EFRI Case Note, Part 1 of 2 — seven decisions from the Netherlands, England and Wales and the United States (24 March 2025 to 24 July 2026). By EFRI | 5 November 2026. Case-law review as at 05 November 2026.

Courts in the Netherlands, England and the United States now order cryptoasset exchanges to freeze accounts and disclose who controls them, at the request of fraud victims themselves. For victims of online investment fraud, this is a real opening: a centralised exchange is a findable entity in the money’s path, as a bank or payment service provider is. The decisions also show where that opening narrows. Almost all were made at interim stage and in the defendants’ absence. Where the exchange group defended itself, the relief was narrower. And none of the decisions establishes that a victim has actually been paid.

Part 1 covers the civil route, in which the victim proceeds directly against the platform or the account holders. Part 2: Seizure, Sale and Forfeiture of Cryptoassets examines the state route and what implementation of Directive (EU) 2024/1260 should deliver for victims. An earlier EFRI case note, Money Moves in Seconds, documented how far evidence requests lag behind the movement of funds.

1. Netherlands

1.1 Rotterdam (OKX): the contested case sets the limits

Rb. Rotterdam (vzr.), 24 March 2025, C/10/694052 / KG ZA 25-115, ECLI:NL:RBROT:2025:3774 — interim relief, contested by the OKX group.

A retired estate agent alleged a boiler-room fraud involving payments of more than €1.9 million to a purported trading platform (r.o. 3.5). A forensic report traced his cryptoassets mainly to OKX’s Seychelles entity and, to a lesser extent, to ChangeNOW. The court treated his victim status as “for now sufficiently plausible”, without deciding it.

The claimant had sued eight OKX entities. Only Aux Cayes Fintech Co. Ltd (OKX Seychelles) was ordered to act. The claims against the other seven were dismissed, partly because the claimant had issued the summons one day after asking OKX’s lawyers which entity held the data (r.o. 3.21–3.22). Under the new Dutch disclosure regime (Art. 194 et seq. Rv), OKX Seychelles had to disclose identity and transaction data; the account holders’ privacy weighed less than the claimant’s interest in recovery (r.o. 3.23–3.25). OKX’s argument that it answers police requests and that the victim should use that route did not justify refusal (r.o. 3.26).

The freeze covered only the part of the wallets traceable to the claimant’s assets, not the whole accounts, because it was not established that the current holders were involved in the fraud (r.o. 3.28). The claimant had to bring proceedings against the account holders within four weeks of disclosure of their identity, rather than the four months requested. No penalty payment was imposed because OKX undertook to comply voluntarily. A claim for an advance order to transfer assets was refused: no urgent interest or legal basis had been stated, there was no judgment against the account holders, the order would cut across Seychelles enforcement rules, and OKX’s argument that it could not transfer the assets was unanswered. The court noted that, so far as it could ascertain, a similar claim had been granted only once before, under a default-style assessment (r.o. 3.33).

1.2 Midden-Nederland: the platform’s refusal as a tort

Rb. Midden-Nederland (vzr., Utrecht), 31 March 2026, C/16/605902 / KG ZA 26-30, ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2026:1482 — interim relief, in default.

The claimant’s cryptoassets, lost in an alleged boiler-room fraud, were traced to an account with three companies from the British Virgin Islands acting as exchange or custodian. The court stressed that the relevant legal relationship was between the victim and the platform, not the fraudster (r.o. 3.8). The platform’s refusals to disclose identity data, to disclose transaction data and to freeze the account (r.o. 3.10) constituted a threatened unlawful act under Art. 6:162(2) BW, given a strong suspicion of fraud by the account user(s), the platform’s possession of the data, and the fact that without it the victim could neither sue the fraudster nor prevent release of the assets (r.o. 3.11). For the freeze, the court also referred to the platform’s contractual power to block accounts (r.o. 3.10).

Jurisdiction rested on Art. 6(e) Rv: the conduct took place in the BVI, the damage in the Netherlands, where the claimant lives and has his assets, and being sued there was foreseeable for the defendants (r.o. 3.12–3.17). Dutch law applied under Art. 4(1) Rome II. The court ordered disclosure within four days, a freeze within two days, a prohibition on warning the account holders, and statements of holdings and transactions, with penalty payments of up to €500,000 (operative part 4.1–4.10). The freeze was conditional on proceedings against the account holders within four months of disclosure.

1.3 The Hague (Deribit): from freeze to transfer

Rb. Den Haag (vzr.), 23 January 2026, C/09/696615 / KG ZA 25-1274, ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2026:1407 — interim relief, in default, after an ex parte interim judgment of 24 December 2025.

