Crypto Recovery Family Firm Claims Retrieval of $6M in Lost Digital Assets
Summary:
Chris and Charles Brooks, founders of Crypto Asset Recovery, claim to have retrieved over $6 million in lost crypto. The New Hampshire-based service specializes in assisting clients reclaim lost digital wallets or who have fallen victim to crypto fraud. They primarily aid individuals who have lost their Bitcoin wallet passwords, which constitute around 70% of their clients. The company has also recently launched a scam-tracking service to help trace stolen funds, despite the recovery chances being extremely low. The firm has enjoyed a 45-46% success rate in helping clients crack lost passwords.
When individuals fall victim to cryptocurrency fraud or misplace their private access codes, their digital assets are typically gone for good. However, a family-owned firm from New Hampshire suggests otherwise, claiming to have retrieved upwards of $6 million in misplaced crypto during their tenure. Chris and Charles Brooks are the founding figures behind Crypto Asset Recovery, an enterprise offering services to customers who struggle with misplaced wallets and fraud-tracking for those defrauded in crypto ventures.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, father and co-founder Chris Brooks revealed that about 70% of their clientele approach them for assistance after misplacing their Bitcoin wallet passcodes. In many instances, these clients lack access to seed word backups, which renders their wallets almost non-recoverable in the absence of expert intervention.
He noted that technologically advanced recovery seeds were proposed in 2013 and only gained popularity in 2015, providing no assistance for those with older wallets. Even in the case of newer wallets, accessing seed words requires some digging around should the user wish to create a backup.
In instances where passwords are lost and no seed word back-ups exist, access to the wallet becomes unattainable. However, Chris suggested that most of these wallets can still be retrieved through the application of software that exert brute force to decipher the password.
In some scenarios, users may have incorrectly recorded their seed word backup by omitting a word or consistently encountering an error upon entering the words. According to Chris, these wallets can often be regained too by leveraging brute force to figure out the left out word or the accurate sequence of words.
Co-founder Charles Brooks recently assisted a collector of "Casascius coins" to recover his misplaced wallet code. A Casascius coin is a tangible coin incorporating a Bitcoin private key formatted in a film on its rear side. Charles resolved the case by applying software to predict the obliterated characters of the private key, using the undamaged characters and the section of the Bitcoin address displayed at the front of the coin.
The pair recently introduced a scam tracing service to aid users whose cryptocurrency has been swindled by fraudsters. In instances of fraud, they scrutinize the transaction hashes of the exploited party's transfer to the scammer, tracking the funds into the swindler's wallet.
Charles warned that funds swindled through scams typically are irretrievable. The only glimmer of hope for recovery lies through seeking legal and law enforcement intervention. Even then, the likelihood of recovery is very low. However, he proposed that tracing stolen funds and providing a police report could prove beneficial for several crypto users.
While no case has been resolved yet, law enforcement is investigating several cases reported by Charles's team. Their company claims to have recovered $6 million through helping users retrieve lost wallets, forgotten passwords, and missing seed words. Charles stated, "We have right around a 45% or 46% success rate when somebody needs help with a cracked password, and so over time that has built up."
Over time, the loss of passwords and missing seed words has resulted in billions of dollars being lost from cryptocurrency users. ChanAnalysis approximates that over 20% of the Bitcoin supply is encapsulated in wallets inaccessible to anyone.
Published At
4/23/2024 5:30:00 PM
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