Crypto Recovery Scams on the Rise

CIRO’s Office of the Investor is here to help Canadian investors – giving them the tools they need to help them stay informed and spot potential scams.

This year, for Fraud Prevention Month, the Office of the Investor has created a video that explains how crypto recovery scams happen and describes the warning signs that investors can use to identify them.

Cryptocurrency Scams

When we think about fraud and scams related to cryptocurrency, two key statistics from CIRO’s Investor Survey (PDF) stand out:

Thirty percent of Canadian investors hold or have held cryptocurrency, despite the fact that six of every ten Canadians think crypto is extremely or very risky.
One in five Canadians report being approached with a possible investment fraud. Of those more than half (55%) of the fraudulent offerings they reported were crypto currency based, making it by far the most common type of investment fraud.

One of the reasons investing in cryptocurrency presents risks is because many platforms and exchanges are unregulated. That means the value of crypto assets can change constantly, and sometimes very dramatically. There are several other risk factors associated with crypto assets that investors should be aware of before buying crypto.

But another hard truth should also make investors pause: scam victims can easily become victims again through what are called “recovery scams.” These scams prey on investors’ desperation to retrieve the funds they have lost and will ultimately scam them again.

What is a recovery scam?

A recovery scam is when someone contacts you claiming they can get back money you lost in a crypto scam. They usually ask for a fee upfront, but once you pay, they disappear. It’s a second scam on top of the first one. In 2025, Canadians lost over $22 million to recovery fraud.

Learn the warning signs of a recovery scam and how to protect yourself.