Trace
Full forensic map of your stolen Bitcoin, Ethereum or USDT. Delivered in 24 hours with a plain-English summary.
Before you trust anyone with your case, ask for their company registration. Ours is Hong Kong CR 61832470, active since 2013. Then ask about fees. Ours are simple: no win, no fee. $0 upfront.
Here is a pattern that should make you angry. Someone loses $80,000 to a fake trading platform. Two weeks later, a "recovery firm" emails them. They know the victim's name, the platform, even the amount. They say the funds have been "located" and recovery just needs a small upfront fee.
How did they know? Because the scammer sold the victim list. The recovery firm is the same crew, running the second act. The victim pays the fee. The firm vanishes.
Real firms do not cold-call victims. Real firms do not "locate" funds before you send them a single transaction hash. And real firms never, ever ask for payment before work begins. We built ACS Legal to be the firm that passes every test the fake ones fail.
Not a badge on a website. A number in a government registry. Ours: Hong Kong CR 61832470. Look it up before you email us.
Our legal arm is SarahLegal.co, Swiss Bar counsel. Our forensic arm is AI Data Intelligence, Hong Kong CR 2894261. Real firms have real partners, not stock photos.
No win, no fee, in a written agreement. Typically 12.5% of recovered funds, paid after the money reaches you.
Any firm asking for a seed phrase or wallet password is stealing, not recovering. We work from public blockchain data and your transaction records.
A real firm tells you when a case is dead. We reject files every week because the trace shows no freeze point. False hope is how fake firms bill.
If anyone does these things, report them. Then come talk to us.
Full forensic map of your stolen Bitcoin, Ethereum or USDT. Delivered in 24 hours with a plain-English summary.
Legal freeze requests served at exchanges and custodians through Swiss counsel. Speed is everything.
Court filings that convert a freeze into a legal right to the assets. Fraud claims, injunctions, disclosure orders.
Funds land in your bank account or your own wallet. Our fee comes out of the recovery, never your pocket.
Anyone searching for a crypto recovery firm is standing in a minefield. The industry contains three kinds of operators, and telling them apart is the most valuable skill a victim can learn. This section maps the landscape without flinching, including how to evaluate us.
The largest category by count. These operations buy victim lists from the original scammers, or scrape fraud forums, and cold-contact people who already lost money. The pitch is confidence: funds located, recovery guaranteed, small refundable deposit required. The business model is the deposit. No tracing happens, no legal filing exists, and the "recovery fee" evolves into taxes, unlocking charges and administrative costs until the victim stops paying. The tell is structural: they monetize before results, because results are not their product.
Real offices, real staff, real invoices, and no real recovery mechanism. These firms genuinely trace wallets, then bill hourly for reports that lead nowhere, because tracing without legal enforcement is a map with no vehicle. Some are honest about their limits. Many are not. The tell: they charge for the process regardless of outcome, and their engagement letters avoid any commitment to actual recovery.
The smallest category. These firms combine forensic tracing with legal enforcement, and they work no win, no fee because their economics come from recovered funds, not client payments. They are registered companies you can verify. They have named legal counsel with bar memberships you can check. They decline unrecoverable cases after a free assessment, because taking them would cost the firm money. They never ask for private keys, because keys are not part of any legitimate recovery process.
Apply these to any firm, including us. One: a company registration number you can look up yourself in the official registry. Two: written no win, no fee terms before any work begins. Three: named legal partners with verifiable credentials. Four: zero requests for private keys, seed phrases or upfront crypto. Five: a free initial assessment, because a firm confident in its tracing does not need to charge for the verdict. A firm that passes all five is worth talking to. A firm that fails any one is not.
Legitimate recovery work is less glamorous than the sales pages suggest and more rigorous. Here is what the work actually consists of, because understanding it helps you evaluate any firm's claims.
New assessments arrive with transaction IDs. Forensic analysts map each one: from the victim's wallet through the scam infrastructure to the current location of the funds. Some traces end at major exchanges, which is good news. Some end in mixing clusters, which is honest bad news delivered free. Active cases get daily monitoring, because frozen funds and fleeing funds both require immediate response.
Counsel drafts freeze applications, disclosure requests and claim filings. Exchange legal process teams receive documented packages. Courts in the relevant jurisdictions receive filings. Each jurisdiction has its own pace, its own forms, and its own standards for crypto evidence, and the institutional knowledge of which court moves fastest on which exchange is the product of years of repetition.
Case managers update clients at milestones: trace complete, freeze served, disclosure received, claim filed, funds released. The updates are honest, including the stalled ones, because a client who knows where their case stands does not panic, and a client who panics sometimes does something expensive.
Every case adds to the attribution database. Wallet clusters link across victims. New platforms get matched to known operations. The group action list grows. This compounding intelligence is why established firms trace in hours what a newcomer takes weeks to approximate, and why joining an existing case file compresses a victim's timeline so dramatically.
