Victims of earlier crypto losses sometimes receive a polished PDF that looks like an Independent Verification Report from Merkle Science. The real company (merklescience.com) sells blockchain analytics and compliance tools to businesses and agencies. It does not run a public counter where strangers collect private “digital asset recovery” reports for a fee.
The forgery borrows a real US address and logo, invents a case file, parks the coins on “Coinbase for three days”, and cites Section B of H.R. 4763 under a recovery-act name that does not match the actual US bill (H.R. 4763 is the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act). Then comes the ask: your wallet must be “SEC-registered”, and anti-money laundering (AML) “protocols” need an initial incoming transfer of 2.1% of the claim. That percentage is the product.
Do not send the deposit, passport scans, seed phrases or exchange codes. Open only the official Merkle Science and Coinbase sites you type yourself. Save the PDF, headers and wallet addresses for a report — and treat every follow-up “lawyer” who found you after a first loss as another advance-fee pitch.
Start at Get help. For the wider paid-recovery pattern: Fake recovery. Related: “Your BTC was found on Coinbase” recovery scripts.
This article is for general information only. It is not legal or financial advice. Details change. If you have lost money, contact your bank or card issuer and use the routes on the help pages.