What this costs, and what it never costs
Triage
No charge
Every enquiry
An analyst reads your submission and tells you whether there is enough of a live trail to be worth pursuing.
- Written viability assessment
- Confirmation of which reporting bodies apply to you
- A view on whether any firm, including us, can help
- Guidance on evidence to preserve immediately
Fixed-scope assessment
Most commonFrom $1,200
Per matter
A bounded piece of work with a defined question and a defined price. Most due diligence and single-platform matters fit here.
- Counterparty or platform due diligence report
- First-pass trace of a single flow of funds
- Infrastructure and domain history assessment
- Clear recommendation, delivered in writing
- One follow-up call to walk through findings
Investigation
$180 to $320 / hour
Against a written scope
Multi-hop tracing, cross-chain work, attribution and evidence packages. Estimated in hours and capped before work begins.
- Full transaction-graph reconstruction
- Cross-chain and bridge analysis
- Cluster attribution and terminal service identification
- Law enforcement referral pack
- Support for civil counsel, including witness statements
- Client portal access throughout
Figures are indicative and exclude tax. The number that binds either of us is the one in your engagement letter, which is issued after triage and before any work begins. Rates vary with the seniority required and the urgency requested.
Six charges we will never make
If any firm asks you for one of these, stop and treat the request as fraudulent. This list is the single most useful thing on this page, and it applies to us as much as to anyone approaching you.
We will never invoice
- A fee to release, unlock or clear your own funds
- A tax, duty or clearance payment on recovered assets
- A gas or network fee collected by us rather than paid on-chain
- A bond, deposit or insurance against a transfer
- A contingency percentage on funds we did not recover
- Payment in cryptocurrency to an address given over chat
Being asked for any of these right now? Tell us before you pay it. We will give you an opinion at no charge.
The awkward ones
Why is there a range rather than a fixed price?
Because scope genuinely varies. Four hops to a named exchange is a different piece of work from forty hops across three bridges and a swap protocol. The range is what we can honestly say before reading your matter; the number is what we put in writing after triage, and it is capped.
Do you take a percentage of what is recovered?
Not as a substitute for fees, and not on funds we did not recover. Where a matter proceeds to civil action and a recovery actually lands, a success element can form part of a written engagement alongside the hourly rate. What we will never do is charge a percentage of a notional balance shown on a fraudulent platform, which is a common structure in this industry and is meaningless, because that balance is not money.
What if the investigation finds nothing?
You are charged for the hours worked, and you receive the report anyway, documenting what was examined and why the trail stopped. That document still has value for insurance claims, tax loss positions and police files. If we can see early that the outcome will be nothing, we tell you then rather than at the end, and we stop.
Is there a minimum loss you will work on?
Not formally, but there is an honest arithmetic problem below roughly $10,000: the cost of investigation and any subsequent legal action starts to exceed the amount at issue. Triage is still free, and where that is the situation we will say so and point you to the reporting routes that cost nothing rather than sell you something.
How do you accept payment?
Bank transfer or card, invoiced from a registered company, against a signed engagement letter. We do not accept payment in cryptocurrency for investigative work, because it removes your ability to reverse a payment and because it is what a fraudulent firm would ask for.
Tell us what happened. We will tell you if it is worth pursuing.
Triage costs nothing and commits you to nothing. You get a written assessment of whether the trail is live enough to act on, and if it is not, you get told that too.
No obligation. No upfront fee at triage. No promise of recovery.