On 14 October 2026 the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office and the FBI shut down a fraud network: 241 websites went offline and 112 servers were seized. What makes this case unusual is the second stage of the fraud rather than the first. The same operators called their victims again weeks after the loss – this time posing as a recovery service that would get the lost money back. The tactic is known as a recovery scam, and it carries on after the takedown.

For investors in Germany this is not a distant American story. Five days before the Brooklyn announcement, on 9 October 2026, the German regulator BaFin issued a warning about a purported “Vantex Bank” and named the suspicion of recovery fraud explicitly. The method is identical…