Disclaimer: we are a law firm dealing exclusively with online fraud and unauthorised financial activity. 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 comes from checks on the public domain registries carried out at the date of publication. If what you read sounds familiar, you can submit your case through the form at the bottom of this page.
In the tiaozhuang12.top case the injured party had done everything right. He had stopped paying, cut off contact with the fraudsters, and filed a criminal complaint. Yet a year and a half later he wrote to us with a sentence we hear often: I do not think anything can be recovered.
tiaozhuang12.top is a scam worth 25,500 euro, with payments between April and June 2025. And this article answers the question almost nobody addresses: what happens to your complaint after you file it, and what you can still do when the proceeding is about to close.
Why tiaozhuang12.top is a scam: the name was never meant to mean anything
A word about the name, because it says something.
tiaozhuang12.top is not an Italian word, not an English word, and not a brand. It is a transliterated string followed by a number, under a cheap generic extension. It is not designed to be remembered, pronounced or searched for: it is not a commercial name, it is a technical identifier, like the label on a warehouse shelf.
tiaozhuang12.top is exactly what one expects of disposable infrastructure: a name that does not need to build a reputation because it must last a few months, and which, once burnt, is replaced by the next in the series.
The technical check confirms it. As at the date of this article tiaozhuang12.top no longer exists: querying the authoritative servers returns a non-existent name and the competent registry holds no registration record at all. The domain has been deleted.
That tiaozhuang12.top no longer exists is worth knowing, because it bears on the decisions to be taken now. The site is gone, but the data on who registered it may still exist at the registrar, and above all the banks and the receiving institutions still hold all the payment data. In our file the money went to a company, not to a natural person: and that is the best news, because a company has a name, a registered office, a companies register and an account in its name — none of which is deleted along with a domain.
The part nobody explains: what happens after the complaint
Here lies the practical value of this article, and it concerns anyone who has reported a matter like tiaozhuang12.top.
When a criminal complaint is filed for an online fraud, in almost every case it is directed against unknown persons: the perpetrators are not known, only their instruments are. The proceeding is entered in the register of proceedings against unknown persons and from that point follows a timetable of its own.
In a tiaozhuang12.top-type file the prosecutor has a time limit for the preliminary investigations. If within that limit no perpetrator is identified, there are two roads: ask the judge for authorisation to continue, or — by far the more frequent outcome in proceedings against unknown persons — apply to close the file.
And this is where the great majority of injured parties in cases like tiaozhuang12.top lose, for a simple reason: they do not know it is happening.
The mechanism works like this. The application to close the file is notified to the injured party only if, in the complaint, they declared that they wish to be informed. It is an express declaration, provided for by the code of criminal procedure, inserted into the document in a single line. Anyone who did not include it receives no notice at all: the proceeding closes and they find out, if ever, much later.
Anyone who did include it receives the notice and has a time limit — twenty days — to file an opposition.
The mistake that makes an opposition useless
And here comes the technical point that separates an opposition that works from one declared inadmissible in two lines.
Opposition to an application to close a file like tiaozhuang12.top is not a letter saying you disagree. The code is explicit: the opposition must contain, on pain of inadmissibility, a reasoned request for the continuation of the preliminary investigations, indicating the subject matter of the supplementary investigation and the relevant items of evidence.
Translated: it is not enough to say "I want further investigation". You must say what is to be investigated and with what element.
And this is precisely where a well-built online-fraud file has a great deal to say, because the supplementary investigations to be indicated are concrete and verifiable. For example: acquisition from the ordering bank of the complete list of operations with beneficiary, IBAN, BIC and reference; identification of the beneficial owner of the receiving account at the foreign institution, with a request for an extract from the companies register of the country where the beneficiary company is said to be established; acquisition from the registrar of the domain registration data and of the list of other domains attributable to the same account; acquisition of any suspicious transaction report; issue of a European Investigation Order to the state where the account is held; and linkage with other pending proceedings on the same matrix.
An opposition listing those requests is not an opinion: it is an investigative programme. And if the judge considers it well founded, a hearing is set and the prosecutor can be ordered to carry out further investigations.
Limitation and closure are not the same thing
A misunderstanding about tiaozhuang12.top must be cleared up, one we met in the tiaozhuang12.top file and meet constantly, because it leads to the wrong choices.
The injured party was convinced his complaint was "running out of time by limitation". In almost every case like this limitation is not the problem.
Aggravated fraud under the second paragraph of art. 640 of the Italian criminal code carries a limitation period of not less than six years from consummation, capable of being extended where interrupting acts occur. With payments ending in June 2025, that period does not expire before 2031. There is plenty of time.
The real and much nearer risk is different: that the proceeding against unknown persons is closed for failure to identify a perpetrator. Closure and limitation are not the same thing, and confusing them leads people to give up when they could act.
