What to do after a fake crypto giveaway
If you sent digital assets to a purported giveaway promising doubled returns, stop sending funds immediately, as genuine organisations never distribute currency in exchange for an upfront payment. Preserving transfer records and reporting the theft will help document the fraud.
- These schemes typically appear on social media platforms, live video streams, or hijacked accounts, falsely claiming that a prominent figure or business will return double any digital currency you transfer to a specified promotional address.
- Warning signs include artificial urgency such as countdown timers, disabled comments on the announcement, instructions to send assets directly from a personal wallet, and the promise of guaranteed, instantaneous returns with zero commercial justification.
- Stop sending any further funds immediately, refuse demands for additional deposits to release the supposed reward, and disconnect your wallet from any promotional web pages you may have visited to prevent further unauthorised access.
- Retain complete records of the incident, including the website or stream link, screenshots of the promotional offer, the recipient public address you transferred funds to, and the transaction hash from your original outbound payment.
- Report the theft directly to Action Fraud to secure a police crime reference number, notify the social platform hosting the fraudulent broadcast, and inform the service provider where you originally purchased the digital assets.
- An onchain trace can track where your transferred assets moved and identify destination services holding the deposits, but it cannot automatically reveal the real-world identity of the recipient or force the immediate return of your property.
Read next
Written by the Wallsec investigations team. General information only, not legal or financial advice.
Need a case reviewed?
Tell us what happened and we will say honestly whether the onchain data supports a trace.