Ask HN: Stepfather had $500k+ crypto stolen; PI found thief; but FBI won't help
7 comments
Did he file a claim on the FBI website? You cannot jut contact the FBI or SS in the way you would contact customer support. You have to file a claim and then at their discretion they may open an investigation, and if so, collect more info.
Claims were filled. In a few cases agents were spoken to to take statements. There was a secret service office close enough so he went in person. No avail.
Can you file a claim in civil court? Then receive a court order?
Who would be the target of the claim? The identity of the thief is unknown. The only identifier is a crypto wallet. Otherwise, the only other targets for a civil case would be Binance, FBI, or SS. None of those are seemingly appropriate targets, but I'm no lawyer.
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Around the start of 2021, he had an issue where he had got locked out of his account. He was trying to get back in and was getting no response from support.
Naively, he tried to Google "coinbase support phone number". Unsurprisingly, scammers had flooded the results with fake sites with phone numbers posing as Coinbase. Sadly, he fell for one of the fake numbers and was phished out of his credentials and all of his bitcoin was stolen. The value of it was around $500,000 to $750,000 at the time it was stolen.
I was not as involved in my stepfather's crypto up to this point (though I wish I had been), but once he confided in me what happened, I have been trying to help him on attempting to recover these assets.
I helped my stepfather audit a reputable private investigator firm that specializes in crypto theft recovery. Throughout the past year and a half, they have been tracing the paper trail of the thief.
The firm was eventually able to trace the stolen crypto to a wallet on Binance. In order to proceed on recovery, the firm requires my stepfather to obtain a subpoena from a law enforcement agency in order to move forward.
My father is located in rural Indiana. County and state refuse to touch crypto because they don't understand it. The only remaining options are the FBI and Secret Service.
The PI provides full written instructions for my stepfather and for the law enforcement agency to follow (who to contact, what to say, etc). The PI will continue to work on reclaiming the stolen assets following. However, they cannot until a law enforcement agency signs off.
My stepfather has been trying for over 6 months to reach out to the Secret Service and FBI, but nobody will listen. Understandably, it's excruciatingly frustrating for him because it's been tracked back to an individual wallet; but the information about it cannot be obtained because law enforcement won't cooperate.
Is there anything I can do for my stepfather to get the FBI or SS to cooperate on signing off on a subpeona?