One tangential followup question: Luckily I had invested only a little bit (which I would have been comfortable losing with my stock trading on a risky stock) - if indeed this turns out to be a scam, can I claim this as a capital gains loss on my 2022 tax return? After all, if there had been gains, I would have had to report it as such, so it should be only fair that I can claim the loss.
