"We Can Get Your Money Back": The Recovery Scam That Targets Fraud Victims a Second Time

He was 81 when his story was told. Two years before, he had been drawn into a romance scam that took at least $1 million of his savings. In time he handed his financial affairs to his son, who wanted to protect his parents from any more harm.

Then a lawyer reached out with good news. He said he worked with the financial crimes arm of the U.S. Treasury. Law enforcement was working on the case, he said, and it might be able to recover the money.

The son asked for a video call. They met, and the man was fairly convincing: young, in glasses, behind a desk, with framed certificates on the wall. So the son asked for one more thing: photo identification, with the lawyer's credentials.

It arrived. The picture on it, the son says, had been generated by artificial intelligence.

The name the man was using was real, and so was the license number. Both had been taken from a licensed attorney.

Why this scam is different

Most frauds have to find you and then persuade you. This one begins with both jobs done. It already knows you paid once, and it offers the one thing you want most.

The Federal Trade Commission has a phrase for refund and recovery scams: "the worst of the worst."

The scale

• In its 2025 annual report, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center counted 10,516 complaints of recovery scams, tied to $1.4 billion in losses. The figures appear in the report's cryptocurrency section.
• People 60 and older filed 2,529 of those complaints and reported more than $540 million. No other age group reported as much.
• A footnote in the report says the losses may also include what people lost in the earlier scams.
• The FBI has put out a public warning about recovery scams every year since 2023. One of them described more than 100 reports of criminals impersonating the FBI's own complaint center between December 2023 and February 2025.
• The FTC issued two consumer alerts on the subject in the summer of 2026, on June 3 and August 3.
• AARP named recovery scams among its five biggest scams to watch for in 2026.

How the trap is built

They do not always contact you. Sometimes they wait where you will go looking.

The list. The FTC says scammers buy, sell and trade lists of people who have already paid a scammer. A list can hold your name, your address, your phone number, the kind of scam that caught you, and how much you paid. The scammers call it a "sucker list." That is their word, and it tells you what they think of the people on it.

Your own search. People who have lost money look for help online, and the criminals have built for that. The FBI warns that fake recovery services advertise and can turn up among search results. It reports fraudsters joining support groups for fraud victims, posing as fellow victims, and steering people toward a contact who claims to run the Bureau's complaint center.

The costume. They may claim to be with a government agency, a consumer advocacy group or a law firm. The FTC says some now pose as its own agents and send a photograph of an ID and a badge to prove it. The FBI reports fake social media pages impersonating its personnel. It also reports videos made with artificial intelligence, showing a senior Bureau leader and steering people to a fake copy of its complaint website. That fake site asks for your name, your phone number, your email, the type of scam and how much you lost. Then it hands you a "reference number" and tells you someone will be in touch.

The FBI is blunt on one point: no law firm is an officially authorized partner of a U.S. government agency. It has also seen references to regulators that do not exist.

The request. It may be an upfront payment under any name: a retainer, a processing fee, an administrative charge or a tax. In one FBI warning it is bank fees, supposedly required by a foreign bank before you can withdraw your money. Or they ask for something else: your Social Security number, or a bank account number. That, they say, is so they can deposit your refund. Or it may be a check for more than you lost, with a request to send back the difference. The FTC calls that one "always a scam."

It works for a reason that has nothing to do with how smart you are. A fraud specialist at AARP puts it this way: lose $3,000, and you are less likely to go to great lengths to get it back. Lose a million, and you are more likely to try spending $30,000 to recover it.

Five signs of a recovery scam

None of these depends on how convincing the person sounds. They are about the shape of the contact.

1. They found you. You did not hire them and you did not call them. The FBI's complaint center says it will never contact you directly: not by phone, not by email, not on social media, not through an app. If more is needed after you file a report, it would come from an FBI employee at a local field office, or from another law enforcement officer. Scammers say that too, so look up the field office yourself and call to confirm.
2. They already know your numbers. The exact amounts, the dates, the company where you sent the money. It feels like proof that they are official. The FBI lists it as a warning sign.
3. They prove who they are with a picture. It may be a badge or an identity card. The FTC says its real employees will not text you a photograph of an ID to verify who they are. In this case it was a lawyer's credentials and a face on a video call. A picture is not proof.
4. They move you somewhere private. The FBI describes a group chat on a messaging app, with people said to be from a foreign bank, and attorneys. You are told it is for secrecy, and for your own safety.
5. Money, or an account number, has to go out before anything comes back.

If this is happening to you right now

Stop sending money and stop sharing information. Then start the real steps yourself. You do not wait for someone to offer them, and the sooner you start, the better.

Call whoever handled the payment. Tell them it was fraud, and ask them to reverse the payment or refund your money. Use the number on the back of your card or on your statement, or sign in to your own account.

• Bank transfer or Zelle: your bank or credit union.
• Payment app: the app itself.
• Wire transfer: the wire company.
• Credit or debit card: the card company.
• Gift card: the company that issued the card. Keep the card and the receipt.
• Cryptocurrency: the exchange or the kiosk operator.
• Cash sent by U.S. mail: the Postal Inspection Service at 1-877-876-2455, which can try to intercept a package that has not been delivered. There is a fee.

If you gave out an account number, tell your bank that too. Keep every record.

Speed matters. In 2025 the FBI's Recovery Asset Team acted on 3,900 incidents and helped freeze $679 million of the $1.16 billion at stake: about 58 cents of every dollar.

Sometimes the money is gone. The FTC says so itself, and it says no legitimate organization will guarantee that you get it back. That is exactly how you know the person who does make that guarantee is lying.

Then report it, and get help. Every one of these is free:

• FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center — www.ic3.gov. Type the address in yourself rather than searching for it, and skip any result marked "sponsored."
• Federal Trade Commission — ReportFraud.ftc.gov
• National Elder Fraud Hotline — 1-833-372-8311 (833-FRAUD-11), Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern. Created by the Department of Justice. It takes reports of fraud against anyone 60 or older, and it will assign you a case manager.
• AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline — 877-908-3360, Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern. For people of all ages.

If it is your parent

Notice what the son in this case did. He put himself between his father and the man who reached out. He asked for proof, and then he asked for more. He also removed several apps from his father's phone, and changed his father's email address and phone number.

Even so, scammers have been targeting the son himself. The messages arrive several times a week. Perhaps dealing with the impostors was enough to make him a target too.

The rule for your house

You never pay up front to get your own money back, or for help getting it back. Not a retainer, not a tax, not a fee to release it. And you never hand over an account number to get a refund.

Take the same care with any recovery service you find yourself.

If it happened to you, it is not a mark against you. These are organized criminals. Coming back a second time is part of how they work.

Sources: FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 Annual Report, pages 17 and 53. FBI public service announcements of August 11, 2023; June 24, 2024; April 18, 2025; August 13, 2025; July 20, 2026; and September 17, 2026. Federal Trade Commission, "Refund and Recovery Scams" and "What To Do if You Were Scammed"; consumer alerts of June 3 and August 3, 2026. U.S. Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime, National Elder Fraud Hotline. AARP, "Five Biggest Scams to Watch for in 2026" and Fraud Watch Network Helpline. The family's story was reported by a national newspaper on March 13, 2026; names are left out here. Checked October 2026. This article is educational and is not legal or financial advice.