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Is there any way to get money back from money launderers? I joined a group on Whatsapp and they offered money for likes and follows on instagram. They then offer advanced tasks where you send them prepayment and they give you back commission. I unfortunately fell for it before I was able to research them online and found they were a scammer.

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    How did you send the money?
    – DJClayworth
    Commented Nov 18 at 14:34
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    Note that paying for likes and follows is already a shady practice; by getting involved even that far, you label yourself as a gullible target.
    – keshlam
    Commented Nov 18 at 14:43
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    How much are we talking about here? You can count that as "tuition' to the school of life. This will not be the last scammers you encounter.
    – Pete B.
    Commented Nov 18 at 16:43
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    I was scammed for ƒ10,– (around €4.50) when I was around 9 years old, and I learned my lesson for life :O
    – gerrit
    Commented Nov 18 at 18:02
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    If you're in the UK you should report it to Action Fraud (ran by the police)
    – Danny Beckett
    Commented Nov 18 at 21:04

6 Answers 6

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No, and I want to emphasise a point not made in the other answers - by falling for a scam once, and by posting about it, you are likely to be made a target of "recovery scammers" who will promise you they can reclaim your funds - if you just pay a fee, or a tax, or another fee. None of it is true and they are just preying on people known to be susceptible in order to milk yet more money out of them. It could be the original group who scammed you pretending to be someone else, or someone who just reads this post and decides to scam you (maybe the latter is less likely on this specific forum where there's no DM functionality). I'm afraid the money is gone and you should not believe anyone who tries to tell you they can help you get it back.

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    Reminds me of people stealing your hubcaps and then offering to sell them back to you at their local "store".
    – Amazon Dies In Darkness
    Commented Nov 20 at 9:13
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You can sue them, try to prove that they lied to you and haven't provided the service they promised, and demand to recoup your losses.

For that you'll need to find who they really are, serve them, have the lawsuit filed and handled in a court that would accept jurisdiction, receive a favorable judgment, serve that on them, and then hope they'll comply and if not - send it to collections and hope to get some pennies on the dollar.

Or, you can write it off as a learning experience and move on.

In all likelihood the scammers are in a different country, maybe on a different continent, and I doubt you have the resources and the knowledge necessary to identify who they are and prove that they are the ones who lied to you.

You can report your experience to the FBI (or a similar agency in your home country, if you're not in the US), they do have the resources and the knowledge necessary. Sometimes they even find some of these people.

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  • It is extremely ill advised to go after organized crimes. You simply do not know who is behind them. File a police report and take community classes to learn more about how scams work and get smarter.
    – Nelson
    Commented Nov 19 at 7:15
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    I obviously didn't intend it to appear a feasible option
    – littleadv
    Commented Nov 19 at 7:38
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Short answer:
No, there unfortunately isn't.

Slightly longer answer:
In theory there would be three ways to recover any money

  1. If the scammer voluntarily gave it back (which they won't - if they were nice they wouldn't be scammers in the first place)
  2. If you managed to force the scammer to give it back (which you can't - their bases of operation are usually selected for being out of your legal reach)
  3. If you managed to reverse the payment (which you also can't as the scammers are unfortunately smart enough to have you use non-reversible payment methods)

But as I said, NONE of those have any realistic chance to work. Your money is gone, the best you can do right now is not lose any additional money.

Also, please be aware that you have been "marked" as an "exploitable target" now - they managed to get money from you once, they will try to get more money from you in the future. As other already mentioned you will likely e.g. get "news" that police caught the scammers and want to refund you your money: they just need a little fee in advance, or that some private investigator is hot on the tail of the scammers and just needs a bit of money to capture them, or that that the scammers themselves had a change of heart and want to give your money back, but need you to prove that it is actually your bank account by sending them a bit of money... I think you get the idea. Be very vigilant and alert for follow up attempts of this kind (as well as any other type of scam) in the next few years (yes, they won't just give up after a week).

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This is a horrible thing to deal with and you have my sympathy.

If you used a credit card or Paypal (not Family and Friends) you can issue a chargeback.

These scammers rely on the fact that you are likely on a different continent and they can easily become shadows.

There is little legal recourse. I would, however, encourage you to document and educate people as widely as possible.

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    Usually these scams work by asking for payments that cannot be reversed (zelle/cashapp/wire/gift cards/crypto). That's kindof the point.
    – littleadv
    Commented Nov 18 at 19:10
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    @littleadv: Absolutely, but it’s still helpful to point out these possibilities, just in case the scammers were sloppy.
    – Peter LeFanu Lumsdaine
    Commented Nov 20 at 17:14
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If the scammers know what they are doing, then the answer is probably no.

You could try to reverse the transactions you made. Unfortunately smart scammers will convince you to use money transfer methods you can't reverse.

You could try to take legal actions. Smart scammers will cover their tracks and make sure that any information you have about them that could be used to find their real identity is fake. And even if you manage to track them down, the traces often end up in countries with dysfunctional legal systems.

You could try to scam the scammers back. But you will probably be wasting your time at best. But in the worst case you might end up breaking the law yourself or become a target of violent criminals.

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The chances of you getting your money back are near zero.

Usually the transactions are carried out by anonymous paying methods, idk cash-/giftcards, crypto or whatnot, the money is directly moved and extracted once the payment is completed and the perpetrators might be in another country or continent or at least move your money there, so that you can't verify it's yours and can't reverse the transaction. So if you can issue your bank to reverse the transaction or whatnot you can try that, but usually scammers are good enough at their game that you don't have that option.

Though despite your chances of recovering your money being near zero you might still alert the respective consumer protection agencies and/or police. That might give them a hint, improve their overview about what scams are currently hot and what preventive measures and education should aim for and so on.

Like if no one mentions these scams or only after other people have gotten scammed out of embarrassment then scammers have it particularly easy because the scam can go on for much longer. That's why for example sex scams probably are very popular as few people would like to admit what they got caught on.

Though as others have said when talking about it online rather use a throwaway account as that could also render you a target for further scams.

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