Frozen on COINBAZA: A San Diego Nurse Gets Most of Her Savings Back
She was told one more fee would release her money. It never would have. Instead, an eight-day trace brought back most of what she had deposited.
What happened
A San Diego intensive-care nurse joined a friendly Telegram group that shared daily crypto signals. The group pointed members to COINBAZA, a slick exchange she had never heard of. Her first small withdrawal cleared, so she committed more, moving roughly $44,800 in Bitcoin and USDT over a month.
When she tried to cash out, COINBAZA froze the account pending a tax clearance fee she had to pay up front. Every payment unlocked another demand.
How we traced it
She reached us before paying the next fee. We preserved her deposit transaction IDs and the platform wallet addresses, then clustered the on-chain flows. Her USDT had funnelled into two centralized exchanges, both of which still held part of the balance.
We filed documented freeze requests with each exchange compliance team inside the eight-day window, matching her transaction IDs to the held funds so they could confirm she was the rightful owner.
The outcome
One exchange returned the portion still on deposit; the second froze and released a further tranche after review. She recovered $27,800 of $44,800, about 62 percent, with no upfront fee charged by us at any point.
Locked out of an exchange that keeps asking for fees?
If a platform wants you to deposit more to withdraw, stop and talk to us. The earlier we trace the deposits, the more tends to survive.