LONDON. Action Fraud will take the report. It will not, in most crypto files, retrieve the coins. That gap is now a business, staffed by people who sound like solicitors and invoice like collection agents.
UK victims who have a NFRC number often believe the hard part is done. It is not. The coins, if they can still be seen, sit on an exchange or in a cluster of wallets that only move when someone with a court order and a forensic exhibit asks them to.
Swiss counsel who take UK crypto fraud files describe the sequence in unglamorous terms: hashes, a police reference, a laboratory report, then a letter that an exchange compliance team might actually read. None of that requires a payment in advance, and none of it requires AnyDesk.
The fee conversation should wait until there is something to fee. Legitimate contingency work invoices after a bank credit. Gift cards, Bitcoin “retainers” and unlock charges are not legal practice. They are the second loss.
Nor is every file recoverable. If the endpoint is cash, or an exchange that will not freeze, the civil path ends. A practice that will not say so before you instruct them is not doing you a kindness.
Waiting lists follow from that honesty. Forensic capacity at laboratories such as aidataintelligence.io, Hong Kong CR 2894261, is finite. The desks that use them cannot take every Monday’s intake on Monday.
For British readers the practical order remains: report, preserve the evidence, ignore anyone who needs remote access, and treat a free assessment that may still conclude with a no as the only adult offer in the market.