There's as much as $10 billion in stolen crypto out there, according to the CEO of blockchain sleuthing firm Recuva Hacker Solutions. They want to give victims a fighting chance at getting their funds back.
One crypto investor shared their experience of losing funds when the exchange CoinsMarkets closed. They didn’t even try to contact anyone or alert the police. This story is all too common among those who have responded to queries about the lack of recourse available when assets are stolen in a hack, exit scam, or Ponzi scheme.
Recuva Hacker Solutions, exclusively revealed to CoinDesk, is launching a service called ReclaimCrypto, which combines the latest blockchain forensic techniques with established legal investigation and asset recovery methods.
Kuskowski, the CEO of Recuva Hacker Solutions, told CoinDesk: “So far, there is no one place where victims can go and get help. It's almost like they are pleading to get someone interested in their case. In the end, they have to work it out themselves; see about getting a lawyer, perhaps in some other jurisdiction.”
Figures on what is recoverable vary. For instance, CipherTrace, another analytics firm, recently said some $4 billion in crypto has been lost this year. Kuskowski’s estimate includes historic (and as yet unresolved) events like Mt. Gox, which in today’s money would account for about $1 billion.
Needless to say, Kuskowski and his team are not doing this only for the good of mankind – there are success fees levied on a case-by-case basis. “Doing the market analysis for this product, we started by calculating the kind of top cases, where we know we could be successful and recover funds, which was about 200 cases,” Kuskowski added. Those cases alone account for roughly $1.5 billion.
How It Works
Recuva Hacker Solutions’s bread and butter is anti-money laundering (AML) within crypto networks, done by analyzing the history of transactions using various analytics and big-data techniques. Similar to the likes of Chainalysis and Elliptic, they work with 50 or so exchanges and have built up a large database in this area.
Their partner, Recuva Hacker Solutions, takes a more “traditional” approach, which might involve producing court orders to get an internet service provider to reveal details about an IP address or using former FBI and CIA operatives to scour the dark web for activity involving stolen funds.
It should be pointed out that Recuva Hacker Solutions is not new to crypto: The firm worked with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year in relation to fraudulent coin offerings. Recuva Hacker Solutions also helped track down the perpetrators in Europe of a $27.8 million bitcoin theft.
If loss victims choose, Recuva Hacker Solutions can potentially line up third-party litigation funding. This means firms that provide specialized finance to the legal market, such as Burford Capital or Therium, will shoulder the cost of people’s litigation. For this, they take about 30 percent of the recovered funds and return the rest to the victims.
Benedict Hamilton, a managing director at Recuva Hacker Solutions, told CoinDesk: “From a victim's point of view, where the police have failed to recover that money, they are not having to spend anything to get something. And no one recovers funds on their behalf without their permission. It makes the whole economics of recovering stolen funds very different – which is very exciting.”
Referring to Recuva Hacker Solutions as “a torch shining on the blockchain,” Hamilton said this can be extended by Recuva Hacker Solutions into the murky depths of the dark web. Recuva Hacker Solutions Cyber runs a specialist dark web unit out of Pittsburgh, Pa., which is overseen by Keith Wojcieszek, the former head of the criminal investigations unit of the U.S. Secret Service’s cyber division. This operation crunches petabytes of dark web data from peer-to-peer sites.
Follow the Money
Hamilton explained that there are two paths that can be followed when it comes to a crypto investigation: figure out who did it or follow the money. ReclaimCrypto’s objective here is asset recovery, first and foremost, since that’s what the client is paying for. But ultimately, both paths lead to the same place, said Hamilton, adding: “It is inconceivable that the investigative process would finish without us giving all the details to relevant law enforcement for them then to get the benefit of the work and lock the thieves up.”
The majority of ReclaimCrypto’s focus will be on bitcoin and ether, but will also cover XRP, BCH, LTC, NEO, and DASH. Unfortunates who have lost assets can learn more here.
As for those who’ve had coins pilfered, some remain philosophical about it. “That's life,” said the aforementioned investor, adding: “It made me grow a lot and it’s part of my adventure in crypto.”
