Whilst all scammers are bad, asset recovery scammers are some of the worst. Why? Because they prey on victims who have already lost money to a scam and are desperate to try and recover their losses. Over the years, we’ve heard some terrible stories of people losing money to a scam, but then losing even more money to an asset recovery scam! We are publishing this warning to stop people from losing funds to the counterfeit version of Hall Brown Limited, the Commonwealth Recovery Scam.
The scammers operate a nicely designed and legitimate-looking website, commonwealthrecovery.org. But don’t be fooled, they are not legitimate. Let’s take a look at why our investigators believe this website is a funds recovery scam.
How do we know that Commonwealth Recovery is a scam?
Impersonation of a legitimate company, Hall Brown Limited.
The Commonwealth Recovery website lists the following details:
Commonwealth Recovery is the trading name of Hall Brown Limited which is a limited company registered at Ship Canal House, 98 King Street, Manchester, M2 4WU. Company number 09935721.
Our investigators confirmed there is a UK registered company with the name, Hall Brown Limited with company number 09935721. This company was incorporated in 2016. However, we identified a different website which states it is operated by Hall Brown Limited, hallbrown.co.uk. Upon assessing the hallbrown.co.uk website, it was revealed to be for a legitimate family law firm. The appearance of this website is nearly identical to the Commonwealth Recovery scam website, suggesting the scammers copied their website from the hallbrown.co.uk website.
On the left below, is an image of the legitimate law firm website. On the right-hand side is an image of the funds recovery scam website:
The Commonwealth Recovery scammers appear to have copied the hallbrown.co.uk website and have only made minor changes to the images of people displayed, names of people, the logo, and contact details. As we’ve explained in many past scam warning publications, it is very common for scammers to impersonate unrelated and legitimate companies.
Social Media
Another easy-to-identify red flag is the lack of social media presence for the Commonwealth Recovery website. The website provides icons that should link to the company’s Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. However, there are no links inserted for the icons. Independent searches of LinkedIn identify no presence for Commonwealth Recovery.
The Commonwealth Recovery scam website displays images of people who are purported as employees of the “company”. Interestingly, there is a young lady shown and her name is displayed as “Bruce Wilkins”. We don’t mean to pass judgment on anyone’s name, however, we just don’t think this young lady looks like a Bruce!
Further searches of the names the Commonwealth Recovery websites list as staff, identify no matching LinkedIn profiles. Evidentially, all names and people displayed on the website are fake.
Scam Tactics Used
Cybertrace has been notified that these asset recovery scammers have contacted victims of a scam and advised that they have found their cryptocurrencies. This is absolutely not true and we believe the scammers are attempting to use a similar tactic to Mirror Transaction Fraud.
Whilst our team of cryptocurrency tracers can indeed locate a victim’s funds, it requires expert Blockchain forensics and specialised tracing software. If you have lost money to an investment scam, or a funds recovery scam, contact our team today to discuss how we can assist you.
