I know this is a scam, but I need to ask about what could possibly go wrong if he submit a wallet address? I did told him to submit a random wallet address that is empty with no single transactions in the past though but I can't stop thinking what this could lead to.

It's good that you realize it's a scam. But I think there is no need to give any random or empty address. Just totally ignore them. There is no need to contact with scammers. It is best to stay away from scammers as much as possible.

[siniminomorocomunisakito]

If you know their trick you can always be ahead of them and possibly be able to Warn others too, I am just wondering what they could possibly have in mind, I think they will track his transactions to know his worth. Or there is more? What do you think?

His style has always been that way. This is a stale old trick that is very effective for new users and is always used by them by offering recovery services so that lost funds can be returned to the way they were before.

If your relative gives the private key to the fraudster, it means that they have the key to your house and they can easily access the potential coins in it after that the account is completely zero.

[FatFork]

What do you think?

Since there is zero chance your brother can get his coins back, I see no point in communicating with the scammers at all. Honestly, I think the best course of action is to completely ignore it.

[Mia Chloe]

I have a younger brother who lives in the US and yesterday he told me about a call he received saying that he can get his lost coins back and all he needs to do is submit his wallet address.

Before saying that I am a fool, I know this is a scam, but I need to ask about what could possibly go wrong if he submit a wallet address? I did told him to submit a random wallet address that is empty with no single transactions in the past though but I can't stop thinking what this could lead to.

If you know their trick you can always be ahead of them and possibly be able to Warn others too, I am just wondering what they could possibly have in mind, I think they will track his transactions to know his worth. Or there is more? What do you think?

Of course such proposal is actually a scam one. To start with, Bitcoin is not some sort of private or governmental organization or company that has some sort of customer care unit or customer service help desk that can help you retrieve lost wallets.
When I first went through this post the first idea of possible things they could do is a dust attack. Likewise, the victim in question may probably and unknowningly give out his wallet address to these scammers and easily they can monitor and track the user's transactions via a block chain explorer or the Mempool. If they are able to link it to an exchange account, then they can get more info about the victim to be able to attempt hacking probably via phishing.

Since there is zero chance your brother can get his coins back, I see no point in communicating with the scammers at all. Honestly, I think the best course of action is to completely ignore it.

This is a very good advice as sometimes in trying to play smart over the scammer, you may unintentionally give out information about yourself and coins that may seem harmless to you however is already a base information for the scammer to work on. So just like fat fork said , avoiding a conversation is best.

[Pokapoka124]

Don’t encourage conversations with scammers because that’s how it starts. When your cousin sends his wallet address, the scammers will check the wallet transactions on the blockchain and get an idea of how much they can skim off him. Then they will probably send a document of his wallet blockchain records making themselves look like technical professionals. They will then ask for a fee to recover the lost bitcoins because they have proved to you that they know where they are, your cousin might fall for the scam if he’s not aware that anyone can do that using bitcoin block explorers.

[lovesmayfamilis]

You haven't lost anything, so you're calm. But those who have lost and are not very strong in knowledge about Bitcoin will hope for any miracle, and scammers are waiting for these people. I think that they will demand an advance payment, and in the end, they will confuse the client heads so that the person will give them both the advance payment and their seed phrases.

[Cantsay]

If you know their trick you can always be ahead of them and possibly be able to Warn others too, I am just wondering what they could possibly have in mind, I think they will track his transactions to know his worth. Or there is more? What do you think?

I haven’t experienced this before - but what came to my mind when I was reading your post was; maybe they are asking for a wallet address so as to know how frequently your brother use crypto and also the amount he spends (that’s if he sends an address that he uses all the time) after they are able to determine the way he moves his coin they might now decide to try to scam him through other means that he might not be aware of.

I think they are just making preparations for a bigger attack - this stage is to try to get close and possibly even get him to disclose information that are not supposed to be shared with others after which they can have their way with the scam.

Even if he sends a new wallet address, he’ll still one day send whatever he received to his exchange wallet and then the tracking will commence.

