The firm has built genuine experience in crypto-asset matters, tested alongside victims and in defence alike. In 2025, before the Paris Judicial Court, it obtained the first acquittal handed down in France in a breach of trust case concerning crypto-assets.
It acts on both sides of this litigation. For individuals, company directors, businesses and service providers harmed by fraud, ransomware, kidnapping or misappropriation, it traces the funds and has frozen whatever can still be frozen. For those under prosecution, it challenges the scope of the seizure, the origin attributed to the funds and the weight given to tracing reports, including in tax fraud and money laundering cases.
In these matters the assets are immobilised before the facts are ever argued, and not always by a judge. A platform may restrict an account of its own motion, the tax authority may seize assets in the hands of the provider that holds them without any judicial decision, and the criminal judge may confirm or lift a seizure ten days after it was made, on the sole evidence gathered by that point. Whoever has not had the funds identified at that stage loses the opportunity to have them frozen; whoever has seen an entire portfolio seized to secure a fraction of its value stays in that position until the seizure is lifted.
The firm has acted in several matters of this kind, for French and foreign clients alike. Proceedings are conducted in French and in English.
A fake platform showing a fictitious valuation and blocking withdrawal, a bogus investment adviser, pig butchering where the relationship precedes the first solicitation by several months, a compromised wallet, fake technical support, and the recovery scam aimed at those who have already been defrauded.
The exchange that received the funds has identified the holder of the credited account. From the TXIDs and the destination addresses, the firm has a forensic analysis establish the traceability of the funds through to the point of exit, on whichever chain, Bitcoin, Ethereum or Solana, and puts the complaint in order, whether it drafts it or completes one already filed, so that the requests for information can be issued without preparatory work.
A recovery phrase disclosed, the seed phrase, an exposed private key, a spending approval signed without grasping its reach, an intrusion into a platform account, interception of the second authentication factor by hijacking the telephone line, the SIM swap.
The funds leave the wallet in a single transaction and then pass through a succession of addresses. The firm has the route established, identifies the point of exit at a provider subject to identification obligations, and brings the action against the assets at that point.
Where the policy covers losses caused by an attack on an automated data processing system, the indemnity is due only if the complaint was filed within seventy-two hours of the attack becoming known, for legal persons and professionals. The firm handles that filing, coordinates the response with the insurer and the technical providers, and brings the action on the ground of extortion.
The firm assists relatives from the first hours, then acts as counsel for the civil party. Assets transferred under duress move to addresses that can be followed for a short time only: tracing and freezing them is done during the investigation, not after it.
A bitcoin wallet immobilised, an exchange account closed overnight: the cause is not the same and the holder is not told which it is. The platform may have restricted access under its own due diligence obligations, or filed a suspicious transaction report, the financial intelligence unit then opposing the transaction for ten working days, at the end of which the President of the Paris Judicial Court may order the assets into escrow. It may have answered a request for information. The assets may have been seized in the hands of an authorised institution.
The firm establishes which of these situations applies before engaging anything at all, the time limits and the counterparties being different in each. Silence from the platform means nothing: it is prohibited from disclosing that an opposition exists.
Time to appeal runs from notification, and the appellant obtains only the documents relating to the seizure being challenged. The firm brings the challenge on that partial file, without waiting for access to the rest.
It checks the scope first. The seizure reaches the portfolio held at the moment it takes effect, up to the amount stated in the decision; anything beyond that amount is open to argument.
The perimeter itself is open to argument. French law now defines crypto-assets by reference to the European regulation on markets in crypto-assets, which reserves a particular treatment for unique and non-fungible tokens, NFTs. What exactly that reference covers has not been settled to date.
The investigating judge rules on restitution during the judicial investigation, the public prosecutor during the preliminary inquiry. The firm brings the application before the competent judicial authority and exercises the remedies against refusals.
A decision to take no further action returns nothing. It opens a six-month period, at the end of which the State becomes the owner of the assets not returned.
Not every seizure is a criminal one. Administrative seizure in the hands of a third party, which requires no judge at all, may since 1 July 2026 lead to the sale of the crypto-assets at the provider holding them: see the dedicated analysis.
The application does not belong to the person under investigation alone. A bona fide third party whose assets have been seized, a spouse, a company, a co-owner, has standing to bring it.
A judicial police officer summons, places in police custody, searches the home or the registered office, issues a request for information to the platform holding the assets. A service provider files a report. An audit is referred to the prosecution service. Then comes, depending on the case, a placement under formal investigation or a summons before the Criminal Court, where the confiscation of the seized assets is decided.
The seizure occurs before any discussion of the facts and may reach the entire portfolio. The defence therefore begins with its scope.
The firm assists from police custody onwards and during searches. Investigators ask for the wallet access code or the recovery phrase: refusing to hand over a secret decryption key is a criminal offence where the conditions of the text are met, and the person being questioned must know this before answering.
The firm also reviews the regime applied to the measure and the regularity of the acts, from the framework of the custody to the conditions of the requests addressed to providers.
A tracing report establishes movements between addresses. It does not establish who controlled them. Attribution rests on other material, connection data, account opening documents held by a provider, correspondence, statements, each of which is open to separate argument.
The firm asks for the underlying material and the source data rather than the summary made of them, and points out what the analysis failed to draw from them. A police report recounting an analysis is not the analysis.
The origin of the funds is argued on the same ground. Where the supposed proceeds of the offence have been mixed with lawful funds, the seizable share is to be demonstrated with figures.
The firm defends those prosecuted for tax fraud and money laundering in connection with crypto-assets. The prosecution often rests on wallets, or NFTs, held abroad and never declared: the authorities then have ten years to reassess, and the prosecution shifts to its aggravated form.
That depends on what has been identified and frozen, and on how early it is done. A final decision opens a right to payment out of the convicted person’s confiscated assets, to be applied for within six months on pain of foreclosure, and that payment reaches only what has been seized. No one guarantees a result; what is decided is how fast the search is carried out.
That is the second-tier scheme, which targets people already defrauded and demands unlocking fees, a tax or a deposit. Some of those involved usurp the names of existing law firms. No service provider can have a criminal seizure lifted or compel a foreign platform to return anything. Sums paid constitute a second loss, to be included in the complaint.
It can technically, nothing obliges it to. What determines it is its own due diligence obligations, not the request addressed to it, which is why a documented report framed in those terms is worth making. Only the judicial authority compels, by request for information and then by seizure.
Ten days from notification of the decision, by declaration to the court registry, before the Investigating Chamber. The appeal does not suspend the measure and gives access only to the documents relating to the seizure challenged. After that time limit, the discussion moves to the ground of lifting and restitution, which follow other rules.
No. It opens a six-month period: if restitution has not been applied for or decided within that period, the items not returned become the property of the State, subject to the rights of third parties. The application is therefore to be made without delay.
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