Lost money once? Be careful who promises to get it back.

After a significant investment loss, most people are contacted again within weeks or months. The approach is confident, informed and specific. Whoever it is appears to know what you lost, roughly when, and sometimes to which platform. That knowledge feels like proof that they are genuine. It is the opposite: it is the clearest sign that your details were passed on, sold, or never left the hands of the original operation.

Recovery fraud is now a substantial industry in its own right, and it is more damaging than the original loss in one specific way: the first fraud took money you had. The second takes money you had to find, at a point when you can least afford it, and it takes the last of the confidence you had in your own judgment.

What the second approach usually looks like

• They contacted you. Cold call, WhatsApp, Telegram, email, LinkedIn, or a comment reply under a post where you described what happened. Almost every recovery fraud begins with them finding you.
• They already know about the loss. The platform name, an approximate figure, sometimes a date. Presented as the result of an investigation. Almost always simply data.
• They present an authority. A lawyer, a licensed investigator, a blockchain forensics firm, a regulator, a government fund, a bank’s fraud department, or an ethical hacker who can reverse the transaction.
• They promise an outcome. Recovery described as likely, straightforward or certain, sometimes with a percentage or a timescale, before any document has been seen.
• They want money in advance. A retainer, a filing fee, a tax, a bond, a conversion charge, a “liquidity” payment, a customs or clearance fee. The label varies; the structure does not.
• The fee is payable in cryptocurrency, by gift card, or to an individual. Or to a company whose name does not match the one they claim to represent.
• There is urgency. A window closing, a court date, a fund being distributed, a wallet about to be emptied.
• There is always one more payment. When the first is paid, a complication arises that requires a second. This continues for exactly as long as payments continue.

Impersonation of real institutions

The most convincing versions do not invent an identity. They borrow one. Real law firms, real regulators, real exchanges and real government agencies are impersonated, using genuine names, genuine registration numbers and copied websites on domains that differ from the real ones by a character or two.

This is worth stating clearly, because it applies to this firm as much as to any other: if someone contacts you claiming to be from Attorney Mirano, you should verify it independently before acting. Look up the firm yourself rather than using a number or link you were sent, and call the number published on this website.

What a regulator will and will not do

Regulators are impersonated constantly, so it helps to know the boundaries of what a genuine one actually does. As a general matter, a legitimate financial regulator or government agency:

• Does not telephone individuals to offer to recover their money
• Does not charge a fee to release funds, and does not ask for tax, clearance or bond payments
• Does not accept payment in cryptocurrency or gift cards
• Does not ask for passwords, private keys, seed phrases or remote access to your computer
• Does not require secrecy from your family, your bank or your lawyer
• Publishes its contact details on its own official website, which you can find yourself

If any of those lines is crossed, the question of whether the person is genuine has already been answered.

How a law firm differs, in ways you can check

The distinction between a law firm and a recovery company is not marketing. It is structural, and every part of it is verifiable by you, without taking anyone’s word for it:

• An attorney is admitted to a bar and appears on a public register. You can look up Jorge Altamirano, registration number 5220058, on the public register maintained by the relevant court authority. Do that. Do it for any lawyer who contacts you.
• A law firm has a physical address and a verifiable identity. Not only a website and a messaging handle.
• A lawyer owes enforceable duties. Of competence, of loyalty, of candor, and in relation to client money. Those duties are enforceable by a regulator and by a court. A recovery company owes you a contract at best.
• A lawyer cannot guarantee an outcome. Professional rules in most jurisdictions prohibit it. A guarantee of recovery is therefore not a sign of confidence; it is a sign that whoever is speaking is not bound by those rules.
• Fees are explained in writing before work begins. What is charged, on what basis, and what happens if the matter does not succeed.

If you have already paid a recovery company

You are not the first and it does not make the underlying matter hopeless. Stop making further payments, preserve everything you have — the messages, the invoices, the payment records, the names and the website — and treat it as a second matter to be assessed alongside the first. In some circumstances the second fraud is more traceable than the original, because it is more recent and because the payment route is often closer to home.