[Jawhead999]

This might be a way for criminals to perform $5 wrench attack, your younger brother lives in US where assault weapons is legal, so this is really dangerous.

With Bitcoin blockchain, when a transaction has confirmation, it is irreversible.

Not entirely correct, transaction that has confirmation could be irreversible since someone can perform 51% attack, one confirmation has around 62% risk. So make sure you need to wait for many confirmations especially you send a huge amount.

[yudi09]

-snip-

If you know their trick you can always be ahead of them and possibly be able to Warn others too, I am just wondering what they could possibly have in mind, I think they will track his transactions to know his worth. Or there is more? What do you think?

The reason they ask your sister to send them the address is because they can return the lost coins only as a method. I wouldn't believe it and thought it was the most obvious trick that they were playing.

Their target is to want people to provide addresses to track because Bitcoin addresses can be information for them to see where Bitcoins are stored.
When they call me to give me my Bitcoin address, I probably won't hand it over for privacy, but if they find my Bitcoin address without my knowledge, I'm not too afraid because my Bitcoin is not in danger considering that what they found was only the public address, not the seed phrase.

[knowngunman]

I already sensed some foul play here for holding conversation with them to that extent. The question is did your brother lost some coins in the past? If no, he should completely ignore them and if yes, he should question himself how they get to know that he lost coins in the past. If you can not have answer to that or they can not answer that, quietly end the conversation. The more you keep on entertaining such conversation, the more they know your weakness and in the long run you'll be convinced that they can really help you. Having money to invest in bitcoins is one thing and having the knowledge to manage and protect yourself from scammers is another.

Their target is to want people to provide addresses to track because Bitcoin addresses can be information for them to see where Bitcoins are stored.
When they call me to give me my Bitcoin address, I probably won't hand it over for privacy, but if they find my Bitcoin address without my knowledge, I'm not too afraid because my Bitcoin is not in danger considering that what they found was only the public address, not the seed phrase.

I experienced something like this just last week although it is not crypto related but the traditional banking. The scammer called me and introduced himself as a staff from my bank. Without doubt, I know he's a scammer for calling during the weekend with just ordinary number and not official number but I decide to play along with him. I asked if there's any problem and he said yes and even provide every of my banking information just to make it look real. To cut the long story short, I asked him from which of my bank and he mentioned a bank I don't have account with. Lol! I told him he's still new in the system and should learn more about scamming. He hissed and ended the call immediately.

Some of these scammers are very smart but you have to be calm and question them to the extent of doubting themselves if you think you have the courage but it is advisable to put end to the call if you can not resist their behavior. Op, keep in mind that whenever someone approached to help without you seeking for the help in the first place, it is likely a scam or there's probably a motive behind the help.

[Lucius]

I have a younger brother who lives in the US and yesterday he told me about a call he received saying that he can get his lost coins back and all he needs to do is submit his wallet address.

The question arises, how does someone know that he has lost coins, and on top of that they are calling him on his phone number? It seems to me that he is being called by the same people who stole his coins and are now trying to pull off a double scam.

Before saying that I am a fool, I know this is a scam, but I need to ask about what could possibly go wrong if he submit a wallet address? I did told him to submit a random wallet address that is empty with no single transactions in the past though but I can't stop thinking what this could lead to.

I believe that the address is only the beginning and in itself is probably irrelevant. Based on that address, the scammers will "conclude" that it is possible to return the coins, but in return they will demand that your brother pay in advance. Unfortunately, that's why I call it a double scam, and many fall for this cheap trick.

[arwin100]

I have a younger brother who lives in the US and yesterday he told me about a call he received saying that he can get his lost coins back and all he needs to do is submit his wallet address.

Before saying that I am a fool, I know this is a scam, but I need to ask about what could possibly go wrong if he submit a wallet address? I did told him to submit a random wallet address that is empty with no single transactions in the past though but I can't stop thinking what this could lead to.

If you know their trick you can always be ahead of them and possibly be able to Warn others too, I am just wondering what they could possibly have in mind, I think they will track his transactions to know his worth. Or there is more? What do you think?

