Recovering Money from a Cryptocurrency Scam: Legal Guide 2026

If you have put money into a platform that no longer lets you withdraw it, your wallet has been emptied, or a so-called adviser has disappeared with your cryptocurrency, the question is always the same: can the money be recovered? Sometimes it can, but never with certainty. It depends mainly on whether the funds can be traced on the blockchain and whether a Spanish judge manages to freeze them while they can still be located. This guide, for readers who live in Spain or lost money through a Spanish bank or platform, explains what to do now, which offence it is, what you can claim from your bank and how to avoid the most common trap that follows: fake “recovery companies”.

What to do (and what not to do) if you have been scammed with cryptocurrency

The order matters. These are the steps, who to take them with and when:

If you do not speak or understand Spanish, you have the right to be assisted free of charge by an interpreter when you give your statement to the police, the prosecutor or the judge, and to a free translation of the main decisions notified to you, such as a decision not to open proceedings or the judgment, and of the information essential to exercising your rights (Art. 9 of Law 4/2015 on the Statute of Victims of Crime). Ask for one when you file the report.

And what you should not do:

• Do not pay “fees”, “taxes” or “unlocking charges” to withdraw a balance the platform says you have: that is the second phase of the same scam.
• Do not send more funds to “verify” your account or “prove liquidity”.
• Do not give your seed phrase, your private keys or remote access to your computer to anyone, including someone who claims to be a police officer, a lawyer or exchange staff.
• Do not reply to anyone offering to get the money back (see below).

For other scams, see our guide I was scammed: what to do, step by step.

Can you get your money back from a crypto scam?

You can try, through several complementary routes, and it pays to be realistic about each:

• Freezing and seizure in the criminal proceedings. From the first steps, the judge may order precautionary measures to secure the financial liabilities (Art. 764 LECrim) and the seizure or freezing of the assets and proceeds of the offence (Art. 127 octies CP). If the funds are held at an identified exchange, the court can order it to retain them.
• Restitution and compensation. Anyone convicted is also liable in civil law (Art. 116 CP), covering restitution, reparation and compensation (Art. 110 CP). Confiscated assets can go to compensate the victims before passing to the State (Art. 127 octies CP, paragraph 3).
• A claim against your bank, if someone operated your account or card without your consent (explained below).
• Other people involved. The holders of the accounts that received the money, the so-called money mules, may bear their own criminal and civil liability; we cover this in the article on computer fraud under Art. 249 CP.

Some factors reduce the chances: mixers, cross-chain bridges or self-custody wallets; platforms in countries that do not cooperate; and, above all, time. That is why no serious lawyer will put a percentage on your chances or promise an outcome. What a lawyer can do is make the right moves early, in the right order.

“Recovery companies”: the second scam

After a crypto scam, victims often receive messages, calls or adverts from supposed experts who promise to recover the funds, often in fluent English and with a polished website. Many come from the same network that scammed you, or from someone who has your details: they know how much you lost, where and when. This is the so-called recovery scam: a new fraud (Art. 248 CP) committed against the same victim.

These are the warning signs:

• They contact you unprompted, often through WhatsApp, Telegram or social media.
• They ask for an upfront payment, often in cryptocurrency, described as “fees”, a “tracing charge”, a “bond” or a “release tax”.
• They assure you that you will get the money back, or put a percentage on it.
• They claim to be an international legal office, an “ethical hacker”, a cybersecurity unit or a public body that “has already located” your money.
• They ask for your seed phrase, your keys, or for you to install remote-access software.
• They rush you: the funds are “released only today”.
• There is no identified lawyer, with a name, a Bar registration number and an office address you can check.

Two checks. A lawyer practising in Spain must be registered with a Bar Association (Colegio de Abogados): verify it there or in the census of the General Council of Spanish Lawyers (Consejo General de la Abogacía Española). If they claim to practise in another country, check that country’s official register of lawyers. And distrust any supposed public body that asks for money to return yours. Anyone who poses as a lawyer without being one may also be committing the offence of unlawful practice of a profession (Art. 403 CP). If you have already paid one of these “companies”, treat it as another scam: keep the evidence and add it to your complaint.

The most common crypto scams in 2026

• Fake investment platforms: dashboards showing non-existent returns; you can deposit, but never withdraw.
• The personal adviser or broker who guides you by phone or Telegram and eventually disappears. If it starts as an online romance, it is pig butchering.
• Pyramid and Ponzi schemes: early investors are paid with the money of those who come later (more in pyramid and multi-level schemes).
• Wallet phishing: websites that imitate a wallet or an exchange, or smart contracts that, once signed, allow the wallet to be drained.
• Rug pull: a project builds hype, raises funds and its promoters vanish.
• SIM swapping: your SIM is duplicated to receive your verification codes and enter your exchange account.

The platform’s name changes every few months; the steps to claim stay the same.

