Scamwatch: recovering forgotten bitcoin
Faye was Headline Money Consumer Money Journalist of 2023 and a Wincott Award finalist in 2025. She's been investigating scams for nearly a decade.
Dear Which?,
I’ve been contacted out of the blue by a company that says I’ve built up bitcoin wealth and claims it can help me recover it.
How can I find out if this approach is genuine?
A Which? Member
Faye Lipson, Which? senior researcher, says:
Many people dabbled in buying bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies around the time their hype peaked in 2017. Years later, they may struggle to recall what they bought, whether they’ve still got it or where it’s held. The allure of ‘forgotten bitcoin’ is often compounded by the idea that it might have gained dramatically in value, as these currencies are notoriously volatile, seeing vast swings and crashes over the past decade.
Regardless of whether you’ve actually bought cryptocurrency, this contact almost certainly isn’t genuine. It is most likely a recovery scam and we warned about a similar one impersonating Coinbase, another cryptocurrency company, in April.
Recovery scams will persuade you to part with an upfront fee in order to trace or ‘unlock’ the supposed riches. In addition to tricking you into paying them for bogus ‘recovery’ services, these fraudsters may also use the details you’ve handed over to target you for further scams, or commit identity fraud in your name.
In some versions of this scam, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is impersonated. The regulator said in 2025 that ‘one of the most common scam methods reported is fraudsters claiming that the FCA has recovered funds from a crypto wallet that was opened illegally in the individual’s name’.
It has also issued warnings in recent years about various firms which claim to provide cryptocurrency recovery services, but lack permission to do so. By far the safest approach is not to engage at all with the organisation contacting you. Instead, report it to Report Fraud.
Cryptocurrency services aren’t currently regulated in the UK. Unfortunately, this can make tracing lost crypto wallets far more difficult than tracing, say, a lost bank account. With the latter, free legitimate account tracing services exist, and the Financial Ombudsman Service can also help if you’re unsatisfied with your bank’s response. With crypto, you could try sifting through your emails for records of any forgotten transactions on crypto exchanges.
