Crypto Fraud in Latvia: What to Do and Whether You Can Get Your Money Back

If you have lost crypto to fraud, you probably need two things at once: to know what to do right now, and an honest answer to whether the money can realistically be recovered. This guide gives you both.

Let us start with what many people do not want to hear, but need to know in order to make good decisions: recovery is the exception, not the rule. A real chance exists in a narrow window — while the funds are still sitting at a regulated exchange or bank and you act within hours to days. Once the crypto has moved into self-custody, through a mixer, or out via an uncooperative offshore platform, a confirmed on-chain transfer is irreversible, and no court or police force will reverse it. Better to know that at the outset than to pay for false hope.

This is exactly where an honest lawyer differs from the “recovery service” that cold-calls victims. We do not sell hope. We help you act fast in the rare cases where a real chance exists, and we tell you plainly when it does not.

This page is general information on Latvian and EU law as of June 2026, not individual legal advice. The outcome depends on the specific facts. For how we work, see crypto lawyer in Latvia.

In short

• The first step is not the police — it is your bank or the exchange. If the funds are still in transit or still on a regulated platform, contact the bank or exchange immediately and ask them to stop or freeze the transaction. Hours matter here, not days.
• Then report to the State Police with a complaint (in person, by calling 110, via the Latvija.lv portal, or with an e-signature to pasts@vp.gov.lv) and preserve all evidence.
• Recovery is realistic mainly in one scenario: the funds are still in an identifiable account at a regulated exchange or bank, and freezing happens within days, not weeks. After they reach self-custody, mixers, or offshore platforms, recovery is usually impossible.
• Beware the second scam. “Fund-recovery” services that ask for an upfront fee, remote access to your computer, or your seed phrase are themselves fraudsters. Never pay an advance fee and never disclose your keys.
• Criminal and civil action can help only if there is someone — or something — to act against: an identified wrongdoer, or specific funds in a specific regulated venue. Against an anonymous thief whose money has already dispersed across the blockchain, no process gets it back.

The first 24–72 hours

Almost everything is decided in the first hours. Freezing only works if there is something to freeze — if the money is still in an account and not already moved on. So act in parallel, not one step at a time.

1. Contact your bank or exchange immediately. Both the State Police and Latvijas Banka advise victims to go straight to the bank or regulated platform rather than wait. If:

• you made a card or SEPA payment — contact the bank and ask it to stop or recall the transfer and block any further ones. A card payment can sometimes be disputed (chargeback), but recalling a bank transfer depends entirely on speed and on the receiving bank;
• the funds are still on, or passed through, a regulated exchange (CASP) — notify its support or compliance team in writing and ask it to freeze the recipient account. A fast notice can sometimes freeze funds before they are withdrawn.

One important caveat: an exchange will not freeze an account or hand over customer data on a victim’s request alone. It acts either on its own suspicious-transaction trigger under AML rules, or on an order from law enforcement or a court. So your call to the exchange matters to get the transaction flagged, but the actual freeze is usually achieved by the police. Take both steps at once.

2. Report to the State Police. More on the channels in the next section. The sooner there is an official complaint, the sooner the police can request data from the bank or exchange.

3. Preserve absolutely everything. Tracing and any later order rest on this data, so gather it before any account is closed:

• on-chain data — every sender and recipient wallet address, transaction IDs (transaction hash / TXID), exact amounts and the asset type (including the network, e.g. ERC-20 or TRC-20), and timestamps. Export these from a block explorer (e.g. Etherscan, Tronscan, blockchain.com) and save the explorer links too;
• exchange or CASP records — full transaction and withdrawal history, account statements, registration emails, support ticket numbers, and the address you withdrew to. Download them right away;
• bank and card records — transfer confirmations, IBANs, payment receipts, dates, amounts;
• communications — screenshots of every chat, email, and text, the website or app (link plus screenshots), the fraudster’s phone numbers, usernames and social profiles, any “account dashboard” showing a fake balance, and any documents or “contracts” they sent.

