Sat Jun 12, 2021 11:54 am
Tracing Bitcoin scammers to exchanges is in the most cases possible, because it's difficult not to make a mistake over time. This is as well applicable if people go into Monero or use mixers. I can say this after many investigations. The reason why the most scammers aren't caught is because the victims get in the forums usually the answer that it's not possible. And if they go to police they have not enough experts and so they do usually nothing.
As mentioned by others pay attention to recovery scammers. You usually can recognize them because their promises are too good to be true. E.g. if they tell you that they can recover nearly everything and give you hope before they looked into the details then they have either no clue about the topic or try to cheat you. If the fraudster didn't move the coins yet then tracing makes no sense at this point in time, you need to be patient and trace it later. A while ago a guy contacted me and I told him I find traces and if police supports and we have luck with the scammers jurisdiction there is a good chance to claim it back. In parallel he contacted a fake recovery agency and they said they can recover it. He paid about 1,000 Dollars (in bitcoin) and directly after the transfer they cut communication. Now he came back to us and understood that the best promise isn't always the best solution.
You can estimate the tracing chances with the "Bitcoin privacy score" of the address (a high score means you need to wait until the score goes down over time, a low score means there are traces to follow up already). A recovery company cannot know in the first place what jurisdiction the scammer lives in. If this jurisdiction isn't friendly to yours then you probably cannot claim the stolen funds back. So be carefully if someone promises you too much and if they cannot answer simple questions about your case.
The privacy of any Bitcoin (BTC) address was calculated. The lower the score, the more likely the owner can be traced. Just do a "bitcoin privacy check".