Please help my sweet dad recover from 500,000$ loss

My super sweet dad just got scammed out of 500,000 dollars by what the FBI calls a "pig butchering scheme". Even worse, he is retired and had to take the money out of his retirement and has no way to make it back. Worse still he wasn't trying to get rich quick or something selfish, both my sister and I are struggling financially and he wanted to be able to support us (even though we didn't ask him too). He is super smart and sweet and he is So embarrassed that he got fooled so badly, and I hate it, so I'm trying to help.

The wild story of how it happened: Around two years ago, my mom told my dad completely out of the blue, after 38 years of marriage that she wanted a divorce. He took it like a champ but it was hard on him mostly because he had been working since he was 17 and was one month away from retirement when she broke the news, so the idea that he would lose half of his life savings was really hard. Shortly after the divorce was finalized he got a connection request on LinkedIn, that's right, LINKEDIN! from a charming younger woman (40yo), finishing up med school to be a surgeon and had a job offer in Colorado. She said she was looking for a local guide to help her navigate the move etc. My dad was born and raised in Colorado, lives walking distance from his childhood home, and is a super genuine and nice guy so he said yes. My dad is also a super introvert, (like really bad social anxiety) so the opportunity to help someone get to know a place he loves without having to interact in person was awesome for him.

My parents were never really close and my dad never had someone that said they loved him or they missed him or dreamed big dreams with him... That is until he met Nicole. What started as an innocent friendship, helping someone get to know Colorado (from afar, through text) developed into the sweetest little "relationship"( still from afar, through text). They were like best friends, he called her Dr Who and she called him by his childhood nickname(Bobby) She text him "good morning" first thing and "sweet dreams" before bed. They talked about travel and family, and my dad, (the eternal early bird) was staying up until 10PM chatting with her. He had a glow and joy I had never seen in him and when his phone chimed with a text he lit up and showed it off proudly, "Good Afternoon Bobby, I hope you had a good morning and a great time with your daughter". Such a simple text, but something that my dad had never had and meant the world to him. So when Nicole told my dad that she could help him make extra money so that they could go on his dream trip to Scotland together he didn't immediately turn her down.

Fast-forward several months and thousands of hours of "trading" and more still of texting, it appeared my dad was well on his way to financially supporting his struggling daughters. He believed he had done his due diligence and researched trading platforms etc., but in the thousands of hours he was moving crypto and money and wallets and trades and all through the direction and screenshots from Nicole... he got a little lost (he's 70+). It looked like he was making money, good money, and Nicole was helping, (she was depositing money into the “account” too) So my dad took money out of his retirement account, then he took out a second mortgage and once everything was moved into his “trading account” he found out…

It was all a LIE.

The REAL wild story of what REALLY went down:

My dad was “trading” using the browser on crypto.com’s Defi wallet app, and believed that from the wallet app he had to go to crypto.com to do the trades (seems reasonable). So one day he decided to withdrawal from the account as a test (like he thought he had done multiple times) but it declined. When he went to the chat icon the “customer service agent” told him his account was frozen and he would need to pay a security deposit of another 200k within 3 days or the account would be frozen forever. The cherry on top, they ended the chat with “I wish you a happy life”.

Up until this point I knew very little about the financial/ trading side of things. Even “Nicole” appeared to be a sweet new best friend that obviously made my dad very happy, but he was pretty quiet about the gory details as he is allergic to talking about his feelings etc. Once my dad received the “Ransom Note” as he calls it from the “customer service” chat he knew something was up and reached out to me. Together we tore apart his entire relationship with Nicole and the convoluted crazy web of crypto transactions, wallets, trades etc. and over many hours figured out what really happened.

It turns out that when my dad thought he was entering crypto.com from the browser in his defi wallet app he was actually on cryptofturd.top, and surprise surprise! it's fake. The site looked like a regular trading site and appeared to function like one, BUT only when Nicole was guiding him. When he tried to do the withdrawal on his own the fake site “declined” the withdrawal request. Because almost everything on the fake site is done by chatting with customer service my dad immediately went to them and they told him his account had been flagged and frozen and issued the “Ransom Note”

Once I started to piece together what really went down I immediately turned to Reddit (as any good millennial would) which promptly made it clear the money was gone girl, and led me to the FBI's warning about “Pig Butchering” scams, which was literally word for word my dad's sitch.

So here I am hoping I can make his life a little happier after this soul-crushing disappointment. Please help me cheer my dad up, recover some of his lost retirement, and maybe even go to Scotland ;)