In screenshots, include the date, time, and address; do not crop the originals; and write down a timeline of events. Keep everything, even what seems trivial — investigators link addresses across different victims.

One more thing to recognise straight away: pressure to “act within 24 hours or the money is gone forever” is itself a manipulation tactic. Genuine urgency comes from you — from acting fast — not from a stranger’s voice on the phone.

How to report in Latvia

Fraud is a criminal offence. It is governed by Section 177 of the Criminal Law (“Fraud”) — acquiring another’s property or rights to property by abuse of confidence or by deceit. The penalty is tiered:

• the basic offence — deprivation of liberty up to 3 years, temporary deprivation of liberty, probationary supervision, community service, or a fine;
• if committed on a significant scale or by a group in prior conspiracy — up to 5 years (with or without confiscation of property);
• if committed on a large scale or in an organised group — from 2 to 10 years, with confiscation and probationary supervision of up to 3 years.

If the fraud was committed in a computer environment — for example, by entering false data into an automated data-processing system — Section 177.¹ (computer fraud) may also apply, with the same penalty range. Where an account was hacked or access credentials stolen, Section 241 (unauthorised access to an automated data-processing system) can apply, while money laundering falls under Section 195.

The scale thresholds are tied to the minimum monthly wage and therefore change over time. A “large scale” is a value equal to or above 50 minimum monthly wages — at the 2025 minimum wage of €740, roughly €37,000 or more. The “significant scale” qualifier rests on the concept of significant pecuniary loss — a loss exceeding 5 minimum wages, i.e. more than €3,700 in 2025. The precise classification in a given case is determined by the investigation, so the current thresholds and amounts are always worth checking against the law in force.

Where and how to file

A report to the State Police can be filed in four ways:

• in person at any police station;
• by calling 110 — the police call and reporting line (112 is the single emergency number);
• electronically without an e-signature via the Latvija.lv state services portal;
• with a secure e-signature (eParaksts) to pasts@vp.gov.lv. (E-submission rules change from time to time — it is worth checking the current conditions at vp.gov.lv before sending.)

An anonymous report cannot support criminal proceedings — you must give full identity and contact details. In the complaint, set out the facts, the timeline, and the amounts, attach the evidence package you gathered earlier, and ask to be recognised as a victim (more on that below).

Cyber-enabled financial fraud in Latvia is investigated by the State Police Cybercrime Combating Department and the economic-crime units. Phishing sites and malicious links can additionally be reported to CERT.lv (cert@cert.lv; phone +371 67085888; a separate line for fake SMS and numbers, +371 23230444). It is important to understand the division of roles: CERT.lv is an incident-response service — it can quickly block fraudulent infrastructure and issues warnings, but it does not investigate crimes and does not recover money. For a financial loss it directs you to the police.

A report is not yet criminal proceedings

A complaint is a report, but not yet opened criminal proceedings. An official who learns of a lawful reason and grounds to start criminal proceedings must do so without delay — or issue a reasoned refusal. The widely cited “10-day” period applies to appealing a refusal to the prosecutor (and to the prosecutor’s time to review it), not to a guaranteed deadline for the initial decision. If a refusal is issued, it can be appealed; a lawyer can help assess the exact procedure.

Honestly about the outcome: crypto cases are often suspended or closed where the wrongdoer cannot be identified or the funds cannot be traced across borders. That does not mean reporting is pointless — a complaint is a precondition for almost everything else, including your rights as a victim — but the expected result must be assessed realistically.

Victim status

Under the Criminal Procedure Law, a victim (cietušais) is a person to whom harm has been caused by the offence — moral injury, physical suffering, or pecuniary loss. A person is recognised as a victim by a decision of the person directing the proceedings, and only with that person’s consent. The status opens the rights a victim actually needs:

• to receive information and copies of key decisions;
• to file a compensation claim within the proceedings;
• to bring in a representative or advocate;
• to appeal a refusal to open proceedings, or their termination;
• in certain cases, to claim state compensation.

