Trust
Where regulators publish warnings
Regulators publish recovery-room warnings on their own official pages, not through private firms that email victims after a loss. The FBI, the UK's FCA, the North American NASAA network, and Belgium's FSMA each keep a distinct, dated alert channel naming tactics and, in some cases, specific companies. Checking those pages costs nothing and needs no lawyer. A firm that contacts an investor first, before that investor has searched for help, is the pattern these warnings describe.
Markers
The FBI's public service announcement on fraudulent law firms (I-081325-PSA, dated 13 August 2025, updating earlier bulletins from June 2024 and August 2023) describes outreach that follows a prior loss: a message arrives claiming funds can be recovered, usually for a fee paid before any work is done. The FCA's standing page on recovery room scams describes the same sequence in a different market: cold contact, urgency, and a request for payment tied to a promised return of money already lost. NASAA's Informed Investor Advisory on crypto recovery rooms adds a further marker: the caller often claims access to the original platform, exchange, or bank, a claim no legitimate recovery process depends on. Belgium's FSMA went further and named seven companies operating this way, describing what it called double victimisation, where the same person is charged twice for the same loss.
None of these regulators describe recovery rooms as occasionally legitimate. The warnings are about the method itself: contact after a loss, a fee before any recovery, and no independent way to verify the claim being made.
How to check any firm
A few checks can be done before any conversation about fees:
- Search the firm's name together with the regulator names above; genuine warnings are dated and specific.
- Ask for the jurisdiction where the firm is admitted to practise law, and confirm that registration directly with that bar or law society, not through a link the firm provides.
- Ask whether payment is requested before any recovery, or only from funds actually returned.
- Ask who the counterparty in any court or arbitration proceeding would be, and request that name in writing.
A longer version of this exercise, including what documents a genuine firm should be able to produce on request, is set out in how to verify a law firm.
Check us by the same criteria
The same checks apply here. Confirm any credentials independently, not through a number or link supplied in an unsolicited message. Compare how a firm describes refusal-to-perform disputes against the regulator pages named above: the FBI, the FCA, NASAA, and the FSMA. A description that matches how these authorities describe recovery-room conduct is a reason to stop, regardless of who is giving it. The starting point for that comparison, and for how this firm frames the underlying legal question, sits on the trust hub.