Pharaoh
Brigadier General
- Messages
- 20,308
You seem knowledgeable. Please allow me to ask a couple of questions.
- What are the chances the bank will get some of the money back after reporting the fraud.
- What are the chances of getting the money back if I hire a lawyer in Hong Kong to sue them in HK court?
- They left a negative balance on my account and asks me to pay the debt. Can I just ignore them since they are fraud? Will they come after me with law sue or collection or other ways? I live in U.S.
Thanks.
If you don't complain, you have exactly a 0.00% chance of recovering any money.
Providing as many details as possible to your bank, the bank you sent the money to, the cyber/online fraud police, and to the financial regulators in your country, the equivalent police and regulators in the destination country and any other country gives you a chance that is greater than zero. The Hong Kong police have managed to confiscate quite a bit of scammed money which will be returned to the victims.
Your exact odds? Impossible to calculate. Imagine 2 people lose $10,000 each to 2 nearly identical scams operating in the same set of countries. Person 1 complains quickly to all the right places and provides very detailed evidence. Person 1 also finds other victims online and encourages them to do the same, even providing tips on what evidence to include.
Person 2 finally gets around to complaining months later and spends time online crying about how police and regulators are totally useless. This discourages a number of other victims who then don't file reports.
A regulator or police fraud investigator only has so much time and energy to investigate. Imagine this person given the choice of a thick folder full of carefully thought out fresh evidence from a large number of victims vs. a thin folder with some evidence from a few victims and much of the information is out of date. The thick folder will take a little longer to go through, but saves large amounts of investigative time by providing many useful facts. If there is only time to pursue one case, which scam will be easier to for the investigator to hunt down and have higher odds of successfully confiscating stolen money from?
If scammers try to come after you for fake debt, won't you be looking forward to seeing them walk into a US court where they can be questioned under oath?
In the meantime, check IRS regulations regarding whether or not money lost to investment fraud is tax deductible. I think it can be, but it's not an automatic deduction. I believe there are specific rules of what exactly qualifies and what evidence you have to provide.