The practical lever is simple: in your complaint, ask to be recognised as a victim straight away. For intentional crimes, victims apply for state compensation to the Legal Aid Administration, and the application must be filed within one year of being recognised as a victim.

Tracing funds and exchanges

Blockchains are public, so transactions can technically be traced. That is what specialist blockchain analytics do (e.g. Chainalysis tools, used by Europol, the FBI, and more than a hundred agencies): from a known wallet address they trace the flow of funds forward to a withdrawal point at a custodial exchange. The logic is this — if the flow ends at a regulated exchange, law enforcement can order it to freeze the funds and disclose the owner’s identity; if it leads to self-custody or through a mixer, tracing rarely turns into recovery.

This is where it matters whether the platform is regulated. Under MiCA, crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) in Latvia are licensed and supervised by Latvijas Banka; former VASPs had to convert to licensed CASPs by 30 June 2025. A licensed CASP has full AML, KYC, and record-keeping obligations — meaning it holds identity and transaction data and has a lawful channel to act on a valid order. The unlicensed offshore “exchanges” that fraudsters use usually have neither, and ignore foreign orders. Before you do anything else, check whether the platform was ever licensed at all — Latvijas Banka maintains a public CASP register and a “Beware of fraudsters” warning section.

In Latvia there are two main routes to a freeze, and in practice the criminal route is often the fastest:

• The AML route (administrative). A bank or CASP that files a suspicious-transaction report withholds execution, and the Financial Intelligence Service (FID) can issue a freezing order. The timeframes cited in commentary (up to around 45 days, extendable, with part of that time allotted for law enforcement to seek a court attachment) should be treated as indicative, not as the exact text of the law.
• The criminal route. Seizure of property (aresta uzlikšana mantai) is a measure that secures compensation of harm to the victim and the return of criminally acquired property. In pre-trial proceedings it is imposed by a decision of the person directing the proceedings, confirmed by an investigating judge (confirmation without delay, no later than within 3 working days).

When the funds are in another EU member state, EU instruments help: the European Investigation Order (for banking information and gathering evidence), Regulation (EU) 2018/1805 on the mutual recognition of freezing and confiscation orders (applicable since 19 December 2020), and — coming soon — the e-Evidence Regulation (EU) 2023/1543 with the European Production Order (applicable from 18 August 2026). These are faster than classic mutual legal assistance (MLA), but still take weeks and work only with cooperative, EU-reachable service providers. Outside the EU, or in uncooperative jurisdictions, you are left with slow MLA — months to years, often without result.

But how much does this actually recover in practice? Europol reports on dismantled EU crypto-fraud networks (in December 2025 — worth more than €700 million) make it clear: laundering across multiple blockchains and exchanges, using accounts under different names, makes tracing and recovery “almost impossible.” It is true that authorities occasionally achieve large freezes — but those are broad, coordinated cross-border operations, not the typical outcome of a single complaint.

Criminal or civil? The reality of recovery

Criminal proceedings and a civil claim are two different routes, and they usually run in parallel rather than as substitutes. But both share the same precondition: there has to be someone, or something, to act against.

Criminal proceedings cost you nothing — the police investigate using state resources, and seizure of property is often the fastest freezing tool. This is your main lever while the funds can still be found.

A civil claim in Latvia can be brought only against an identifiable defendant — the fraudster, if identified, the money mule whose account received the funds, or another intermediary. You cannot bring a claim against an “unknown person.” The legal basis may be unjust enrichment, tort, or contract. The civil court’s main tool for protecting the money is the securing of a claim (Chapter 19 of the Civil Procedure Law, Sections 137–146), and it has several features that make it useful:

• it can be requested before the claim is filed — if the court grants it, the judge sets a deadline by which the claim must be brought, failing which the security lapses;
• the court decides no later than the next day after receiving the application, without notifying the defendant in advance — it is precisely this element of surprise that lets you catch the funds while they are still there;
• one of the available measures is the attachment of sums owed to the defendant by a third party (including a credit institution) — that is, freezing the account.

