BERN. Digital asset recovery has shifted from reactive damage control to active enforcement through the courts. One of the lawyers driving that shift is Sascha Christener, an attorney admitted to the bar of the Canton of Bern in February 2018. His firm, Crypto Justice Legal, applies a disciplined operational model aimed at breaking up transnational syndicates that specialise in investment fraud, romance scams and counterfeit financial platforms.
This profile examines why his method works, and the sharp line his practice draws between genuine judicial intervention and the predatory recovery outfits that prey on the same victims.
How modern crypto fraud works in two phases
Fraud operations today follow a two-stage model of exploitation, built to extract the maximum from each victim while covering the trail of the assets. The first stage is acquisition: targets are approached through sophisticated social engineering, whether romantic deception, bogus job offers or high-yield investment programmes dressed up as legitimate exchanges.
The second stage begins when the original money is gone and the victim is financially cornered. A new wave of actors makes contact, trading on the victim’s desperation by selling recovery services that charge upfront fees for results that never materialise.
Mr. Christener considers this second wave the more vicious of the two: “The second crime is the one that still has your number.” Playing on the emotional wounds opened in the first stage, the fraudsters turn shame into fresh losses, frequently asking for seed phrases or remote access while posing as technical recovery specialists.
Enforcement through the courts, not predatory tactics
There is a fundamental divide between genuine legal recourse and fraudulent recovery operations. Crypto Justice Legal works to a strict protocol rooted in Swiss law and international cooperation, and refuses any practice that would put client security at risk. Its method stands on three pillars of judicial action.
Pillar one is forensic tracing. From transaction hashes, chat logs, bank statements and official police reports, including CAFC, Scamwatch, NCSC and Report Fraud references, the team assembles a detailed map of where the money went. That evidence is what identifies the off-ramps and the custodial venues holding the stolen assets.
Pillar two is judicial freezing. Instead of informal pleas, the firm obtains interim relief orders from the competent courts, injunctions that legally oblige custodial institutions to freeze the specific wallets that hold client funds. A court order is a legal lock: it does not promise instant restitution, but it stops the assets being dissipated further.
Pillar three is controlled repatriation. Money is returned only once it sits in a bank account controlled by the victim or the victim’s legal representative. A standard fee of 12.5 per cent is invoiced exclusively on a successful recovery, so the interests of counsel and client point the same way.
Security rules that admit no exception
Crypto Justice Legal imposes an absolute ban on custodial practices that put client assets in danger. The firm never takes private keys or seed phrases, and it categorically rejects requests for remote desktop sessions through tools such as AnyDesk, because that kind of access ends, without exception, in total asset compromise.
Alliances and alignment with regulators
From its Bern base, Mr. Christener’s practice draws on Switzerland’s robust regulatory framework. It works actively with FINMA, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, on compliance and reporting standards, and coordinates with international bodies, among them ASIC in Australia, UK reporting desks and Interpol, to lay bare the centralised structure of these fraud factories.
Analysis by Times of Switzerland has made the same point: recovery works when a helpdesk ticket becomes a formal legal case, because “a ticket creates a case number; an injunction creates a freeze.” Mr. Christener’s firm puts that principle into practice, turning scattered fragments of evidence into instruments a court can enforce.
A working model for digital justice
As of October 7, 2026, Sascha Christener’s work stands as a critical line of defence against the escalating threat of transnational crypto fraud. By refusing the shortcuts peddled by predatory actors and keeping to a disciplined, court-driven methodology, Crypto Justice Legal offers victims a realistic route toward recovering their assets.
Its transparency, shown in the refusal to request remote access or custody, together with rigorous adherence to Swiss legal standards, sets a new benchmark for ethical digital asset litigation. Where scammers sell speed as a commodity, the deliberate tempo of the judicial process remains the only vehicle for justice that can be relied upon.
About Crypto Justice Legal
Crypto Justice Legal was founded and is led by Attorney Sascha Christener, admitted in the Canton of Bern in 2018. The firm specialises in international litigation against investment scams, romance fraud, fake exchanges and predatory recovery entities, and works out of Kramgasse 65, 3011 Bern. Its mandate is to protect client assets through strict adherence to legal protocols, zero tolerance for unauthorised access and full transparency in every proceeding.
Enquiries: cryptojusticelegal.ch or info@cryptojusticelegal.ch.