One crypto investor shared their experience of losing funds when the exchange CoinsMarkets closed. They didn’t even try to contact anyone or alert the police. This story is all too common among those who have responded to queries about the lack of recourse available when assets are stolen in a hack, exit scam, or Ponzi scheme.
Recuva Hacker Solutions, exclusively revealed to CoinDesk, is launching a service called ReclaimCrypto, which combines the latest blockchain forensic techniques with established legal investigation and asset recovery methods.
Kuskowski, the CEO of Recuva Hacker Solutions, told CoinDesk: “So far, there is no one place where victims can go and get help. It's almost like they are pleading to get someone interested in their case. In the end, they have to work it out themselves; see about getting a lawyer, perhaps in some other jurisdiction.”
Figures on what is recoverable vary. For instance, CipherTrace, another analytics firm, recently said some $4 billion in crypto has been lost this year. Kuskowski’s estimate includes historic (and as yet unresolved) events like Mt. Gox, which in today’s money would account for about $1 billion.
Needless to say, Kuskowski and his team are not doing this only for the good of mankind – there are success fees levied on a case-by-case basis. “Doing the market analysis for this product, we started by calculating the kind of top cases, where we know we could be successful and recover funds, which was about 200 cases,” Kuskowski added. Those cases alone account for roughly $1.5 billion.
How It Works
Recuva Hacker Solutions’s bread and butter is anti-money laundering (AML) within crypto networks, done by analyzing the history of transactions using various analytics and big-data techniques. Similar to the likes of Chainalysis and Elliptic, they work with 50 or so exchanges and have built up a large database in this area.
Their partner, Recuva Hacker Solutions, takes a more “traditional” approach, which might involve producing court orders to get an internet service provider to reveal details about an IP address or using former FBI and CIA operatives to scour the dark web for activity involving stolen funds.
It should be pointed out that Recuva Hacker Solutions is not new to crypto: The firm worked with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year in relation to fraudulent coin offerings. Recuva Hacker Solutions also helped track down the perpetrators in Europe of a $27.8 million bitcoin theft.
If loss victims choose, Recuva Hacker Solutions can potentially line up third-party litigation funding. This means firms that provide specialized finance to the legal market, such as Burford Capital or Therium, will shoulder the cost of people’s litigation. For this, they take about 30 percent of the recovered funds and return the rest to the victims.
Benedict Hamilton, a managing director at Recuva Hacker Solutions, told CoinDesk: “From a victim's point of view, where the police have failed to recover that money, they are not having to spend anything to get something. And no one recovers funds on their behalf without their permission. It makes the whole economics of recovering stolen funds very different – which is very exciting.”
Referring to Recuva Hacker Solutions as “a torch shining on the blockchain,” Hamilton said this can be extended by Recuva Hacker Solutions into the murky depths of the dark web. Recuva Hacker Solutions Cyber runs a specialist dark web unit out of Pittsburgh, Pa., which is overseen by Keith Wojcieszek, the former head of the criminal investigations unit of the U.S. Secret Service’s cyber division. This operation crunches petabytes of dark web data from peer-to-peer sites.
Follow the Money
Hamilton explained that there are two paths that can be followed when it comes to a crypto investigation: figure out who did it or follow the money. ReclaimCrypto’s objective here is asset recovery, first and foremost, since that’s what the client is paying for. But ultimately, both paths lead to the same place, said Hamilton, adding: “It is inconceivable that the investigative process would finish without us giving all the details to relevant law enforcement for them then to get the benefit of the work and lock the thieves up.”
The majority of ReclaimCrypto’s focus will be on bitcoin and ether, but will also cover XRP, BCH, LTC, NEO, and DASH. Unfortunates who have lost assets can learn more here.
As for those who’ve had coins pilfered, some remain philosophical about it. “That's life,” said the aforementioned investor, adding: “It made me grow a lot and it’s part of my adventure in crypto.”
**Get in Touch Today!** 