The instrument has its price, though. For a monetary claim secured by attachment, the applicant must usually deposit 5% of the claim amount with a bailiff as cover for the defendant’s possible losses; if the claim is ultimately dismissed, those losses can be claimed from you. On top of that come state fees, lawyer’s costs, and often a blockchain-tracing report. In a smaller fraud, these costs can match or exceed the loss itself — worth calculating right at the start.

In a cross-border situation, the EU offers a further tool — the European Account Preservation Order (Regulation (EU) No 655/2014), by which a court in one member state can freeze funds in a debtor’s bank account in another. An important nuance: it is built around bank accounts at credit institutions; whether a particular crypto-platform balance falls within it is assessed case by case and cannot be taken for granted. A Latvian court can also order securing measures in support of a claim to be brought on the merits in another EU member state (Brussels Ia, Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012, Article 35).

And now the honest limits, which must be stated plainly:

• Anonymity is the biggest obstacle. No identifiable defendant means no civil claim and usually no recovery. Self-custody losses and transfers that have left regulated venues are usually unrecoverable.
• Jurisdiction and enforcement. Offshore exchanges and defendants outside the EU are slow or impossible to compel; even a won judgment cannot be enforced if the assets or the person are abroad or already dispersed.
• The exchange is usually not the payer. An exchange that merely received the fraud proceeds is generally not liable for your loss just because an account existed there. It can be compelled to freeze specific funds or disclose data — but not to pay your loss. Its liability for any breach of AML duties is legally unsettled and hard to prove; it should not be relied on.

So the most realistic scenario in which recovery is possible is narrow, and the same across every source: the funds are still in an identifiable account at a regulated, EU-supervised exchange or bank, and the police or the Financial Intelligence Service act within hours to days to freeze them and obtain disclosure. Everything else is either much harder or impossible.

Beware “recovery” scammers

If you have been defrauded once, prepare to be approached again. Advance-fee or “recovery” fraud is a documented second scam, and in Latvia it is not theoretical.

The State Police has described a scheme in which fraudsters pose as representatives of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), approach people who have already lost money to investment fraud, have them install remote-access software, and — supposedly to “return the funds” — get them to register on platforms, pay a card “activation” purchase, and even take out quick loans to “improve their credit score” and “recover the maximum amount.” Latvijas Banka similarly warns of “brokers” who offer to recover failed crypto investments while asking for remote access to your computer. Often the scheme is two-stage: the fake platform first pays out a small “profit” to build trust, and after the loss a second team appears — the “rescuers” who defraud again.

Foreign regulators say the same: the FBI/IC3, the US CFTC (“Don’t be Re-Victimized by Recovery Frauds”), the UK FCA, and Belgium’s FSMA. The message everywhere is identical — and victims’ details are sold on, so the approaches repeat.

A few firm principles worth committing to memory:

• Never pay an advance fee to anyone promising to recover your crypto. A legitimate lawyer charges for specific legal work, does not guarantee recovery, and does not demand a percentage “unlock,” “tax,” or “liquidity” fee to “release” funds.
• Never disclose your seed phrase or private keys, and never grant remote access to your computer.
• Legitimate police and regulators never call asking for payment or for your bank and card details.
• A blockchain transaction cannot be “hacked back.” Anyone who promises this is lying.
• If a platform suddenly freezes your account and demands a further payment before “returning” your money, that demand is itself the fraud.

Tax and documentation

This part is technical, but important so that the fraud does not create a second problem for you.

First, about unrealistic hopes: a loss from fraud cannot be deducted from your salary or other income. Crypto-assets are taxed as a capital asset, and gain or loss is assessed only within that asset class. The VID position is narrower than many assume: losses from disposing of virtual currency can be offset only against positive capital gains arising from disposing of virtual currency. The reverse direction is allowed — losses from disposing of other capital assets can be offset against gains on virtual currency — but not the other way around.

