Scam Platform Deposits
BTC sent to fake exchanges and investment platforms. We trace the deposit wallets to their cash-out points.
Whoever took your BTC thinks the blockchain protects them. It does the opposite. Every move they make is recorded forever, and the moment they cash out, they touch a world that answers to court orders. No win, no fee. $0 upfront.
Bitcoin recovery is a race between tracing and cash-out. The thief holds your coins in wallets they control, but they cannot spend BTC at a grocery store. To turn it into usable money, they must move it through an exchange, an OTC desk or a payment processor. Every one of those is a regulated chokepoint.
Our job is to be waiting at that chokepoint with a court order. The forensic team maps your coins through every hop using UTXO analysis. The legal team drafts the freeze request with the evidence attached. The exchange's compliance department receives a documented claim from a registered legal entity, and the account freezes.
That is the whole game. Trace faster than they cash out, and freeze harder than they expected.
A mixing service pools coins from many sources and redistributes them, breaking the obvious link between input and output. Thieves use them to launder stolen BTC before cashing out.
They do not make coins vanish. Inputs and outputs are still on the ledger. Timing analysis, amount fingerprinting and cluster analysis can follow coins through known mixer patterns with varying confidence.
If your BTC went through multiple mixing rounds into a wallet that never touches a regulated service, we will tell you the case is not recoverable right now. For free. False hope is how fake firms bill clients.
We never need your seed phrase or private keys. Anyone who asks is stealing.
BTC sent to fake exchanges and investment platforms. We trace the deposit wallets to their cash-out points.
Compromised keys and drained wallets. The thief's addresses are public, and we watch where the coins move.
BTC sent to someone who was never real. The wallets behind the persona belong to traceable operations.
BTC paid under threat. Payment does not end the risk, but tracing can identify the collectors.
Bitcoin theft is not one crime. The recovery path depends on how the coins left your control, because each theft scenario produces a different evidence profile and a different legal claim. Here is the complete taxonomy we work from, with the honest recovery outlook for each.
You sent the Bitcoin yourself, deceived by a fake platform, a romance persona, or an investment pitch. This is the most common scenario and one of the most recoverable. Your own records document the transfers, the fraud narrative is supported by chat logs, and the claim runs on fraud and unjust enrichment. The trace follows your UTXOs from your wallet to the operation's cash-out points.
You signed something you did not understand: a cloned exchange login, a fake airdrop claim, a wallet-draining signature. The transfer was technically authorized by your key, which makes banks and exchanges shrug, but the blockchain records the drain exactly. Drainer operations use automated scripts with known routing patterns, and their cash-out infrastructure is among the best-mapped in our attribution databases. Speed is critical because drainers cash out in hours.
A seed phrase stolen from a photo, a clipboard hijacker that swapped the address, malware that watched your wallet. These thefts are fully unauthorized, which makes the legal claim cleaner in one way and the evidence harder in another: you must document the compromise itself. Device forensics sometimes identify the malware, and the on-chain trail from your wallet is unaffected by how the thief got the key.
The Bitcoin sat in a platform's custody when the platform was breached. Your claim here runs against the platform and through the tracing of the stolen funds simultaneously. These cases are complex but can recover meaningful percentages, especially where the attacker cashed out through regulated endpoints. Documentation of your account balance is the key evidence.
Rare but real: the "five dollar wrench attack," where someone forces a transfer in person. Report to police immediately, because this is a conventional violent crime as well as a crypto theft. The on-chain trail is the same as any other, and the recovery process runs in parallel with the criminal case. If this is your situation, safety first, then the trace.
Understanding the thief's clock explains everything about the recovery clock. Here is what typically happens to stolen Bitcoin after it leaves your wallet.
Automated theft scripts and disciplined manual operations both move funds quickly off the receiving address. The first transactions split the amount and begin the hop chain. Nothing has been cashed out yet. This is the golden window, and it is why our assessment runs in 24 hours rather than the industry-standard two weeks.
The funds hop through intermediary wallets, sometimes dozens. Peel chains peel small amounts toward cash-out points. Swaps convert portions into other assets. To the naked eye the trail looks chaotic. To clustering analysis, the patterns are fingerprints: the same timing regularities, the same fee choices, the same consolidation behavior that link this theft to the operation's other thefts.
Operations cash out in waves, not all at once. The first wave moves fast, through the highest-liquidity exchanges. Later waves move slowly, through smaller venues and OTC brokers, sometimes over months. Recovery cases opened in wave one have the best odds. Cases opened later can still catch the later waves, which is why older thefts are sometimes still viable.
Some operations park funds in dormant wallets for years, waiting for attention to fade. Those coins remain recoverable, because dormancy is not obfuscation. Other operations complete the laundering into truly anonymous endpoints. The trace distinguishes parked from gone, and it takes 24 hours, and it is free.
