What each one is for
- An onchain investigator establishes facts: where the funds went, through how many hops, and what kind of service holds them now. The output is an evidence pack.
- A solicitor advises on rights and remedies, and can act — pre-action correspondence, disclosure applications against exchanges, freezing injunctions, civil claims.
- An investigator cannot compel anyone to do anything. A solicitor can, but generally needs a documented target before it is worth the cost.
- Neither can reverse a confirmed transfer, and neither should ever ask you for private keys or a payment in cryptocurrency.
When the investigator goes first
In most cases, tracing comes first, because legal action needs a defendant or a respondent. If the funds sit in an unidentified wallet, there is nobody for a solicitor to write to. A trace that terminates at a regulated exchange deposit converts an untargeted loss into a specific, addressable one.
Tracing first also protects you commercially. It is far cheaper to learn that the funds went straight into a mixing service — and that no realistic legal route exists — from an investigation than from a month of legal fees spent reaching the same conclusion.
When the solicitor goes first
- The loss is large and time-critical, and there is already a named counterparty — a UK company, a named individual, a platform with a registered entity.
- You need an urgent freezing order or a disclosure order, and the deadline for acting is measured in days.
- The dispute is contractual or regulatory as much as it is onchain — a UK-regulated firm, a bank's reimbursement decision, or an employment or partnership dispute.
- You have already been to Action Fraud and your bank, and the remaining question is legal rather than factual.
How the two fit together
The practical sequence for most cryptocurrency fraud cases is: preserve evidence, report to Action Fraud and the receiving exchange, commission a trace, then take the evidence pack to a solicitor if the endpoints justify it. A report written to be verified independently is the document a solicitor can build on.
Wallsec is not a law firm and does not give legal advice. We produce the factual record; where a case warrants legal escalation we say so plainly, and the decision to instruct is yours.
What it costs, roughly
- Reporting to Action Fraud, your bank and the exchange: free, and it should happen regardless.
- An onchain trace and evidence pack: fixed-scope, quoted in writing before work starts.
- Legal action: charged by the hour or by stage, usually an order of magnitude more, and rarely proportionate for small losses.
- If the total loss is modest, the honest answer is often that reporting plus a trace is as far as it is worth going.
If you are looking at your own case rather than reading generally, our cryptocurrency investigation service explains how a case is scoped and worked, the asset tracing hub covers the network-specific work, and our overview of cryptocurrency scam recovery in the UK sets out what is realistic. Asset pages: USDT tracing, Bitcoin tracing and Ethereum tracing. You can also contact the investigations team directly.
Common questions
- Do I need a solicitor to instruct an investigator?
- No. You can commission an onchain investigation directly. A solicitor may later use the report, but the report does not require one to exist.
- Will a solicitor accept a private investigator's report?
- A properly built evidence pack is designed for exactly that: every hop is stated with its transaction hash, so any third party can verify the path independently rather than taking it on trust.
- Can a solicitor get my cryptocurrency back?
- They can pursue lawful routes — disclosure against an exchange, a freezing order, a civil claim. Whether that returns funds depends on the funds still being reachable and on who holds them. No solicitor can reverse a transfer on the ledger.
- Should I do both at once?
- Rarely, and only where a deadline forces it. Running both in parallel usually means paying legal fees to wait for facts that the trace has not produced yet.
- Is Wallsec able to recommend a solicitor?
- We do not take referral fees and we do not contact third parties without your instruction. We can tell you what kind of legal specialism a case points toward; the choice of firm is yours.
Have a case you want reviewed?
We scope at intake and tell you honestly whether the onchain data supports a traceable case.