The Belgian Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) is warning the public about recovery room fraud.
Recovery room fraud is a practice in which fraudsters offer to help victims of investment fraud receive compensation for their losses or recover their lost assets.
Scammers generally contact their victims by phone or e-mail. FSMA noted, however, that victims sometimes come into contact with so-called “recovery rooms” when conducting searches on the Internet or via social media. When presented, the fraudsters and their companies pose as law firms or accountants and sometimes as police agencies or financial supervisors.
Fraudsters don’t hesitate to misuse the credentials of existing companies or official institutions to appear trustworthy.
Scammers charge a fee for their services. Victims of investment fraud must pay the fee upfront. This is a clear indication that this is a recovery room. Payment is requested, for example, to cover certain administrative or legal costs or to pay taxes. However, this is a purely fictitious cost.
In some other cases, scammers pretend to offer free services. The victim must only give access to their computer through a remote desktop application (such as Anydesk). In this way, fraudsters can install spyware on consumers’ computers or gain access to their PC-Banking.
Scammers also sometimes ask their victims to create and activate a wallet on a crypto platform.
In all cases, fraudsters manage to steal money from consumers. Once the fraudsters receive the fees, they disappear without a trace and it is almost impossible to recover the amounts paid. Therefore, FSMA strongly advises against responding to such offers.
Companies operating illegally that FSMA is warning the public about are the following:
- Apag-Audit AG (
- Claiming Justice (
- Principle of Cryptographic Conduct (
- Etoro (Torocoin – Cloned Company) (
- FXVC (Cloned Company)
- Global Get Back (
- IFP Center (www.ifp.center)
- NCSC (Clone Corporation)
- Mall (
- Ucoin Capital (
- VaxCo (www.vaxco.io; www.vaxco.co; www.vaxco.org)
Victims of investment fraud are often targeted twice by the same fraudsters: first the latter commit investment fraud and then recovery room fraud. The people behind the investment scam can also sell their victims’ contact information to other scammers.
Anyone who has ever been a victim of an investment scam should know that scammers may retarget their victims or sell their personal information to others.