FSMA Issues Warning Against Surge in Fraudulent Recovery Room Schemes

Belgium's Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) has issued an updated warning to the public regarding fraudulent "recovery room" operations. In these deceptive schemes, scammers target individuals who have previously lost money to investment fraud, falsely claiming they can help recover the stolen assets or recoup trading losses. According to the FSMA, fraudsters initiate contact with victims primarily via unsolicited phone calls and emails. In addition, many victims stumble upon these fraudulent recovery services while searching online or browsing social media. To build credibility, the operators routinely impersonate established law firms, accounting agencies, police officials, or financial supervisory authorities, often copying the identity details of legitimate organizations. To execute the scam, perpetrators typically demand upfront payments, claiming the funds are necessary to cover fictitious legal fees, administrative charges, or tax obligations. Upfront payment requests are a primary indicator of a recovery room scam. In other scenarios, scammers offer "free" assistance but demand remote access to the victim's computer using tools like AnyDesk, enabling them to install spyware or compromise online banking accounts. Fraudsters may also instruct victims to create and fund cryptocurrency wallets. In every case, once the money or access is handed over, the perpetrators disappear. The FSMA noted that victims of investment fraud are often targeted twice by the same group of criminals, or find their contact information sold to other fraud networks. The FSMA has identified several entities and websites irregularly operating recovery schemes: - Cyber Justice (justice-cyberguard.com) - GL Markets (glmarkets.io) - Money Recovery (moneyrecovery.me, moneyrecovery.uk) Furthermore, the authority highlighted a rising trend of identity theft and impersonation, with scammers falsely operating under the following names and web addresses: - Bybit - European Blockchain Association (blockchain-eba.org, blockchain-wtc.com, blockchaineba.org) - Ombudsman Financial Services (ombudsman-fs.co) - Sentinel (sentinel-fe.com) The regulator stresses that official supervisory bodies such as the FSMA do not possess the mandate to recover lost funds for individual investors and will never contact consumers to offer asset recovery. Victims of investment fraud are advised to report the matter immediately to local law enforcement, refuse any unsolicited fund recovery offers, and never pay advance fees or grant remote desktop access to third parties.