- Service Areas / Platforms & Projects
Giveaway Scams
- Platforms & Projects
How These Cases Work
Card details, banking logins, and wallet credentials captured through a convincing fake page or message.
Smaller sums, simpler trails — and often more traceable than people expect.
01
You Pay a Small Amount to Unlock a Large One
The offer arrives as a prize notification, a tax refund, an inheritance, a competition win, or a promotion promising to multiply whatever you send. The amount promised is large enough to be interesting but not so large as to be absurd.
There is always one obstacle: a delivery charge, a processing fee, a customs payment, a verification transfer. It is small relative to the prize, which is what makes it work. Once paid, another fee appears — and for many people the second and third payments exceed the first considerably.
Nothing is ever released, because there was nothing to release.
02
What an Investigation Involves
Actionreclaims Investigations
These cases are often more straightforward than the larger frauds. The payments are usually few and direct, which means the trail is short and the receiving accounts are easier to identify.
We trace where each payment landed and what else those accounts received. Because these campaigns are run at volume against many people simultaneously, the same accounts frequently appear across dozens of cases — and that pattern is what turns a small individual loss into something a bank or the police will act on.
We also document the campaign infrastructure: the numbers, addresses, and pages used to reach you.
- Inside An Investigation
Our Process
Four stages, in the order we work them.
Direct Payment Tracing
Each payment followed to the account or wallet that received it.
Recipient Clustering
Identifying what else those accounts received and who else was targeted.
Campaign Infrastructure
The numbers, domains, and pages used to run the approach.
Evidence File
Documentation for your bank, the platform, and a police report.
- Clients
In their own words
“It was only a few hundred to release the prize. Then it was a few hundred more. The report showed both went to the same account, along with a lot of other people’s.”
Denise
United States
4.9 Rating
- FAQ
Common Questions
Sometimes yes, sometimes no, and we will tell you which at the free assessment rather than taking a case that costs more than it recovers. What often makes small cases worthwhile is that they connect to larger patterns — the receiving account rarely has only your payment in it.
Partially. Gift cards are harder than bank transfers because redemption is fast and often anonymous, but the codes were redeemed somewhere and that leaves a record. Be aware upfront that these are among the harder cases.
Don't pay it. There is no prize, and each payment simply establishes you as someone who pays. Keep the messages — they are useful evidence — and get in touch before sending anything further.
Usually from a data breach or a purchased list rather than anything you did. Part of the investigation looks at how you were reached, which occasionally identifies the source and is worth knowing since it predicts further approaches.
Quite possibly. People who have paid once are frequently re-approached, sometimes by supposed recovery firms offering to get the money back. We never make contact first, and we never ask for payment in cryptocurrency.