TransUnion FCA FOI Finds High Proportion of Individuals Scammed Twice Through Recovery Rooms
· Nearly one in five (17%) of scams reported to the FCA in 2025 mention a form of recovery room scam1
· Recovery room scams associated with cryptocurrencies were the most prevalent, accounting for 70% of all reported 2025 recovery room scams
· FCA impersonations were the highest reported to the regulator and account for over a quarter (26%) of reported scams in 2025
A Freedom of Information (FOI) request submitted to the FCA by TransUnion found that almost one in five (17%) of all scams reported in 2025 mentioned a form of recovery room scam. This percentage remains stubbornly high, underlining how many people who have already been targeted by a scam continue to be targeted again.
Recovery room scams, where criminals falsely promise to help recover money lost to a previous scam in exchange for an upfront fee, continue to cause significant harm. As many as 70% of these recovery room scams were associated with cryptocurrencies in 2025, with cryptocurrency scams themselves (14%) the third most reported scam type in that year, after FCA impersonation (26%) and recovery room scams (17%).
Madhu Kejriwal, chief executive officer of TransUnion UK and Europe said: “Unfortunately, there is a whole market of scams that target people who have already been defrauded. Once you’ve been a victim, fraudsters can seize the opportunity to target you a second time, and in a lot of cases, this can be effective because they hold verified information on the individual from the original scam.
“In the case of cryptocurrency scams, there is often no obvious route to recover lost funds, unlike traditional banking fraud, where customers can seek assistance from their bank. This naturally opens up an opportunity for criminals to pose as recovery agents.”
TransUnion's Tips for Protecting Against Fraud
1. Pause before you pay. Fraudsters rely on urgency. Any request to transfer money, share a one-time passcode, or act "immediately" to avoid a penalty should be treated as a red flag, whatever channel it comes through.
2. Verify independently. If you receive a call, email or message claiming to be from your bank, a government body or a company you deal with, contact them directly using a number or website you already trust, never one provided in the message itself. When contacting your bank you can use the 159 service, which provides direct connection to official bank contact numbers. If you have received an email which you’re not quite sure about, forward it to the Suspicious Email Reporting Service (SERS): report@phishing.gov.uk
3. Be sceptical of unexpected contact, even if it looks or sounds convincing. Always be cautious of an out of the blue contact offering to help recover money. Ask how the caller has the information. Reports of fraud can only be exchanged between law enforcement agencies and cannot be shared with private businesses that operate ‘so called’ recovery room services. Most phone providers are part of an initiative that allows customers to report suspicious text messages for free by forwarding them to 7726.
4. Protect personal information. Fraudsters increasingly use small pieces of publicly available data to build convincing, personalised scams. Limiting what is shared on social media and being cautious about who you share personal details with can reduce exposure.
5. Use multi-factor authentication wherever it's offered, particularly for banking, email, and any account linked to payments, as this remains one of the most effective barriers against account takeover.
6. Report suspected fraud promptly, both to your bank and to Report Fraud. Early reporting improves the chance of recovering losses and helps build the intelligence picture used to stop similar scams reaching others.
7. For businesses, review fraud controls regularly, particularly around payment authorisation and identity verification, given how quickly criminal tactics are evolving alongside the technology.
8. Understand tools available: Use FCA firm checker to check a financial firm is authorised and has regulatory permissions to provide the relevant service.
Notes:
Unless otherwise stated, all figures are from the FCA’s Freedom of Information: Right to know request.
1 "Recovery room scam" combines three categories as classified by the FCA: recovery room (crypto), recovery room (non-shares) and recovery room (shares).