And there is a further point almost nobody knows: closure is not final. The code provides for the reopening of investigations when new elements emerge. If after closure a new fact appears — another injured party who has reported the same accounts, the identification of an IBAN holder, a measure in a connected proceeding — the prosecutor can ask the judge to reopen. A closed file is not a dead file.
How to find out where your proceeding stands
A practical question for anyone who has reported a matter like tiaozhuang12.top: how do you find out whether your proceeding still exists, and at what stage?
The code gives the injured party the right to ask the prosecutor's registry for information on the registration of the report of the offence. It is a written request, submitted to the competent prosecutor's office, and it tells you whether and when the fact was registered and under which proceeding number.
For a tiaozhuang12.top-type file that number is the single most important piece of information you can hold, because without it every subsequent document — supplement, opposition, reminder — ends up in a general filing system and risks never being matched to the right file.
So, to anyone who reported months or years ago and has heard nothing since: the first thing to do is not to give up, it is to ask for the proceeding number.
If the complaint was summary, supplement it
One last practical question, concerning the tiaozhuang12.top file and very many others.
A report taken at a police counter is normally a summary narrative. It opens the proceeding, and it is right that it was made at once, but it contains no investigative applications and often not even the declaration of wishing to be informed of an application to close the file.
That can be remedied. A supplementary document can be filed with the same prosecutor's office, citing the proceeding number, containing the itemised list of payments, the documents, the requests for acquisition, the application for seizure and — if missing — the express declaration of wishing to be notified.
It costs little and changes the shape of a file like tiaozhuang12.top, because it turns a narrative into a set of requests a magistrate can actually work on.
The legal framework of the case
The tiaozhuang12.top facts are from April to June 2025, hence after the entry into force of law 90/2024, in force since July 2024: art. 640 paragraph 2-ter of the Italian criminal code — aggravating fraud committed remotely by means of computer tools capable of hindering identification of the perpetrator — is fully applicable. This is a check always to be set out in writing in the document, dating each individual payment, because for files covering conduct straddling that date the charge changes.
In the tiaozhuang12.top file there are added the diminished defence of art. 61 no. 5, recalled by art. 640 paragraph 2 no. 2-bis, and the particularly serious financial loss of art. 61 no. 7, which with 25,500 euro rests on solid ground.
Also relevant are the unauthorised financial activity offence under art. 166 of the Italian consolidated financial act, if the activity proposed was financial in nature and the party was unauthorised, prosecuted of the court's own motion; identity impersonation under art. 494, for the personal documents handed over; and money laundering under art. 648-bis in relation to the beneficiary company's account.
The documents handed over: the disavowal
In the tiaozhuang12.top file the identity card, tax code, IBAN, email, telephone number and utility bills proving residence were handed over.
It is the complete set required by remote identity verification, and whoever holds it has what is needed to attempt to open accounts in someone else's name. More than a year on, the risk has not vanished: precisely for that reason the supplementary document must include an express, dated disavowal of every relationship and every operation carried out with those documents. It is a line worth a great deal the day an allegation arrives.
What to do now, in order
Anyone who paid into tiaozhuang12.top, or is in the same position, should proceed as follows. First, ask the competent prosecutor's office for information on the registration and obtain the proceeding number. Second, ask your own bank for the complete list of operations with beneficiary, IBAN, BIC, country and reference, rather than relying on the receipts you have at home. Third, check the beneficiary company named in the transfers in the relevant companies register. Fourth, file the supplementary document with the investigative applications and the declaration for being notified of any application to close the file. Fifth, if the notice of an application to close has already arrived, count the days: the time limit is short and the document must indicate specific supplementary investigations, not a generic disagreement.
And above all, after tiaozhuang12.top as after any such matter: do not pay a cent to anyone promising to recover the capital against an advance. After a fraud like this, sooner or later come the calls from self-styled recovery firms, bogus officials and bogus agents. They know how much you lost and when, because that data comes from the original fraud.
Similar cases already handled by the firm
You may find useful our study of unauthorised financial activity; our analysis of finomarkets.org, on a broker blacklisted by the supervisory authority; that of capitagains; that of manoab.com, on the clone of an authorised intermediary; and that of dam.w24platform.com, on the deleted domain and fake recovery.
If you paid into tiaozhuang12.top: what to do now
The picture is this. tiaozhuang12.top is a scam: a domain with a purely technical name, now deleted, used between April and June 2025 to collect 25,500 euro into an account held by a foreign company.
The domain is gone, but the payment data and the beneficiary company are not. And if you have already filed a complaint, the proceeding probably still exists: the risk is not limitation, which for these facts does not run out before 2031, but closure against unknown persons — which is resisted with an opposition setting out precise supplementary investigations, and which in any event does not shut the door for ever, because reopening the investigations remains possible.
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