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£220,000 recovered for cryptocurrency scam victim
Published September 2, 20260 min read
Amount lost
£475,000
Amount recovered
£220,000
Duration
12 weeks
Our client saw an advertisement for a cryptocurrency platform on Instagram and followed a link to invest a small amount of £200. They were then contacted by an account manager who claimed they could earn larger returns by trading within forex and stocks. They were advised to set up a Revolut account and convert this to crypto.
Our client saw their trading account in high value and was told they needed to pay tax fees in order to withdraw the funds. Our client paid the fees; however, the money was never released.
An attempted recovery scam then followed
Like many crypto scam victims, our client was subsequently contacted by recovery scammers claiming they could recover their lost crypto and that a fee was required to release it.
Fortunately, our client did not pay the recovery scammers after speaking to Refundee, who advised that this was a scam and that they should cut contact.
We then provided support and guidance to help the client recover from this. Our expert fraud investigators conducted a thorough review and created a bespoke report for Revolut.
Revolut rejected the initial claim, stating that since the money went to crypto, there was nothing they could do.
We then escalated the case to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS). The FOS agreed that the bank was partly at fault, and our client was reimbursed £220,000, an amount they had believed was lost forever.
Summary
An Instagram advert led our client to a fake trading platform and a £475,000 loss. Revolut said nothing could be done because the money went to crypto. We escalated to the Financial Ombudsman, which found the bank partly at fault and awarded £220,000.
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