The United States has managed to recover most of the ransom paid by the Colonial Pipeline Company. In May 2021, the eastern USA was left with fuel shortages as a major pipeline was knocked offline by a ransomware attack. The pipeline’s owner, The Colonial Pipeline Company, decided to pay the ransom in order to minimise service disruption. However, US security forces made a major breakthrough with the Colonial Pipeline ransom and managed to recover almost all of the fee, worth around $4.4 million at the time of payment. Ransomware victims usually receive instruction to pay using cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, which are extremely difficult to trace or recover.