TL;DR lost $500 to Banxa for BitCoin scam and have the opportunity for a refund, but they require me to send another transaction of $500 in order to process it. I cannot afford to lose another $500 but it would also be incredibly helpful to have the old $500 back. They said this needs to be done by midnight tonight. (send $500 and they'll return that $500 and the old $500 for a total of $1000)

Hi there,

A little over a month ago, I got a call from someone who claimed they were a police officer and they gave me so many reasons to trust them and I was in a very bad place at the time and could not afford to be arrested like he suggested would happen.

So what happened was that he said my name came up in a fraud investigation using two different crypto sites: Banxa and BitCoinWell.

He said that I had to send money to verify my ID and to "clear my name". He said that once they determined that I was not the perpetrator that they would immediately issue me a refund.

Well, after never hearing from him again and not getting my money back, I contacted Banxa support and they told me that no refund could be issued.

However, I was just talking with another person on their fraud team and they informed me that a refund could indeed be issued, but only if I sent the same amount of money that was originally sent in the previous transaction. They would then issue the full amount of this new transaction along with the old transaction's amount.

I am really in need of money, and really do want that $500 back, but, I will not have any more money at all if I send anything else.

Has anyone every experienced this sort of thing before? This is incredibly shady and they're making me complete the transaction by midnight tonight. I've asked them a ton of questions and they keep assuring me that the refund will go through and that "there is no other way" to issue the refund, and that I cannot even do a trial transaction of a smaller amount.

Please someone tell me what to do, as I have a chance to get back the $500 I lost, or lose a further $500 if that doesn't actually work.