Fake crypto support and "unlock your account" scams

These schemes are built on worry, not carelessness. A message says your account is frozen, compromised, or under review, and the person on the other end sounds calm, technical, and helpful. That is the whole design. Here are both versions, how to spot them, and what to do.

Version one: the fake support agent

The FBI describes this pattern in a November 25, 2025 public service announcement, Account Takeover Fraud via Impersonation of Financial Institution Support. Criminals pose as staff, customer support, or technical support at a financial institution and talk the account holder into handing over login details, including multi-factor authentication or one-time passcodes. With those, they log in to the real website, reset the password, and take control. The FBI reported more than 5,100 such complaints from January 2025 to the date of that alert, with losses over $262 million, and noted that the stolen money often went to accounts linked to cryptocurrency wallets, where it moves quickly and is hard to trace.

Sometimes you never get a call at all. The same FBI alert warns about search-engine ad poisoning: scammers buy ads that imitate a real company's ads, so a search for your exchange or bank leads to a convincing fake site that collects your login.

The scale is large. The FBI's 2025 IC3 Annual Report counts 47,794 tech and customer support fraud complaints with $2.13 billion in losses, the third-costliest category of cyber-enabled fraud that year. The FTC said in June 2026 that people reported losing nearly $1 billion to business impersonators in 2025, with the highest losses to bank impersonators. Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm, found in its 2026 Crypto Crime Report that impersonation scams grew 1400% year over year, and cites one alleged scheme in which a single person posing as an exchange's customer service took nearly $16 million from victims.

Version two: pay a fee to unlock your money

The second version starts with a platform that looks like an exchange or trading app. You deposit, the dashboard shows growth, and then a withdrawal is blocked by a tax, a fee, or a verification deposit.

The FBI's 2025 report describes exactly this ending to cryptocurrency investment fraud: when victims try to withdraw, they are charged taxes and fees as a final attempt to take more money before the scammers disappear. The FTC's consumer guidance says the same thing in plain terms: if you log in to the "investment account," you either cannot withdraw at all, or only if you pay high fees. The balance on the screen was never real, and paying the fee does not release it.

Think about how a real business that holds your money would collect a charge. It would take it out of the balance it already holds. A demand that you send new money first, often in crypto, so that your existing money can be released, does not make sense for a platform that actually has your funds.

How to spot it

• They contacted you, by call, text, email, or social media, about a problem you did not report.
• They ask for a code, a password, your seed phrase, or remote access to your device.
• They want you to move funds to a "safe," "secure," or "new" wallet to protect them.
• They want payment in crypto. The FTC is blunt: only scammers demand payment in cryptocurrency.
• A fee stands between you and a withdrawal, described as tax, compliance, verification, or unlocking.
• You found the support number through a search ad rather than inside the official app or a bookmark.
• A rescuer appears later, offering to recover the money for an upfront fee.

That last point matters. The FBI counted 10,516 recovery scam complaints in 2025, with $1.4 billion in losses, and its alerts warn of fictitious law firms targeting crypto scam victims and of scammers impersonating the IC3 itself. Our guide to the recovery scam that follows the first scam covers the pattern in detail.

What to do

• Stop and do not pay the fee. No real withdrawal is waiting behind it.
• Hang up and reach the company yourself, through the official app or a bookmarked site. The FBI recommends bookmarks over search results.
• Never share codes or a seed phrase, with anyone, for any reason.
• If you gave access, follow the FBI's steps: contact your financial institution immediately to ask for a recall or reversal, reset compromised passwords, notify the company that was impersonated, and file a detailed complaint at ic3.gov. You can also report to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
• Check the platform or message with our free risk rating. For every signal, address screening, and a PDF you can share, unlock the $9.95 full forensic report.
• If money already moved, start with our first-hours checklist and talk to an analyst about tracing it.

Sources

1. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internet Crime Complaint Center. Account Takeover Fraud via Impersonation of Financial Institution Support, Public Service Announcement I-112525-PSA, November 25, 2025. https://www.ic3.gov/PSA/2025/PSA251125
2. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internet Crime Complaint Center. 2025 IC3 Annual Report. https://www.ic3.gov/AnnualReport/Reports/2025_IC3Report.pdf
3. Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Advice. What To Know About Cryptocurrency and Scams. https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-know-about-cryptocurrency-scams
4. Federal Trade Commission. FTC Data Show People Reported Losing $3.5 Billion to Imposter Scams in 2025, press release, June 15, 2026. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/06/ftc-data-show-people-reported-losing-3-point-5-billion-imposter-scams-2025
5. Chainalysis. 2026 Crypto Crime Report: Scams, January 13, 2026. https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/crypto-scams-2026/

Blockchain Fraud is a service of UnyKorn LLC (Wyoming). Educational information and risk analysis, not legal advice. We do not guarantee the recovery of any funds. We charge a flat fee or retainer, never a percentage of recovered funds.