One posts BBC reports that a white hat hacker helped a bitcoin user access her locked wallet. Although the story ends well, others find themselves in similar situations that may result in losing all their belongings.

The effectiveness of wallet recovery services is still debatable as the field is filled with shady numbers plotting scams.

For example, a question about recovering lost bitcoins on Quora showed many answers, each suggesting a different expert to help with the problem. Situations in which users may encounter scammers include:

• The scammer and the recovery specialist they referred to are not the same person
• Contact via Gmail address instead of company domain address.
• With words that are “advertising” that firmly promise the performance of the service
• Share how the expert has helped other customers.

Scam Bitcoin Recovery Service Ad Template | Source: Quora

With Bitcoin’s soaring value, it’s understandable to seek out “recovery experts.” But will this cause problems for users?

What Happened to Rhonda Kambert, an Early Bitcoin Investor?

Rhonda Kamert, an Illinois resident, first invested in Bitcoin in 2013, buying 6 BTC at $80 per BTC.

Over time, she used part of the token but forgot about the rest of the BTC. It wasn’t until 2017, when Bitcoin hit the $20,000 mark, that she suddenly remembered. However, in the raw state, she couldn’t exactly remember her wallet ID.

It wasn’t until early 2021, after the price hit the $50,000 region, that Kampert had enough momentum to try to find that BTC again. In the end, she regained the wallet with a huge 62,400% win.

Can bitcoins be hacked?

Looking for help, she met father and son Chris and Charlie Brooks. After chatting for a while, she felt confident enough to give them the information she had.

During the video call between the two, Kampert recalled Chris opening his wallet right in front of her. Out of the initial six BTC it had, the wallet showed a balance of 3.5 BTC (about $175,000 at the time).

After paying Brooks a 20% tuition fee, she paid $10,000 for her daughter’s college tuition. The rest was transferred to a hardware wallet with a PIN code that she “memorized very carefully.”

The BBC article does not mention how Brooks accessed the wallet earlier. However, since Kampert had the wallet password and forgot only part of the ID, it is believed that Brooks was able to open the wallet by trying all possible combinations of the missing part of the wallet address based on the information provided by Kampert.

Although multiple techniques are used, it is important to note that there is no one-size-fits-all way to hack a cryptocurrency wallet.

While everything was going well for Kambert, she also took the risk of losing everything by trusting Brooks. And how many people have been fooled into a similar situation?

Kampert’s history requires users, especially those who are new to the market, to be more careful at the wallet setup stage and make risk plans to avoid similar cases.

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