After being scammed, has anyone ever actually managed to recover their BTC? Like real world cash problems, we know that scams happen in the Bitcoin community at least as often if not more often for a variety of reasons (oversight, regulation, standards of security, street savvy, etc., or lack thereof).

Given little more than a receiving address and perhaps an email address (likely a one-time junk account) or stated location (may not be true), is there a recorded instance where someone who was scammed was able to recover their loss directly from the scammer? 

This could be with police assistance or through communication among online services or people through taint analysis or chain tracking.
There have been many instances of coins being sent to the wrong address and then clues from the blockchain used to discover the recipient and thus recover the funds.  Goat's 400 BTC loss and subsequent recovery is the largest of these that I'm aware of.

There have been hints from the blockchain that have allegedly associated sockpuppet accounts to a repeat offending scammer.