CALGARY. Calgary and Edmonton police still open a startling number of files that begin as a romance and end as a Bitcoin transfer to a “trading desk” the victim has never seen. The pattern has a name, pig butchering, that is now more famous than it is useful. What matters is whether any of the coins can still be found.
Civil options exist. They are narrower than the adverts. A freeze at an exchange requires a trace that will stand up, a legal basis the platform recognises, and time. None of that is improved by a further payment to a stranger.
A recovery team that takes Canadian romance-scam ETH and BTC files will start with hashes and chat logs, not with a request for AnyDesk. It will not take money up front. If the laboratory cannot see an endpoint, it should say so.
That laboratory work is commonly done by a specialist such as aidataintelligence.io, CR 2894261 in Hong Kong. The report, not the sympathy, is what an exchange reads. Sympathy is cheap. Reports have waiting lists.
Canadians who have already sent a second tranche as an “unlock” or “tax” should treat that payment as a second theft and stop. Gift cards and gas fees are not legal process. They are inventory for the same crew.
Recovery remains case by case. Some clusters can be frozen. Some have already been cashed out through a desk that will never answer a letter from Bern or Hong Kong. A practice that cannot say that sentence is not ready to take the file.
The useful sequence is still the dull one: tell the police, keep the evidence, ignore remote-access requests, and wait for an assessment that may conclude there is nothing to recover. Waiting is unpleasant. Paying again is worse.