The first calls to make
Report the theft to the exchange or wallet provider involved, to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, and to local police, and keep the confirmation for each report. If funds moved through a centralized exchange, its compliance team may be able to restrict an account that received them, and requests from law enforcement or a court usually carry more weight than a customer email. If your phone number was hijacked, contact your carrier to regain control of the line and ask for records of the number transfer or SIM change. From a device you trust, change passwords, revoke connected app permissions, and move any remaining assets to a new wallet promptly, since an exposed recovery phrase cannot be changed. Do not hold back a report while you gather more information; reports can be supplemented later.
Tracing and the records that make it possible
Transactions on most public blockchains are visible, so stolen cryptocurrency can often be followed from wallet to wallet even when the people behind the wallets are unknown. Tracing is most useful when funds reach a service that knows its customers and can be compelled to produce records or hold assets. Collect the transaction hashes, the wallet addresses involved, exchange account statements, emails about login or withdrawal alerts, and anything from your carrier about the number change. Unsolicited offers to get the funds back for an upfront fee deserve deep suspicion; federal agencies have warned that these offers are frequently a second fraud aimed at people who have already lost money.
Civil options and their limits
Where the thief can be identified, or where funds sit at an exchange that can be reached, a civil lawsuit may ask a court for orders freezing assets and for subpoenas to identify account holders, sometimes before the defendants' names are known. Claims against an exchange or a phone carrier depend on what the user agreement says, what security the company offered, and how it responded once you reported the problem, and some of those agreements require arbitration. Whether consumer protections built for bank transfers extend to crypto accounts remains an unsettled area. When you call us, we start with where the funds went, how much time has passed, and whether any recovery path justifies its cost.
