GlossaryBeginner
Advance-Fee Scam
A scam that asks a victim to pay an upfront fee to unlock a much larger promised sum, which never actually arrives.
An advance-fee scam asks a victim to pay a smaller upfront fee — framed as a tax, release cost, or verification charge — in order to unlock or receive a much larger promised sum, which never actually arrives.
In crypto, this pattern commonly appears as an offer to "recover" previously lost or stolen funds for an upfront fee, a structurally identical scam targeting people who've already suffered a loss, covered in Kaavon's "What to Do If You've Been Scammed in Crypto" guide.
Examples
- A message offering to recover crypto lost to a previous scam, in exchange for an upfront "release fee," is a classic advance-fee scam.
- Advance-fee scams rely on the promise of a large payoff to justify an initial, smaller loss, which is itself the actual goal of the scam.