Deribit FZE (Dubai) and DRB Panama Inc. were ordered to freeze the accounts of one individual and two companies within seven days, not to warn the users (penalty €100,000), and to disclose holdings and transactions since 15 October 2022 (operative part 3.1–3.7). The measure lapses unless proceedings on the merits are started within six weeks of disclosure.

The decision goes further than Rotterdam. Subject to receipt of a provisionally enforceable merits judgment ordering the account holders to pay damages and tolerate the transfer, together with proof of service, the platforms must transfer the frozen assets, up to the damages awarded plus interest and costs and limited to the assets affected by the freeze (operative part 3.8). This is a court-ordered route from freeze to satisfaction, granted in default after Rotterdam had refused comparable relief in contested proceedings. The judgment does not record any transfer.

1.4 The jurisdictional debate

Commenting on a 2023 freeze against Huobi Global (Rb. Amsterdam, 28 August 2023, ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2023:6218), G.J.P. Molkenboer argues that the fraudster’s wrongdoing cannot found jurisdiction over a custodian that is not the fraudster; the relevant act is the custodian’s own threatened release of the assets. For purely financial loss he reads CJEU case law (Universal Music, VEB/BP) as requiring foreseeability plus a further connecting factor, but considers foreseeability defensible for an internationally active custodian whose terms allow freezing on suspicion of fraud. Writing in 2024, he questions how much MiCAR will help victims dealing with a custodian outside the EU (JOR 2024/20, pp. 188–192, points 5–12). Midden-Nederland follows essentially this structure. The commentary predates full application of MiCAR. Under Article 59 MiCAR, crypto-asset services within the Union require authorisation or another specified entitlement; Article 61 MiCAR provides a limited exception where the client acts on their own exclusive initiative. A non-EU address therefore does not by itself put EU-facing services outside the regulatory framework. Regulatory scope and enforcement of a particular civil order remain distinct questions.

2. England and Wales

2.1 Wilden: an order the exchange did not obey

High Court (KBD), Deputy High Court Judge Guy Vassall-Adams KC, 5 June 2026, Wilden v Person Unknown & Anor [2026] EWHC 1355 (KB) — return date; neither defendant appeared.

A German company director was targeted by a “recovery” fraud: a caller offered to recover bitcoin he had lost on the defunct EuropeFX platform and induced him to buy more (paras 3, 12–23). His loss was about €2,586,845.42; investigators traced 32.4572826 BTC to infrastructure of HTX, owned by Huobi Global S.A. (paras 24–31). Applying s. 37 Senior Courts Act 1981 and relying on D’Aloia v Persons Unknown [2024] EWHC 2342 (Ch), the court found a good arguable case in deceit and a “very high risk of dissipation”, and continued a proprietary and worldwide freezing order against the fraudster (paras 37–43). It maintained a disclosure order against Huobi under Bankers Trust and Norwich Pharmacal (paras 44–47), and accepted the claimant’s cross-undertaking despite his limited means (para 47).

No order required Huobi to freeze anything. Huobi replied by email suggesting the claimant contact the police and did not comply with the disclosure order (para 2). The judge found that HTX was “providing a safe haven for the proceeds of crime” (para 34), noted the FCA’s pending allegations against HTX without making findings (paras 5, 35), and ordered indemnity costs of £60,993.91 against both defendants, describing Huobi’s conduct as “wholly unreasonable” (para 51).

2.2 Smithers: tracing errors and fungible tokens

High Court (Comm), Waksman J, 23 January 2026, Smithers & Anor v Persons Unknown [2026] EWHC 207 (Comm); Bright J, 24 July 2026, [2026] EWHC 1907 (Comm).

The claimants’ expert had applied last-in-first-out (LIFO) tracing to bitcoin, which produced “false positives”: addresses of people who had not received the claimants’ assets. This had not been disclosed to the court (paras 3–4). Waksman J treated the non-disclosure as innocent; no discharge application was before him. He found it “entirely disproportionate” to discharge the orders, pointed to the third parties’ right to damages under the cross-undertaking, and continued the order (paras 2–6, 13–14), while noting the more reliable UTXO-based method (para 4).

At the summary judgment stage, after service by NFT or OP_RETURN message to the receiving addresses (para 11), Bright J ordered bitcoin to be returned in specie, because each unspent transaction output “remains a discrete and identifiable unit until it is spent” (paras 17–19). USDC and ether were treated as fungible; the remedy was compensation in fiat currency (para 20). The defendants against whom judgment was sought did not respond, so this distinction was not tested in adversarial argument. Three recipients who had responded with explanations were excluded from the application (paras 13–15). The distinction matters for recovery: an order recognising the claimant’s continuing ownership targets identifiable property; collecting a money judgment requires assets against which it can be enforced. The decision should not be read as a universal rule excluding proprietary remedies for stablecoins or ether.

