Cybertrace Case Study
The following is a real story, from a real past client. Our client, Mark Gibbons has approved us using his real name as we explain the process undertaken in recovering money from a scam.
The identities of those involved have not been changed.
Our client Mark reached out to us stating he had been scammed for $56,000 and reported the following in his original contact form.
“I got sucked in to a mt4 trading platform most of the funds went in BTC my bank won’t help as when I first transferred money in my coinspot account they asked if everything was ok I said yes I do have the wallet addresses on my account that they got transfers too I told them I want to withdraw funds and they haven’t sent now my account I can’t access but I have lots of pictures from trading account”
The above is a very common account from scam victims. MetaTrader 4 (mt4) is a very well-known trading system, and the system can be used for real genuine trading platforms, but also, it can be manipulated and used by scammers.
Mark’s bank did ask him about the transfers to Coinspot, which is one of the most widely used crypto exchanges in Australia. Mark confirmed with the bank, that everything was fine. This makes it hard to argue the bank should have done more to protect him from the fraud. In any case, the banks don’t like to refund their clients, and fraud victims generally cannot rely on banks giving them a refund.
Once Mark contacted our team of scam investigators, we explained the process to take on a scam of this nature.
Step 1) Investigate
Investigate the fraud and identify the offender responsible. Only if the offender can be identified do scam victims have any way to recover the money lost to a scam.
Our investigators proposed two types of investigations to try to collect evidence of who was behind the scam. The first was cryptocurrency tracing, and in conjunction we proposed to conduct website forensics.
Step 2) Gain Police assistance
Attend a Police station and seek their assistance in opening a case. Here in Australia, we don’t expect the Police to drop everything and start investigating a scam. But we do hope that they are willing to open a case, and action our crypto tracing results. For Mark, he had sent his funds from Coinspot in the form of Bitcoin. Upon tracing the Bitcoin sent, our crypto tracing team identified his funds as being cashed out through Binance. Below is a real image of Mark’s crypto trace investigation:
The above tracing was conducted using CipherTrace, however, our team now uses Chainalysis.
The trace results are strong. The funds went through minimal wallet addresses and whoever is registered at Binance, is definitely of interest to the investigation. Mark needed to ask the Police to request the account holder records from Binance. However, despite attending multiple Police stations, Mark was rejected by the Police in his state.
Even though our investigators had traced the Bitcoin and the results were strong, the Police were not willing to help by sending an email to Binance to request account holder records. Gaining Police assistance in Australia can vary, although most people do get their assistance to action our crypto trace results and contact the exchange.
Step 3) The asset recovery process
There is no one-size-fits all solution for trying to actually get money back from a scammer. Sometimes, Cybertrace can negotiate on the client’s behalf, for other occasions we may need to work with partners in the country where the offender resides. And other cases could require further collaboration with law enforcement or engaging a lawyer.
So how did Mark get his money back if the Police weren’t willing to help?
Well, our scam investigators invested a lot of time investigating the fraudulent investment platform responsible for defrauding Mark. Website forensics is an investigation that Cybertrace has pioneered to identify scam syndicates and identify the masterminds. And as a result, were able to identify who the mastermind of the scam was. The scammer resided in Israel and had even had past court records for operations of a scam call centre/boiler room. Obviously, he was back at it again! The evidence collected was very strong, so without any help from the Police, the scammer was still identified by Cybertrace.
Our team referred Mark to a lawyer in Israel. Generally, if you’re going to take legal action against a scammer, you typically use a trusted lawyer in the country where the offender resides.
However, Mark wasn’t keen on using a lawyer. Instead, Mark made contact with the offender himself directly, announcing he has identified him as being responsible for the scam and demanded his money back.
This went on for a few weeks. All of sudden, Mark is contacted by the supposed legal department of the scam website! And they provide him a document to sign, and say they are going to give his money back. A section (clause 2) of the document mark was sent is as follows:
“2. It has been expressed that the Company has agreed to the terms herein without admitting to any of the claims in the Letters as defined herein, that Company has completely denied any and all of these claims and agreed to this settlement at “nuisance value” and in order to avoid any claims on my behalf.”
Essentially, the scammers state they are going to give the money back, but they admit to nothing, and that Mark has to agree that he cannot take any further action. The criminals are trying to buy Mark’s silence and are trying to make him go away.
A payment plan was outlined in the scammer’s letter, with an amount of Bitcoin to be sent to Mark each month. Sure enough, each month Mark received a Bitcoin transaction from the scam platform. However, they did not fulfil their agreement and they sent Mark back only around 75% of his investment. Still, Mark was grateful to have succeeded in recovering 75% of his money, and without needing to engage a lawyer. Below is Mark’s Google Review:
Before Mark engaged Cybertrace to investigate the scam, his contacts, including his accountant said to forget it, and that there was no way he would recover his funds. We are the first to acknowledge the complexities of trying to get money back from a scam. But this real experience of our past client outlines that anything is possible and only through expert investigation can we hold scammers accountable.
Cybertrace has assisted many other clients all around the world to identify scammers and hold them accountable. Our success with Mark’s case was not our first and certainly will not be our last. But it’s a perfect example of how Cybertrace assists scam victims in getting justice and recover money from a scam! If you have been the victim of a scam, contact our investigators today to discuss how we can help you.
