How to freeze stolen crypto on an exchange

Why this is your best move (and you can start it yourself)

The blockchain is irreversible, but exchanges aren't. When stolen funds enter a regulated exchange with identity verification (KYC), they land under the control of a company that has a fraud team, compliance obligations, and a button to freeze accounts. That's where a victim can actually move the needle.

The good news: you don't need to hire a lawyer to take the first step. You can email the exchange's fraud desk or compliance team yourself, lay out your case with clear evidence, and request a review. The better documented the request, the more seriously they take it.

The submission pack they'll ask for

A fraud desk doesn't act on “I was robbed.” It needs to verify the money trail on its own, in minutes. Prepare and attach this:

• Your wallet address: the address the stolen funds left from.
• All transaction hashes: from the very first transfer you made through to the deposit that landed at the exchange — hop by hop, no gaps.
• A fund-flow diagram: a visual map of how the money moved from your wallet to the exchange account, with amounts at each step.
• The incident timeline: dates and times of what happened and when, from the scam's first contact to the last transaction.
• The amounts and assets: how much was stolen, in which crypto (for example USDT, ETH, BTC), and its approximate value.
• The exchange deposit identifier: if you can, the deposit address or network it came in through, so they can locate the receiving account.

What the exchange can and can't do (honestly)

On reasonable suspicion backed by solid evidence, an exchange can place a temporary evidentiary lock on the receiving account while it reviews. That buys you time — which is exactly what you need in the first days.

But maintaining a hard freeze is another matter. To hold it beyond that short window, the exchange almost always needs a police report, a law-enforcement request, or a court order — and usually requires it within days. Without that formal backing, the temporary lock lapses and the funds move again.

Stablecoins have a nuance: the issuer (for example Tether with USDT, or Circle with USDC) can also freeze addresses at the token level, but in practice it acts on a request from law enforcement or an attorney, not directly from the victim.

The other path: flagging the wallets (no police report)

If a freeze doesn't come through, there's still something useful you can do without a police report: report the addresses so they get flagged as linked to a theft. Exchanges and blockchain-analytics firms check these lists — a flagged wallet has a much harder time cashing out, because deposits coming from it trip compliance alerts.

It isn't recovery, but it throws sand in the scammer's machine and raises the friction to turn the loot into real money. It's an action you have available from day one.

Why a forensic report fits this request exactly

Here's the key: a fraud desk works with verifiable evidence, not stories. A forensic report is built to precisely that spec — source address, the full chain of hashes, a flow diagram, the timeline, and amounts — so you can submit it yourself and the other side can verify it without friction.

That's the practical difference: instead of wrestling with a generic support form, you walk in with the same pack their team needs to justify a lock. It doesn't guarantee the outcome — nobody legitimate does — but it turns your request into something actionable. And it's all done with public blockchain data: your seed phrase and private keys are never needed.