Getting stolen crypto back

59 US documents on seizures, forfeitures and restitution in crypto scam and theft cases since January 2024

Some stolen crypto does come back, mostly through prosecutors. The usual route is a civil forfeiture case against the wallets that hold the money, followed by a court order returning it or a remission process that pays victims. 15 of these documents say the money is to go back to victims, through restitution, remission or a court order.

People targeted by fake recovery services reported $1.40bn in losses in 2025, across 10,516 complaints to the FBI; the FBI says that can include what they lost to the earlier scam. They target people who have already lost money, often posing as government officials or recovery firms, and ask for a fee up front. Source: FBI, 2025 IC3 Annual Report, p. 53.

If you have lost crypto to a scam

• Report it to the FBI’s IC3, with wallet addresses, transaction hashes, amounts and dates. Prosecutors build forfeiture cases from traced transactions, and reporting is free.
• Read the FBI’s guidance for crypto scam victims.
• Treat anyone who contacts you offering to recover the money for a fee as a likely second scam.
• People aged 60 and over can call the National Elder Fraud Hotline, 833-372-8311.

Seizures and forfeitures in scam and theft cases

Rows are actions the ledger files under trust scam, Ponzi scheme, investment fraud or hack and theft, where the document is a seizure or forfeiture or its main figure is a forfeiture or restitution amount. A case can appear once for each step, so the count is of documents, not cases. A seizure isn’t a return: money can take years to reach victims, and some never does. Download the rows: enforcement.csv · enforcement.json. Every crypto scam action, and where to report one

Each row is one published step in a case, linked to its source document, so a case can appear again as it moves from charge to plea to sentence. Where one step was announced twice within days, it counts once. Justice Department rows are press releases whose headline names crypto. Figures are the main amount each document states, and for charges they are allegations. Allegations are unproven unless a conviction, plea or settlement is stated. Summaries and stages are machine-read from the document and checked automatically, so the linked document is the authority.

Cite this Bitminer.io, “Getting stolen crypto back”, data to 5 November 2026, https://bitminer.io/ledger/recovery/. Free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with credit and a link. How this is built · Frozen copy of November 2026’s data