Learning from Mistakes: Advice for Victims of Fraudulent Brokers — Advokatskaya Gazeta

In brief

A typical story: an entrepreneur sends money to a “broker” — part by bank transfer in the U.S., part in cryptocurrency — and then contact stops and the project’s website disappears. A police report is necessary but slow: checking a crime report takes up to a month, and evidence from abroad through legal-assistance channels can take more than a year — by then accounts are closed and wallets are emptied.

What was done in parallel with the report: a claim in a U.S. court (Florida) to obtain the bank’s statements through disclosure — weeks instead of a year of waiting; tracing of the cryptocurrency transfers from the transaction hashes; an order barring the use of the funds in the accounts and a freeze of crypto assets on the exchanges; then a crime report and a civil claim in Russia.

The court has not yet issued a final decision, but the evidence has been obtained and other victims have joined the case. What the statements revealed and how the tracing was built is in the article at the link below.

The author’s conclusion: in fraud cases time is money; in the first weeks after the deception the assets can still be traced and held.