u/Massive-Evidence7690

 Hi guys,

I am middle aged adult and I want to share a story related to crypto.

To begin with, I started exploring crypto for passive retirement yield and believe me I almost fell for a sketchy crypto platform yesterday and to be honest I am paranoid…

I receives an email about some DeFi yield kind of thing promising 20% APY on stablecoins, having a decent looking website with charts and testimonials, even a whitepaper that sounded legit at first. The domain is platform name dot finance, registered recently but they claim partnerships with big names like Kraken, Coinbase (try searching it) and find some reviews on medium sites but nothing on coingecko or defillama etc, which makes me pause for a sec. Next, I sign up with a burner email and they ask for wallet connect right away to deposit USDT for some bonus, no KYC yet which feels off. Also the twitter has around 5k followers mostly bots from what I can tell, posts are generic pump stuff.
I back out and do not connect anything. Now I am wondering that whether I dodge a rug or I am just paranoid.

I have seen those bridge exploits like that of Kelp thing where everything looks fine until millions are gone.

So, I got scammed out of some crypto, and now I have no idea where my funds went. I'm feeling pretty stuck here😞

I’ve heard that stolen crypto can be traced on the blockchain, but I don’t know where to begin or what is the way forward. I’m trying to understand how I can begin following transactions, identify where the funds have gone, and whether any of that leads to something actionable.

Has anyone here gone through something similar and managed to track their funds? If so, what steps should I take, and does it lead anywhere useful? I’m also wondering if there’s any real chance of recovery in case of lost cyrpto, or if tracing is just for visibility rather than getting anything back. Any guidance or shared experiences will really help right now.

Hey all,

I downloaded an app from the store, this investing app called Quick Earn about 3 weeks ago after seeing ads everywhere on both social media platforms. It looked totally normal with good reviews. They requested the funds to be sent in crypto, they explained something about U.S. regulation and no middleman. So, I put in $12000 from my bank in Florida to coin-base, as they suggested, made a few trades, saw some good gains. Deposits went smooth, first withdrawal worked. I kept pushing more money in and even got support and offered to take VIP trading opportunities. After 2.5 months I invested 280,450 USD. Everything was smooth. Then I tried to pull out more and it said pending review. Support went quiet. Today the whole site is down. Reviews are tanking with the same complaints. I am freaking out. Bank says the transfers were legit. Feeling, obviously, dumb and helpless but it seemed very real. What should I do, file with FTC or bank first?