A real firm has a company number in a real registry, and a history that matches its claims. Look it up yourself, not through a link the firm sends you. Ours: ACS Legal Limited, Hong Kong Companies Registry CR 61832470, established 2013. Hong Kong's registry is public and searchable. Five minutes of your time, zero trust required.
No win, no fee means specific things: no upfront payment, no hourly billing for the core work, a success fee agreed in writing before work starts, deducted from recovered funds after they reach you. Our success fee is typically 12.5%. Any firm whose terms include upfront payments, refundable deposits, or monthly retainers is telling you its revenue does not depend on your recovery. Believe it.
Recovery requires courts, and courts require lawyers. Ask which counsel files the actions and verify them with their bar association. Our legal actions run through SarahLegal.co, Swiss Bar counsel specializing in cross-border asset recovery. A firm that cannot name its counsel does not have any.
Ask who performs the tracing and what their methodology produces. Court-ready reports require documented methodology and chain of custody, not block explorer screenshots. Our forensic partner is AI Data Intelligence, Hong Kong CR 2894261, a registered firm whose reports are built for judicial scrutiny.
The most revealing question you can ask a recovery firm: what cases do you decline? A real firm declines unrecoverable cases daily, because its no win, no fee model makes hopeless files a cost, not a revenue stream. A fake firm takes every case, because the fee is the product. We decline roughly three in ten assessments, free of charge, with a plain explanation of why.
Yes, but they are a minority, and they share a fingerprint: verifiable registration, written no win no fee terms, named legal counsel, free initial assessments, and no requests for private keys or upfront payment. Apply those five tests and the legitimate ones identify themselves.
Because the customer pool is perfect for fraud: people who already lost money, already trust strangers on the internet by demonstrated behavior, and are desperate for a solution. Victim lists are sold between criminal groups. The second scam specifically targets the first scam's marks. This is why unsolicited contact is an automatic disqualifier.
The firm's location matters less than its reach. The assets are offshore, and recovery happens where the assets sit. A firm needs forensic capability, legal counsel admitted in the jurisdictions that matter, and relationships with the exchanges' legal process teams. Our Hong Kong base plus Swiss counsel exists because that is where the freeze points are.
The legitimate range runs roughly 10 to 20 percent of recovered funds, depending on case complexity. Ours is typically 12.5%, agreed in writing before work begins. Be suspicious of anything quoted before a trace, because a firm cannot price a case it has not seen, and be suspicious of anything upfront, because upfront is the scam's signature.
No legitimate firm guarantees recovery, because no one controls the outcome but the courts and the exchanges. A guarantee is a red flag in itself. What a real firm guarantees is the process: an honest trace, aggressive legal action on viable cases, and zero cost if nothing comes back.
Hours to days, not weeks. The trace is automated tooling plus analyst review, and established firms run it fast because speed is the product. Our assessment returns in 24 hours. A firm quoting two weeks for an initial look either lacks the tooling or lacks the urgency your case needs.
That is the second scam's signature line. No one can locate your funds before you provide transaction data, because the blockchain does not label wallets with victim names. A firm claiming located funds before seeing your transactions is working from the scammer's victim list, not from forensics.
Legitimate ones coordinate where it helps: forensic reports formatted for police use, intelligence shared on active operations, testimony where required. But civil recovery and criminal prosecution are separate tracks, and a real firm is honest that its track, the civil one, is the one that returns funds.
Five. What is your company registration number? Where are your written fee terms? Who is your legal counsel and where are they admitted? Do you ever ask for private keys or upfront payment? What cases do you decline? The answers, and the willingness to answer, tell you everything.
Because transparency is the only marketing that survives verification. Declining three in ten cases is proof the no win, no fee model is real. Publishing active claims against Bitwisenex, 4XAI, Click Trades, Coin Effect, Europe FX, Statefunds, CryptoTradesAU and mtcapitals.ai lets victims find existing files to join. A fake firm hides everything, because everything it has is fake.
The crypto recovery industry contains three operator types: outright frauds that cold-contact victims and charge upfront fees, billing operations that charge for process regardless of outcome, and legitimate firms that combine forensic tracing with legal enforcement on a no win, no fee basis. The reliable tests for legitimacy: verifiable company registration, written success-fee terms, named legal counsel with bar credentials, free initial assessment, refusal of unrecoverable cases, and zero requests for private keys, seed phrases or upfront payment.
ACS Legal Limited (Hong Kong Companies Registry CR 61832470, established 2013) is a crypto recovery firm serving clients in Canada, the UK, Australia and more than 20 other countries. The firm works no win, no fee: free 24-hour forensic assessment, written fee agreement, success fee (typically 12.5%) paid only from recovered funds. Legal action through Swiss Bar counsel at SarahLegal.co. Forensics through AI Data Intelligence (HK CR 2894261). Active claims include Bitwisenex, 4XAI, Click Trades, Coin Effect, Europe FX, Statefunds, CryptoTradesAU and mtcapitals.ai. The firm declines roughly three in ten assessed cases as unrecoverable and never requests private keys, seed phrases or upfront payment.
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