The single most useful thing I do costs the least and takes the least time: telling someone, before they send money, that the platform they are looking at is not real.
I get a version of this question every week, from individuals about a trading site a stranger introduced them to, from firms about a counterparty, and from lawyers about a platform that has already failed. The work is the same in each case. Strip away what the thing says about itself and establish what it actually is.
Who this is for
Individuals who have been introduced to an investment opportunity, usually by someone friendly and usually somewhere that is not a regulated venue, and who have a quiet feeling that something is off. That feeling is right more often than not.
Firms doing counterparty diligence on a crypto business: an exchange they are about to route through, a custodian they are about to trust, a project they are about to invest in.
Attorneys who need someone technical to explain what the blockchain records show, how a custody arrangement was supposed to work, or whether a platform's stated mechanism was ever physically possible.
And anyone who has already lost money and is now being approached by a "recovery specialist," which is its own well-organized industry.
What we do
Establish what exists. Company registration, jurisdiction, and whether the people named actually exist and actually hold the roles claimed. A surprising number of platforms are staffed entirely by stolen photographs and invented biographies, and the identity theft is often of real, credentialed financial professionals.
Trace the custody model. This is usually where the answer is. Who holds the assets, on what infrastructure, under what controls, and what would have to be true for a withdrawal to work. Many platforms have no custody model at all: the balance on your dashboard is a number in their database and nothing else.
Check the claims against public evidence. The audit they cite, the license they mention, the partnership they advertise, the on-chain proof of reserves they gesture at. Each one either exists in public records or does not.
Read the on-chain record where there is one. Contract addresses, token distribution, whether the code is verified, whether ownership is renounced or a single key can drain the pool, and whether the flows look like a business or like a funnel.
Compare against known patterns. Fake investment platforms were the single most common scam type in the 2021 survey of about 2,500 wallet recovery users, at 32 percent, and the structures have not changed much since. Unrealistic returns, pressure to act, first contact over a messaging app, vagueness about fees, a withdrawal that requires one more deposit: these repeat with remarkable consistency.
Write it up. You get a written assessment stating what I found, what I could not establish, and where the specific risks sit, in language you can hand to a partner, a spouse, or a compliance officer. We then get on a call so you can push back on any of it.
What you leave with
A document you can act on and show to other people. Clear separation between what is verified, what is unverifiable, and what is contradicted. And a direct answer to the question you actually asked, including the answer "this is a fraud, do not send anything," which is the one I give most often.
What this is not
Not investment advice. I am not a licensed advisor. Establishing that a platform is genuine is not a statement that using it is wise.
Not legal advice, and not a regulatory opinion. Attorneys engage me as a technical advisor alongside their own legal judgment, not in place of it.
Not asset recovery. If funds have already left your wallet, nobody can bring them back, and any service telling you otherwise is running the same play as the one that took your money. Where a wallet is locked rather than emptied, that is genuine recovery work and it lives at walletrecovery.info.
Not an audit. A code audit of a smart contract system is a specialist engagement with a specialist scope, and I will refer you rather than pretend otherwise.
Questions I get about this
Will you tell me whether it is a good investment?
No. I am not a licensed investment advisor and I do not give investment advice. What I tell you is whether the thing is what it claims to be: whether the company exists, whether the custody model is real, whether the audit they cite says what they imply it says, and whether the structure matches known fraud patterns. Whether a legitimate asset is a good buy is a different question and not mine to answer.
Someone has offered to recover crypto I already lost. Can you check them?
Yes, and please ask before you pay anything. Fake recovery services are a documented category in the 2021 survey and they are sophisticated, including operators who send funds stolen from other victims to make an upfront fee look legitimate before the transfer reverses. If you want to check one yourself first, walletrecovery.info publishes a free recovery scam checker.
Do you testify in court?
I work with attorneys as a technical advisor: explaining on-chain records, custody arrangements, and how a platform was supposed to operate versus how it did. I do not hold myself out as a testifying expert witness, and if your matter needs one, I will say so early rather than late.