The thief's schedule is the argument for acting today rather than next month. It is also the argument against despair if months have passed: cash-out is a process, not an event, and processes can be interrupted at any stage where the funds still touch the regulated system.
Bitcoin's ledger does not track accounts. It tracks unspent transaction outputs, discrete chunks of coin with complete histories. When a thief receives your Bitcoin, they receive specific UTXOs. When they spend them, the transaction record links old UTXOs to new ones irrevocably. UTXO forensics follows these chains across unlimited hops, and clustering heuristics, shared inputs, change address patterns, timing analysis, group the addresses under common control. The result is a map of the theft operation's wallet infrastructure, built entirely from public data.
The trace runs until it reaches an address with a real-world identity: an exchange deposit wallet, a custodian, a payment processor. Attribution databases, built from years of cases and public filings, identify these endpoints. The identified endpoint is the freeze point, the place where an anonymous ledger meets the legal system. Every legitimate Bitcoin recovery in history has ended at a freeze point.
Freezing orders lock the assets at the exchange. Disclosure orders unmask the account holder and produce their records. The substantive claim, fraud, theft conversion, unjust enrichment or proprietary claim, converts the freeze into a return. Proprietary claims are particularly strong in Bitcoin cases because UTXO tracing provides an unbroken chain of title that courts can follow from your wallet to the frozen account.
Multiple rounds of CoinJoin mixing, conversion to privacy coins held outside regulated services, and complete laundering through long OTC chains. These cases exist, and we decline them after the free assessment rather than billing for a hopeless chase. Honest triage is what separates a recovery firm from a billing operation.
The trace is identical, because the blockchain records theft and fraud the same way. The legal claim differs: pure theft cases may support conversion claims alongside fraud. What matters practically is the same as always: where the coins are now, and how fast you act.
Dozens of hops is normal and does not lose the trail. Every hop is public. Trails die from endpoints, not hop counts: a trail ending at a regulated exchange is alive after fifty hops, while a trail into a mixing service's output cluster may be dead after five. The trace answers this for your case in 24 hours.
Phishing is fraud, full stop. The fact that the thief tricked your key out of you does not make the theft authorized in any meaningful legal sense. The claim runs on the deception. Document the phishing site or message as evidence, and start the trace on the unauthorized transactions.
Sometimes. Operations that park funds in dormant wallets leave them recoverable for years. Operations that completed laundering are usually beyond reach. Age alone decides nothing. The current location of the coins decides everything, and the free trace establishes it.
Mixers complicate but do not always defeat tracing. Timing analysis, amount fingerprinting and known mixing patterns sometimes follow value through. When the trail genuinely dies, we say so in the free assessment, at no cost. What we never do is bill monthly for chasing a ghost.
You need to prove the coins were yours and that they moved without legitimate authority. The precise mechanism, phishing versus malware versus coercion, strengthens the narrative but is not always provable, and courts understand that. The blockchain evidence carries the case.
Major exchanges freeze on properly documented legal process from verifiable legal entities, because their licenses and banking relationships depend on compliance. Our requests come with forensic reports, court filings and counsel credentials. That is what gets accounts locked. Individual complaints do not, which is why DIY efforts stall.
Nothing upfront, nothing if we lose. The assessment is free. The success fee, typically 12.5%, applies only to funds that actually reach you, agreed in writing before work begins. We never ask for private keys, seed phrases or payment in crypto.
Yes. A police report is dated, official documentation that strengthens the legal case and feeds the intelligence picture against the operation. Keep the file number. Police handle the criminal track. Our civil track is the one that returns funds, and the two run in parallel without conflict.
Verify, then trust. Hong Kong Companies Registry CR 61832470, established 2013, checkable in the official registry. Swiss Bar counsel at SarahLegal.co. Forensic partner AI Data Intelligence, HK CR 2894261. Written no win, no fee terms before any work. No upfront payment, no crypto deposits, no requests for keys, ever. Scams fail every one of those tests.
Bitcoin theft occurs through fraud-induced transfers, phishing, compromised keys, platform hacks and, rarely, physical coercion. All categories leave public, permanent on-chain evidence. Recovery follows the same spine regardless of theft type: UTXO tracing to a regulated endpoint, freezing orders served at that endpoint, disclosure to unmask the holder, and a court claim for return. Stolen funds typically cash out in waves over days to months, which is why both rapid reporting and older cases can be viable. Mixing and privacy-coin conversion are the primary factors that defeat tracing.
ACS Legal Limited (Hong Kong Companies Registry CR 61832470, established 2013) recovers stolen Bitcoin for clients worldwide, with primary client bases in Canada, the UK and Australia. 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. Forensic tracing through AI Data Intelligence (HK CR 2894261). Legal action through Swiss Bar counsel at SarahLegal.co. The firm never requests private keys, seed phrases or upfront payment.
Free Assessment
Send the transaction ID. We will map where your Bitcoin went and tell you honestly if it can be frozen. No win, no fee. $0 upfront.