The firm has already handled this case: seventy thousand euros in cryptocurrency, no bank transfers, and every transfer made by the injured party following chat instructions. Why it is still fraud and what can be reconstructed without a bank in between.
Preliminary note: we are a law firm and we deal exclusively with online fraud and the unauthorised provision of financial services. This article arises from a real case handled by the firm and is published in anonymised form as regards the injured party, for public interest purposes. The technical data come from checks on the public domain-name registries carried out on the date of publication. If you recognise yourself in what you read, you can submit your situation using the form at the bottom of this page.
In the defi-trust.site affair there is not a single bank transfer. There is no bank that executed an order, no destination IBAN, no advice note to ask the branch for.
There are seventy thousand euros in cryptocurrency that the injured party moved with their own hands, one step at a time, following the instructions arriving in a chat.
That is why this case deserves an article of its own: because people who recognise themselves in it tend to think they simply made a mistake, and that is not so.
defi-trust.site is a scam, the firm has already handled this case, and here we explain why having pressed the keys yourself does not change the legal classification of the facts, and what can still be reconstructed when there is no bank transfer.
Why defi-trust.site is a scam: the checks
Let us start with the objective data, even though here they are data of absence, and absence is already an answer.
The domain defi-trust.site is no longer registered today. It is not suspended, it is not parked: it has left the registries. The same goes for the other two addresses used in the same affair — a domain that reverses the same two words and a third with another extension — also no longer registered.
Three signboards for the same activity, all dark. That is the physiology of these structures: the name is a season, not an identity.
The rest is consistent with what we see daily. Behind defi-trust.site there is no company, no VAT number, no reference to any intermediary entered in a supervisory register. The expression "DeFi" — decentralised finance — is used as a reassuring label, but in the language of those who built it, it means one thing only: no intermediary answers for anything.
And here is the first practical warning. In investment proposals, the word "decentralised" is not a technological guarantee: it is the advance explanation of why, when the money disappears, there will be no one to call to account.
The route: from your wallet to theirs
In the defi-trust.site case the money made three moves, up to the defi-trust.site wallet, and it is useful to see them in a row because they are always the same.
First move. The injured party had cryptocurrency in a personal wallet, the result of investments made independently years earlier that had gone well. It had been sitting there for a long time.
Second move. They are told that in order to "operate" the funds need to be on an exchange, and they transfer them to an account in their own name at a regular, well-known exchange.
Third move. From their own account on the exchange, following the instructions received in the chat, they transfer them to the addresses indicated by the organisation.
Every single movement was carried out by the injured party. No one stole their keys, no one got into their computer, no one broke into an account.
And that is exactly the point that needs clarifying.
"I sent it myself": why it is still fraud
People who have been through defi-trust.site often do not report it, or report it late, for a precise reason: they feel responsible. "Nothing was stolen from me, I sent it myself."
Legally that is a misunderstanding, and it must be dispelled.
Fraud under Article 640 of the Italian Criminal Code is precisely the offence in which it is the victim who performs the act of disposing of their property. There is no taking: there is a voluntary act, performed, however, under the effect of artifice and deception. That is the very structure of the provision: someone is led into error and, as a result of that error, disposes of their own money.
Consent obtained by deception is not valid consent, and the fact that the transactions were carried out by the injured party is not a mitigating factor for whoever deceived them: it is a constituent element of the offence.
In the defi-trust.site case, moreover, the artifices were the usual ones: a platform showing returns, daily chat support, step-by-step instructions, a signboard promising trust in its very name.
There is a practical corollary worth fixing: anyone who guides you step by step through the movements is not helping you, they are making you do their work for them. An authorised intermediary does not phone you to say which button to press on your exchange.
Without bank transfers: what remains to be reconstructed
When there are no bank transfers, as in defi-trust.site, the type of tracing changes completely. But changing does not mean vanishing.
In the defi-trust.site case three things remain, and all three can be obtained.
