Well, we notice your reply and as a private cyber investigations company from Israel, we would like to explain a few things. Hopefully to add some value and explain the logic behind a few things.
"What they don't like to disclose on their website and service contract is that they contact professionals such as the police, lawyers and regulator's to help retrieve stolen money."
What? Why did you decide that it's a secret? In any case, we offer a plan of actions to the client, we describe the full process. From what we know other legit companies say it as well. They are explaining that. Most of the victims, don't really read all the articles and the information, they don't have the patience to go over it, even when we are sending it to them directly. This is one of the reasons, that from the first place, they did not check the website before investing.
The regulatory body can help only in case a victim lost money to a regulated company.
If you were defrauded by a UK company when you are Candian, it's will not help to file a Police complaint in Canada. In any case, most of the victims don't really know who defrauded them.
"They will only do recovery services themselves when it is easy like looking up the destination bitcoin address that stolen bitcoins were taken to when no/minimum bitcoin laundering was involved. This is publicly available and anyone can look this up. It's not hard at all especially when there is no bitcoin laundering involved."
There are many types of scams, not everything goes around bitcoin. In any case, tracing the money in case of a bitcoin is free. But it will not help to recover it or to know who did it. So in most cases, it is a waste of time, because the money will be laundered in any case. Sometimes there other ways to find who did the scam. Obviously, I will not describe them so the scammers will not be smarter. In any case, bitcoin cases are the hardest.
"Although these companies sometimes claim to have elaborate asset recovery expertise, or even legal expertise,"
Well yes, I agree with that part, many companies claim to have experts when they are not. A company that is not a registered law firm, cannot sell and provide to its clients' legal services, such as a lawsuit. Meaning regular business, cannot hire a lawyer that will work for them and will represent clients in lawsuits, it's illegal. So if you wish to take legal actions, you should have a registered law firm for that. Never deal with a company that will accept bitcoin as payment for "recovery services". The only difference is that we provide cyber investigation services, in case the victim doesn't know who defrauded him. If the victim wants to file a civil lawsuit, we can recommend him a law firm, but it will mean that he will have an additional agrreement with a law firm. You cannot file a lawsuit if you don't know who to sue.
"some of them do little more than draft a demand letter to the original scam artist and send a boilerplate complaint to the logical regulatory agency. Those are two steps that victims can take easily on their own, free of charge."."
You can represent yourself in court as well for free, but still, everybody prefers to have a lawyer for obvious reasons. The idea with the letter comes from law firms. If the victim wants to file a civil lawsuit, his lawyer will need first of all to warn the other side, before taking legal actions. Because the judge will ask you why did not try to resolve it first of all without a lawsuit. Sending by yourself some kind of a letter to a scammer that is not leaving in your country, will not help. Because it will show that you cannot do anything, or that you don't have the means/tools to do something against him. But if you will do it with a lawyer from his country, then maybe he will take you more seriously.
However, before even coming to the stage when you are sending a letter, you need to know who defrauded you, where he is living at and to have evidence to prove your claims, so it will not be extortion or/and libel.
Complaining to the regulatory body when the website/platform was not regulated, never helped someone. If somebody is offering it as part of the services, it is a fraud.
In order to recover funds from a scam, first of all, the victim needs to know who did it, collect evidence, find the scammer and then to decide what he will do. Or he will go to the Police and will hope that they will care or he can take the matter into his own hands and file a civil lawsuit.
I hope that it will help someone in the future.
Be safe, Alexander, Global FTI Team.