Where money has been lost to a scam or fraudulent scheme, pursuing recovery generally involves both a criminal complaint through the Public Prosecution and, separately, a civil claim to recover the loss where the perpetrator has identifiable assets. Losses arising from investment schemes specifically are handled with our investment & securities fraud practice.
Documenting the deception — communications, payments, and any promises made — as thoroughly as possible strengthens both the criminal complaint and any civil recovery effort.
Fraud requires proving deceptive intent, not simply that a transaction or business arrangement didn't work out as hoped, and a genuine business dispute or failed venture is a materially different matter from actual fraud — a distinction that's often central to a defense.
This practice assesses the specific facts to determine whether the case as framed actually meets what a fraud charge requires. Where the alleged deception took place online, the charge often also engages our cybercrime framework.
An investor's genuine anger over a real financial loss is completely understandable, but that anger doesn't itself establish that the loss resulted from deception rather than a legitimate business risk that simply didn't materialize as hoped — the actual test is whether the person accused misrepresented facts or intentions at the time the arrangement was made, not whether the outcome was disappointing.
We build these defenses around the contemporaneous record — what was actually said and represented at the time decisions were made, not reconstructed after the fact through the lens of a frustrated outcome — since this is usually what separates a legitimate business failure from something that could genuinely be characterized as fraud.
A criminal complaint addresses accountability and can trigger investigative tools that a private individual doesn't have access to on their own, while a civil claim is what actually seeks to recover the specific money lost — and pursuing only one of these tracks, when both are realistically available, often leaves value on the table that a coordinated approach would have captured.
We help victims understand how these two tracks interact for their specific situation, since the evidence and momentum generated by one can genuinely strengthen the other when they're pursued together with a coordinated strategy in mind. The civil recovery side typically runs through our disputes & litigation team while the criminal complaint proceeds.
Document everything — communications, payments, and any promises made — and contact us to assess pursuing both a criminal complaint and, where the scheme's operator has identifiable assets, a civil recovery claim.
Fraud requires deceptive intent — a business arrangement that simply didn't succeed as hoped isn't automatically fraud. This distinction is often central to defending against an accusation.
A criminal case and a civil recovery claim are generally separate processes, and pursuing both, where realistic, is often the right approach to maximize recovery.
Reach out immediately — we focus on the contemporaneous record of what was actually said and represented at the time, which is usually what distinguishes a legitimate business failure from genuine fraud.
Often both — a coordinated approach frequently produces better results than pursuing only one track, since evidence and momentum from each can reinforce the other.
No — genuine frustration over a loss doesn't establish deceptive intent, which is the actual legal test. We help clients build a defense around what was truthfully represented at the time, not the disappointing outcome alone.
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