Same question by other people on how the caller know that your brother lose his coins? But in the situation like that you should warn your brother not to entertain any claims that they can retrieve back their lose balances since that is a huge risk if you try to see what they can able to do since you don't know what possible actions they will execute so to avoid getting any further issue much better ignore and just forget about that lose balance then move on.

A lot of tricks has been done for many times by those scammers so hopefully your brother didn't try to talk again with those scammers since its dangerous if they get further more details about him since he might receive a lot of scamming attempts or other things that we can't imagine.

[Queentoshi]

I believe that the address is only the beginning and in itself is probably irrelevant.

This is what I was thinking too, that the scammers may possibly only be demanding for the wallet address simply just to check how cooperative their victim is,  I agree that it may look like an irrelevant information, but that would just be the first thing they ask, and if you give them audience, once they know they have your attention, they start demanding more and maybe ask you to pay for their services at the end of the day.

Best action for scammers who send you suspicious messages is to leave them unanswered.

[sunsilk]

I have a younger brother who lives in the US and yesterday he told me about a call he received saying that he can get his lost coins back and all he needs to do is submit his wallet address.

Before saying that I am a fool, I know this is a scam, but I need to ask about what could possibly go wrong if he submit a wallet address? I did told him to submit a random wallet address that is empty with no single transactions in the past though but I can't stop thinking what this could lead to.

If you know their trick you can always be ahead of them and possibly be able to Warn others too, I am just wondering what they could possibly have in mind, I think they will track his transactions to know his worth. Or there is more? What do you think?

Start out if your brother has lost his coins. From there, stitches the people that he has talked with and why that random call knows that he has lost it before.

While there's no problem at all if he sends a random fresh wallet address to that guy. But as Lucius said and explained, that's the start of the scam.

Tell your brother to be wise as lost coins if it's with crypto, they're lost forever.

[Kelward]

Don’t encourage conversations with scammers because that’s how it starts. When your cousin sends his wallet address, the scammers will check the wallet transactions on the blockchain and get an idea of how much they can skim off him. Then they will probably send a document of his wallet blockchain records making themselves look like technical professionals. They will then ask for a fee to recover the lost bitcoins because they have proved to you that they know where they are, your cousin might fall for the scam if he’s not aware that anyone can do that using bitcoin block explorers.

I believe that the scammers will want to do anything to gain a victim's trust, so them asking their victim to connect their wallet could be a first step to gain trust, after which they will unfold the second phase of their scam. So I think that it's either of two things, they'll end up asking for outrageous fees, until the victim will get the picture and move on, or they'll coax the victim to unintentionally provide them with sensitive information to hack their wallet. When Bitcoin is sent to a wrong address, it's as good as gone forever, unless the receiver wants to reverse the Bitcoin to the sender, so it's best for the person to move on, instead of contacting these recovery scammers.

[SatoPrincess]

Scammers come up with all kinds of new ways to scam people. There are a lot of ways the scammers can use to steal your money, in this case;

• The scammers can request for personal data and use it for identity theft/fraud.
• They could ask for a fee for their service, and later ask for more fees until the victim is unable to send anymore.

OP, I don’t think this was a random call. You should ask your cousins some questions. Did you lose his coins and how did he lose them? It seems to me that it is the same scammers who stole his coins in the first place that are contacting him for bitcoin recovery service.

[Faisal2202]

If you know their trick you can always be ahead of them and possibly be able to Warn others too, I am just wondering what they could possibly have in mind, I think they will track his transactions to know his worth. Or there is more? What do you think?

Getting the wallet address of a person can cause future scam attacks, which means if your brother had shared his wallet address, then that scammer might try different types of scam attacks on him, like address poisoning, or something else, they will try to fish him so that he would caught up in there honey words. And I don't think they would do any strong damage by only knowing your wallet address unless your brighter is a noob.

Means, it was there first demand, after that they would check it on explorer, and might ask you to download some files, or some software so that you could unlock it by yourself, or they might say, we have unlocked your wallet, and in order to get the seed phrase you have to pay us more etc. etc. They will try to scam, so its better to report them, I found a site, don't know the potential it have but dyor before reporting that call here https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/