I got scammed or suspect scam on Ethereum or Uniswap. What to do?

Question

This is a general question and answer on ethereum.stackexchange.com to all "I got scammed, please help" posts.

Usually: If you suspect something is a scam and you need to ask about it, it is a scam in 99% of cases. The fact that you are reading this post indicates that you are about to be scammed or are already scammed.

This applies to you if you think:

• You have been scammed
• You think something might be a scam

Popular scams include

• Fake investment sites promising xx% returns
  • including MEV bot scams, YouTube video scams and learn build your trading bot scams
• Romance scams a.k.a. pig butchering scams
• Token tax, honey pots and other scam tokens: tokens you can only buy, not sell or only sell for loss (note: Ethereum does not have a mechanism to tell if a token is a honey pot or scam. Any services, like DexTools, DexScreener, TokenSniffer, saying they can detect scams is not accurate, and you should not rely on or trust these tools.
• Airdrop scam tokens dropped to your wallet leading to phishing sites
• Reclaim crypto scams that claim to get your scammed money back, after you have been scammed once
• Password recovery and private key recovery scams that claim to restore the access to your account or wallet
• Fake wallet applications in Google Play, Apple App Store and other platforms
  • An incident with Apple App Store and Uniswap wallet
• Scam advertisement in Google Search, top of legit search results
• Complete tasks and get rewarded scams - also known as "shopping cart scam" where they give you real money first
• Phishing links, including:
  • Fake airdrops
  • Fake NFT mints
  • Usually associated with a hacked, well-known social media account or Discord These are so-called authorised transfer scams. As opposite to the hacks, the users voluntarily transfer away their money with their our authorisation.
• Social media account takeover phishing where a legit Twitter or Discord account gets taken over due to weak security settings by the owners and it starts to post phishing links
• Duplicate trading pair ticker or token symbol scams - when buying tokens on DEXes, only buy tokens directly linked from the official website, or tokens which address someone else has confirmed for you. Anyone can register any token symbol and popular tokens have scam duplicates. Only token address matters, not the symbol.

Other malicious issues

Outside scams, there exist other cybercrime that may cause you to lose your assets

• Malware esp. on Microsoft Windows desktop computers directly extracts the private key from the wallet
  • Your computer gets infected with a malware when you install pirated software or random EXE files from Internet
• Transaction address stuffing, also known as dust attack scams, to fool one to copy a wrong Ethereum address
• Leaking your private key by storing your private keys or seed phrases on Google Drive, LastPass or other non-reputable password manager, Github, or other similar unsafe manner

This is a generic question to address the flood of pleads of asking help for scams. Moderators are free to edit both the question and answer to add more information it.

Answer 1

What to do in the case of you got scammed

On public Internet forums, like this and Reddit, no one is able to help you. Watch out for parties who offer help to get your money back for more money, as they are scammers themselves.

• Generally, it is very difficult to get any money back from scams, like it is from any international crime. It's better to accept the fact that the money is gone at this point.
• File a report with a local police, because any counterparties like cryptocurrency exchanges are required by the law to not to disclose anyone's identity. Only a police has the authority to get this information.
• Contact a local lawyer specialised in cybercrime. Scams need to be reported to the police as police is the only with effective tools to research scams.
• For a remarkable sums of more than tens of thousands of dollars, professional asset recovery companies may help you. Getting any assets back always involves litigation, is often international, slow and very expensive.
• Any smart contract cannot be "hacked" or "modified" to get your money back. Asking about this and flooding the forums with questions like "how do I undo the MEV bot I saw in Youtube video" is unproductive, as no one can help you here.
• Do not use any wallets that have been compromised. Create a new wallet from the scratch - wallets are free anycase. If your computer was infected with malware it needs to be formatted. Posting to forums or chats about scams or asking for your money back will not help you; it will only flood a forum with non-helpful messages. Instead, contact the police or local legal help. Nobody at the forums has power to get your money back, or prevent any further scams.

There have been successful asset recoveries through litigation from romance scams, so it is not unheard of.

How to prevent getting scammed

• If you suspect it is a scam, it likely is
• If the returns are too good to be true, it's a scam - there is no magical way to make money or profits from the thin air
• Don't try to trade, snipe or buy random tokens on sites like DEXScreener or Poocoin
• Don't use trading bots unless you understand the underlying trading mechanics
• Never give any payment for anyone you met in an online chat, or someone who you have not met in a real life
• Do not approve transactions you do not understand what they are
• Use a mobile app based wallet instead of a desktop wallet, as Android and iOS have much better cyber security than Microsoft Window

For Ethereum developers and security researchers

• Report scams and addresses on Chainabuse
• Githubs repositories of various blacklist databases used by wallets

Further information

• For more information see /r/cryptoscams on Reddit.
• See also Security and scam prevention on Ethereum.org.