Second, a significant uncertainty must be acknowledged. A theft, where the asset simply vanishes without a sale for consideration, may not be a “disposal” at all, the kind that creates a recognised capital loss. VID guidance does not clearly resolve this case, so do not take for granted that defrauded crypto can be used as a tax relief. It is assessed case by case — discuss it with a specialist before you declare anything.

Third, documentation. Tax losses are not recognised automatically. For a loss to have any chance, you generally need to be able to document:

• the original acquisition and cost basis (purchase records, exchange statements, prior transaction history — without history, the acquisition value defaults to €0);
• the fact and amount of the loss (the police complaint and criminal-proceedings documents, the exchange’s notice, on-chain proof of the transfer);
• that recovery is not possible and the asset is genuinely gone.

It is precisely the police complaint and the decisions in criminal proceedings that turn “my crypto is gone” into something you can show VID. Keep supporting documents for at least 3 years. A reminder, too: from 1 January 2026 DAC8 applies, and the first CASP reports to VID are due by 30 June 2027 — so it is worth documenting a loss cleanly, because VID will increasingly see both blockchain and exchange data. More on losses and the capital-gains logic: crypto taxes in Latvia.

Frequently asked questions

Can defrauded crypto realistically be recovered? Sometimes — but it is the exception, not the rule. A real chance exists mainly when the funds are still held at a regulated exchange or bank and you act within hours to days to have them frozen. After self-custody, mixers, and uncooperative offshore platforms, a confirmed on-chain transaction is irreversible and recovery is usually impossible. No honest lawyer guarantees recovery.

Where do I report crypto fraud in Latvia? To the State Police — in person at any station, by calling 110, electronically without an e-signature via Latvija.lv, or with a secure e-signature to pasts@vp.gov.lv. An anonymous report cannot support criminal proceedings. Phishing sites can additionally be reported to CERT.lv (cert@cert.lv), but CERT.lv does not recover money.

What should I do first after a scam? The first step is not the police — it is your bank or the exchange. If a payment is still in transit or the funds are still on a regulated platform, contact it immediately and ask it to stop or freeze the transaction. Then report to the police and preserve all evidence.

Someone offers to recover my lost crypto for a fee. Should I trust them? Almost certainly not. This is the second scam. Never pay an advance fee, never disclose your seed phrase or private keys, and never grant remote access to your computer. Legitimate police and regulators never call asking for payment.

Can I write off stolen crypto on my taxes? Not automatically. Losses from disposing of crypto-assets can be offset only against positive capital gains from disposing of crypto-assets — not against salary or gains on shares. And a theft, where the asset vanishes without a sale, is not always a “disposal” that creates a recognised loss. It is assessed case by case.

When to talk to a lawyer

Not in every case can a lawyer recover the money — and an honest lawyer will tell you that at once. But there are moments when timely legal help genuinely changes the outcome:

• in the first hours, when there is a need to assess whether the case is recoverable at all, and to prepare freezing and data-preservation requests to the bank and exchange quickly and correctly;
• when a police-ready complaint has to be prepared with a clean evidence package, to improve the chance that proceedings are opened and that you are recognised as a victim with full procedural rights;
• when victim rights need securing — access to the case and the state-compensation application within one year;
• when there is an identifiable defendant or intermediary and it makes sense to assess a civil claim and the securing of a claim;
• when a cross-border reality check is needed — an honest assessment of when funds on a foreign platform are practically out of reach and when international cooperation is worth the effort;
• when a loss has to be documented correctly for VID and prior years brought in order;
• and — no less important — when you need to protect yourself from the second scam.

Our role is simple and direct: to tell you honestly what can and cannot be done in your situation. If you would like us to assess your case, see our disputes and litigation services or get in touch. If the question is about source of funds or the security of a future transaction, see our transaction support.

If you also need emotional support, Latvia has a free helpline for victims of crime, 116006, which also provides information on victims’ rights and state compensation.

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Related reading:

• Crypto Tax in Latvia 2026 — the full guide
• Getting a MiCA/CASP Licence in Latvia

Updated: 26 June 2026. General information only and not individual legal advice.