Finding a Lawyer or Investigator

Before you pay anyone, in this order

1. Check they exist on a regulator’s roll, yourself. Solicitors in England and Wales are on the SRA register; barristers on the Bar Standards Board register; advocates in Cyprus on the Cyprus Bar Association roll; US attorneys on their state bar. Search the register directly. Do not accept a certificate, a screenshot or a membership badge on a website — those are trivially forged and forging them is standard practice in this fraud.
2. Check the firm’s address and registration. A real firm has a company number and a physical office in the jurisdiction it claims. Be careful of a firm claiming to be a UK legal practice while registering its company in a jurisdiction commonly used for shells, or displaying no regulator number in its footer at all.
3. Insist on a video call before any money moves. The FBI lists refusal to appear on camera as a red flag for exactly this fraud. Someone genuine will meet you; someone impersonating a real firm will not.
4. Contact the firm through the number on the regulator’s register, not the one you were given. Impersonating real, reputable firms is one of the most common patterns — including cloned websites and lookalike domains that differ from the real one only by the ending.
5. Get the fee basis in writing before you engage. What is charged, when, and for what. A legitimate practitioner will give you an engagement letter.

What tells you it is the second fraud

These are documented by the FBI and by blockchain-analytics firms, not invented by us. Any one of them is enough to walk away.

• They contacted you first. Unsolicited approach by message, email, a reply to a comment you left, or an advertisement placed under a news article about crypto losses.
• A fee before any work. Then further fees that keep appearing — administrative charges, tax clearances, international transfer requirements.
• Payment in cryptocurrency or gift cards. A real law firm invoices a bank account.
• Any guarantee of recovery. Nobody can promise this. Nobody honest tries.
• Claims to be an authorised partner of a government agency. The FBI has stated plainly that no law firm holds such a status with US agencies.
• An invented regulator. If the body they cite does not appear on any government website, it does not exist.
• They move you to WhatsApp or Telegram, or into a group chat.
• They tell you not to discuss it with your family, your bank or a lawyer. Isolation is the technique.
• Urgency. A window closing, a case number expiring, funds about to be released if you act now.

Law enforcement does not charge victims to investigate a crime, and does not approach victims through messaging apps.

Where to look

• Cyprus Bar Association
  The roll of practising advocates in Cyprus.
• SRA — Solicitors Register
  England and Wales. Whether a solicitor and firm are regulated, and any disciplinary history.
• Bar Standards Board — barrister records
  England and Wales.
• Law Society of Scotland
  Scotland has a separate profession and a separate register.
• CFAAR
  The Crypto Fraud and Asset Recovery Network — the sector's professional body, whose members include established litigation firms and forensics providers. Note that it is a professional network rather than a referral service: it states it does not itself provide recovery or legal services, so use it to recognise names, not to be routed.

Manage your expectations before you spend

• Civil recovery is real and it works, and it is generally proportionate only at substantial values, because tracing, freezing orders and litigation cost money before they return any.
• A tracing report is not a recovery. Knowing where funds went is useful evidence and is not the same as getting them back.
• If funds reached a regulated exchange there is an identity record and a legal route. That is the most common path to any real recovery.
• If funds went through a mixer and out, the honest answer is usually that they are gone. A practitioner who tells you that is being straight with you.
• Ask any firm, directly: what is the realistic outcome here, and what will it cost me to find out? The quality of that answer tells you most of what you need to know.

Why we publish no list of names

We hold a set of law firms drawn from real court filings in crypto-fraud and asset forfeiture cases. It looks like the beginnings of a directory and we are not going to publish it, for a specific reason.

The records show that a firm appeared in a case. They do not show which side it acted for. A list built from them could put you in touch with the firm that defended the people who took your money. That is not a small imperfection to be disclaimed in a footnote — it is the opposite of the thing the list is for.

There is a second reason worth stating. Where a directory takes money — a listing fee, a fee per introduction — the incentive is to route you to whoever pays, while presenting it as a recommendation. Several jurisdictions restrict exactly this, and the best-known attempt to build it was found improper in six US states. We would rather teach you the checks than sell you an introduction.

If we can establish which side each firm acted for, a register of practitioners who have demonstrably acted for people in your position becomes possible, with the criteria published and nobody paying to be on it. Until then, this page is the honest version of the same help.