Sadly, in such cases there is not much that a victim can do to recover the money lost.
Usually, a report need to be made with the police from the country where the victim is located.
The victim needs a case number for that fraud report.
With the case number, the victim needs to contact their bank and report the bank account used in fraud and ask for that fraudulent bank account to be frozen.
Until the entire procedure is done, the scammer already sent the money from that bank account to another bank account... meaning there will be no money left to recover.
The payments made to bitcoin wallets are almost impossible to be recovered. In most of the cases, the scammers are using a different wallet with each victim and that wallet gets closed after the scammer manages to obtain the money.
it makes no sense to cooperate with others who have been scammed with this profile. The photos are used by multiple scammers… so it makes no use to do a systematic investigation on marine scammers and their contact / bank details
100% agree with that - practically a victim has no chance to do this type of research, getting the type of results that might be admissible in a court of justice.
This is the law enforcement work, but only if the case gets reported and also if there are other instances of victims of the same scammer in the same jurisdiction. The main problem is that law enforcement have limited resources allocated for this type of fraud and the priority given to such cases in not high.
The best option, after reporting to your local police and your bank, is to make the scammers details public - email addresses, phone numbers, fake documents and stolen pictures they used, messages they sent.
It will not help you recover the money you lost.
It might not even get the scammer in jail.
In the best case scenario, the money mule (person receiving the money on behalf of the scammer) may end up having problems.
Still, it may help other potential victims dealing with the same scammer, if these victims are checking online before sending money to the scammer.