The Expert Podcast

For the last couple years we've heard about hundreds and hundreds maybe thousands of consumers who have been defrauded out of funds from some online scam usually have to do with a ponzi scheme cryptocurrency bitcoin and a lot of these were just scammers that said look if you send us money we'll buy bitcoin and raise up your account value but what we've seen in the last couple months if some of the underlying platforms the large wallets and the trading accounts were at their core a scam.
You see this article here you know crypto ponzi schemes are starting to unwind and some of those are some big names not just you know an individual scammer that's out there that's soliciting you on social media or spamming you on email or on facebook or instagram some of the large scale platforms doesn't matter what the names are are turning out to be nothing but a big vaporware ponzi scheme and even if you were a legitimate investor the money's all gone one of these schemes the founders disappeared for three four weeks and they filed bankruptcy.
Question is what do you do if you have found that one of your large-scale investments in cryptocurrency has gone away well the first thing you want to do is make sure you don't send them anything else next thing you want to do is make sure that they don't have any access to your money your personal information your financial information think about what you've sent them by email what documents you've uploaded you may want to change your credit cards they want to get a new driver's license depending on what they have.
Beyond that now you want to file some notices with law enforcement your local police officer or police department they may not take the the case they may not take the report because they consider it not in their jurisdiction but you want at least try if you can at least get a police report that's fine it doesn't matter even if they take the report your local police even county sheriff or even state police is likely not going to drop everything and investigate your case but at least you want to get it filed next thing you want to do is report it to the fbi's online scam department called oc3 get it reported there and the last thing is decide what you're going to do with communications you don't want to send them any more info but you may not want to cut off communications and burn the bridge may be helpful later to keep that line of communication open for a couple reasons we'll talk about those.
Then what you want to do is investigate who are the actual parties behind the scam or behind the platform most of the time they're going to give fake names or they may not have their principles listed on their website so you want to get to the bottom of it who are actually the people involved with this and you can do that yourself we can investigate it once you find out the parties next thing you want to do is do an asset search find out where are their assets because their assets are your assets your money is now in their hands so you want to find out where's their assets bank accounts real estate vehicles corporate assets international assets intellectual property all the different asset classes you want to search to get to the bottom of where the money went.
Once you have that itemized and locked in your third step is you're going to have to take some type of legal action to recover your assets remember we're not attorneys we're not giving you legal advice but depending on your jurisdiction you may have to get a rid of garnishment a judgment or some other process from the court because even if you have their bank account bank account number name of the bank routing number and you know there's you know 2 million 450 2 000 and 12 cents you can't go to the bank and say give me that money bank's not in a position to determine whether or not it was a scam or not they can't take your word for it that these people took your money they can't take anybody's word for it except for one person in the world that's a judge.
A judge can sign an order that says give that man his money give that woman her money give that company back their money if a judge says it now the bank has to do it but just because you have proof you have emails you have account statements you have phone calls and you have this big fat bank account sitting out there you can't just walk into the bank and say hey give me that money that's mine banks not gonna take your word for it and nor should they because if they would somebody could go into your bank and say give me your money right you want a little more protection on that.
It's easy enough to do you can go to court to present your evidence the judge looks at it and says this is fair enough and get a judgment but you can't do that unless you know who you're getting a judgment against you have to have the actual parties and you can't recover it unless you tell the court these are the assets i want to claim this is the real estate i want to put a lien on this is the bank account i want to seize this is the these are the vehicles i want to repossess right so you have to have that information.
So if you become a victim or if you're finding that your accounts are not accessible bitcoin or otherwise those are the steps you want to take again you can reach our website we have some consultation available if you want to talk about it further make sure you take those first four steps stop sending money block off access make your report and then start searching and you'll be on your way.