The exchange history. The account from which the cryptocurrency left was an account in the injured party's name, opened at an exchange that applies customer identification procedures. That platform keeps the complete history of transactions and can export it: date, time, amount, currency, destination address. It is the basic document of the whole file, and it must be downloaded by the person concerned, not requested from third parties.
The transaction hashes. Every blockchain transfer has a unique identifier. With it you can trace the destination address and follow the subsequent path of the funds, because the ledger is public and permanent. We explained at greater length what a hash does and does not prove in our article on m.hashvalueks.com.
The origin of the funds. The fact that the cryptocurrency came from earlier lawful investments held in a personal wallet is not a colourful detail: it documents the origin of the capital and strengthens the injured party's position.
There is also an advantage many overlook. Unlike a foreign bank account, the blockchain does not forget: 2023 transactions are still readable today, exactly as they were then. Time erodes websites, not the ledger.
The point where cryptocurrency meets a name
This is the part that makes the work on defi-trust.site possible, and it deserves to be explained clearly.
Blockchain addresses contain no names. But the funds, sooner or later, have to be converted or withdrawn, and the place where that happens is almost always an exchange or a service provider.
Those providers, in the European Union, are subject to anti-money-laundering obligations: they must identify customers, retain data and respond to requests from the judicial authority. That is where an anonymous address meets an identity document.
That is why, in affairs such as defi-trust.site, the reconstruction does not stop at the first address: the path of the funds is followed to the point of conversion, and that point is the target of the request to the authorities.
It is not a promise of recovery: it is a route that exists and that must be set out precisely in the complaint, with the addresses and the hashes.
The legal framework
The defi-trust.site facts date from 2023, and are therefore prior to Law 90/2024: the aggravating circumstance of Article 640(2-ter) does not apply, and pleading it would be a mistake. The circumstances in force must be pleaded: diminished capacity to defend oneself (Article 61(5)), recognised by case law in the online context, and particularly serious financial loss (Article 61(7)).
The repeated transfers to defi-trust.site amount to a continuing offence (Article 81(2)). Offering investment services to the public without authorisation falls under Article 166 of the Italian Consolidated Law on Finance, prosecuted ex officio. The subsequent movement and conversion of the sums are relevant as money laundering (Article 648-bis) and, for whoever reinvests, as self-laundering (Article 648-ter.1).
On this last point a clarification about time is needed. Aggravated fraud becomes time-barred after six years, seven and a half with interrupting acts: for 2023 facts the window is still open but not unlimited. Money laundering has longer periods and runs from the acts of reinvestment, which come later: one more reason to frame the classification properly from the outset.
What to do now
Anyone who has sent cryptocurrency to defi-trust.site, or to a platform built the same way, should obtain:
the complete export of the history from their exchange, in original format, for the whole relevant period; the list of destination addresses and the hashes of each transfer; the screenshots of the platform, if any remain, because the sites are gone; the native export of the conversations using the application's function, with dates and times, because that is where the instructions received can be read; and documentation of the lawful origin of the cryptocurrency used.
The complaint must contain the application for preventive seizure (Article 321 of the Code of Criminal Procedure), the request for information on registration under Article 335 and the request for notice in the event of a request to shelve the case under Article 408(2). If a complaint was already filed at the time, you do not start again: you supplement it.
And the usual warning: anyone who contacts you promising to recover the cryptocurrency in exchange for an advance payment is the second scam. We have written about this in relation to eu-ecommbx.com.
Similar cases already handled by the firm
Anyone who has come across defi-trust.site will also find useful our analysis of answer-blockchain.com, on another 2023 case, and that of cryptoledgerx.top, on what speed can achieve.
If you sent the cryptocurrency yourself: it is not your fault
The picture is this. defi-trust.site is a scam: a signboard promising trust in its name, no longer registered today like the other two domains of the same activity, behind which there never was a company or an authorisation.
The fact that you made the transfers yourself does not make you responsible: that is exactly how fraud works, punishing the person who induces the error, not the person induced. And without bank transfers the trail exists anyway: exchange history, addresses, hashes, and the point where the funds meet an identity.
The firm has already handled this case. You can submit your situation for a preliminary assessment.
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