Which offence is it? Fraud, computer fraud and aggravated fraud

The fact that you sent the money yourself does not prevent it from being an offence: if you did so because you were deceived, it is fraud (estafa) under Art. 248 of the Criminal Code (CP). If, on the other hand, someone got into your account or your wallet and moved the funds without your consent, the case falls under computer fraud (estafa informática) in Art. 249.1 CP. The penalties are these:

Two important points. The minor offence based on the amount exists only for fraud by deception under Art. 248 CP: since Organic Law 14/2022, computer fraud has no minor form, so even if the loss does not exceed €400, the penalty is still the one in Art. 249.1 CP (Consulta FGE 1/2024, issued by the Attorney General’s Office). And in mass scams committed as a continuing offence that are notably serious and harm a large number of people, the judge will impose, giving reasons, a penalty one or two degrees higher (Art. 74.2 CP); a stable structure with a division of roles may add the offence of criminal organisation (Art. 570 bis CP). More in our articles on Art. 248 CP and on aggravated fraud under Art. 250 CP.

Will the bank refund you? It depends on who authorised the payment

The answer lies in Royal Decree-Law 19/2018 on payment services (the Spanish transposition of the EU’s PSD2), and the key question is whether the payment was authorised or not:

• If you ordered it yourself, for example a transfer to the platform or to an exchange, even because you were deceived, it is an authorised payment (Art. 36) and, once your bank has received it, it is irrevocable (Art. 52). You have no right to have it refunded. You can ask your bank to try to recover it from the receiving bank, but that is not a right and only makes sense if the money is still there.
• If a third party made it by getting into your online banking or using your card, the payment is not authorised. The bank must refund it by the end of the business day following the day on which it is notified at the latest (Art. 45.1), unless it has reasonable grounds to suspect fraud and reports them to the Banco de España, or you acted fraudulently or with gross negligence, which the bank must prove (Arts. 44.3 and 46.1). You must notify it without undue delay and, in any event, within thirteen months of the debit (Art. 43.1).

The thirteen months apply to payments you did not authorise or that were executed incorrectly: they give no right to reverse a transfer you ordered yourself and that was carried out as you instructed. If the bank does not reply or refuses, file a complaint with its customer service department, which has fifteen business days to answer (Art. 69), and then with the complaints service of the Banco de España. Bear in mind that these rules protect payments made with funds, which the law defines as banknotes and coins, bank money or electronic money (Art. 3): cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin or ether do not fit that definition, so they will not help you reclaim a transfer of those cryptocurrencies made from your own wallet. If the scam started with a message impersonating your bank, see also our page on online fraud and phishing.

Can the money be traced on the blockchain?

Yes. On Bitcoin, Ethereum and most blockchains, transactions are public: with the hash of your transfer, an expert can follow the funds from address to address. What the blockchain does not show is who is behind each wallet. That information appears when the funds reach a crypto-asset service provider, because Spanish anti-money-laundering law makes these providers obliged entities and requires them to identify their customers (Arts. 2.1.z) and 3 of Law 10/2010).

Once a complaint is filed, the court can order the exchange to disclose the holder’s details and retain the balance, and order fraudulent websites to be taken down or, if hosted abroad, provisionally blocked (Art. 13 LECrim). If the platform is in another EU Member State, the court can use a European Investigation Order (Law 23/2014); outside the EU, including the United Kingdom, it depends on the cooperation instruments available with each country. Mixers and bridges make tracing harder, but a solid expert report remains the basis of any freezing request. We explain how crypto assets are seized and confiscated in our guide on crypto-asset seizure and freezing.

MiCA and unlicensed platforms: what changes for the victim

Regulation (EU) 2023/1114, known as MiCA, has applied since 30 December 2024 and requires authorisation to provide crypto-asset services in the European Union (Art. 59). Platforms that were already operating could continue to do so during a transitional period that ended on 1 July 2026 at the latest (Art. 143.3); each Member State could shorten it or not apply it. For you, this has three practical consequences:

• Check the platform in the public register of authorised providers kept by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) (Art. 109 MiCA) and in the warnings published by the CNMV, the Spanish securities regulator, about unauthorised entities.
• An authorised provider can be located: it has a registered office, a supervisor and customer data, the best scenario for a court order.
• The licence does not decide everything: operating without one does not, in itself, make a platform a scammer, and having one does not rule it out. What determines whether there is an offence is the deception. We explain this in what to do if your platform has no MiCA licence.

How long it takes and when the offence becomes time-barred

There is no fixed time frame for recovering the money. The judicial investigation lasts up to twelve months from the opening of the case, extendable for periods of up to six months (Art. 324 LECrim), and requests for cooperation abroad can lengthen it. Freezing measures, by contrast, can be requested from the start, and that is where time really counts.

These are the limitation periods in Art. 131 CP, counted from the day the offence was committed or, for a continuing offence, from the last act (Art. 132.1 CP). Having time left to file a complaint does not mean there is time left for the money.

How we can help

At Alonso Sala, with more than 15 years of experience in criminal law, we represent victims of crypto scams and on-chain tracing cases: we prepare the complaint (querella or denuncia) with the evidence in order and, where the case requires it, the support of an expert tracing report, we ask the court for freezing and seizure measures, and we act as private prosecutor to claim restitution and compensation. If you no longer live in Spain, you do not need to travel to file the complaint: a querella is filed through a court representative (procurador) holding a power of attorney and signed by a lawyer (Art. 277 LECrim). If the court later needs to hear you, it may allow you to appear by videoconference (Art. 325 LECrim); that is for the court to decide. We will not promise you an outcome or give you a percentage: we will tell you frankly what real chances your case has.