Duncan Sheehan’s critique of D’Aloia highlights the underlying conceptual dispute: because every USDT carries the same redemption claim, technical distinguishability is legally irrelevant, and following the same asset must be kept distinct from tracing into a substitute ((2025) 141 LQR 346–351).

3. United States — Parr

E.D. Tex., Judge Mazzant, 23 September 2025, Parr et al. v. BitPay et al., No. 4:25-cv-850 — preliminary injunction after a TRO of 27 August 2025; no defendant appeared.

The plaintiffs alleged a loss of US$490,527 in a purported staking programme that misused the name of BitPay, which the court described as a legitimate provider (pp. 1, 7–8). The court froze 16 addresses at Binance (9) and OKX (7) (p. 12), accepting that the assets could be moved “within seconds, to unretrievable locations” (pp. 8–9). Pre-judgment preservation was available because the plaintiffs sought equitable relief, including a constructive trust over the traceable proceeds (p. 11). A claim for damages alone would not have supported it.

4. Procedural posture

Seven decisions: what the courts ordered and how the cases were heard

Decision	Date	Posture	Contested?	Result
Rb. Rotterdam, RBROT:2025:3774	24.03.2025	Interim	Yes (OKX)	Disclosure; freeze of traceable part only; no advance transfer order
E.D. Tex., Parr	23.09.2025	Prelim. injunction	No appearance	16 addresses frozen at Binance/OKX
Rb. Den Haag, RBDHA:2026:1407	23.01.2026	Interim	Default	Freeze, disclosure, conditional duty to cooperate in transfer
Smithers [2026] EWHC 207 (Comm)	23.01.2026	Return date	Binance by letter	Order continued despite false positives
Rb. Midden-Nederland, RBMNE:2026:1482	31.03.2026	Interim	Default	Refusal to act a threatened tort
Wilden [2026] EWHC 1355 (KB)	05.06.2026	Return date	No appearance	Disclosure against Huobi, not complied with
Smithers [2026] EWHC 1907 (Comm)	24.07.2026	Summary judgment	No response from judgment defendants	Return of identifiable bitcoin ordered; fiat compensation for USDC/ether

The note does not establish that any freeze remains in place or that any ordered disclosure or transfer has been carried out.

Our Assessment

Freezing preserves the chance of recovery. It does not establish that the victim has been repaid.

The exchange is the new pressure point, and Dutch courts have found the lever. EFRI’s central thesis is that accountability should attach to the intermediary through which the money provably had to pass. In crypto-enabled fraud, that is increasingly the centralised exchange. Midden-Nederland locates the relevant wrongful act in the platform’s own refusals. On the circumstances accepted by the court, an intermediary that holds the data, faces a strong suspicion of fraud and can contractually block the account acts unlawfully if it refuses the necessary disclosure and preservation measures. This was an interim decision in default, not a final damages judgment against the platform. The same reasoning underlies EFRI’s position on banks and payment institutions, and should be tested there too.

The record is thin where it matters most. Almost every victim-friendly order was made in default. Among the Dutch decisions examined, the exchange group that defended itself in Rotterdam obtained narrower relief and a reasoned refusal of the transfer obligation that The Hague later granted in default. The Deribit transfer order has not, on the published record, been tested against a defending platform or enforced in Dubai or Panama.

An order is not compliance. In Wilden, Huobi ignored a disclosure order of the English High Court. Offshore custody adds the practical questions of jurisdiction, service and enforcement. MiCAR’s rules for services offered within the Union must be distinguished from obtaining compliance with a particular freezing or disclosure order. In EFRI’s view, access to EU customers should come with an enforceable obligation to respond to freezing and disclosure orders from Member State courts.

Rigour in tracing is in victims’ own interest. The false positives in Smithers show how a hurried trace can freeze uninvolved persons’ assets, while a cross-undertaking may offer limited practical protection if the claimant lacks the means to meet a damages award.

Practical lessons for victims and their advisers

• Treat preservation as urgent. The point of a freeze is to keep recovery possible while the substantive claim is decided.
• Identify the correct legal entity. A trading name or exchange group is not necessarily the entity holding the relevant account data or assets.
• Use tracing suited to the asset. Explain the method, assumptions and limits, including any risk of identifying uninvolved recipients.
• Plan the next proceedings immediately. The Dutch orders imposed different deadlines: four weeks, six weeks or four months, with specific disclosure triggers and conditions. These are case-specific orders, not a general limitation period.
• Plan enforcement across borders. An order, a platform’s compliance and a transfer to the victim are separate steps.
• Match the remedy to the evidence. The treatment of bitcoin, stablecoins and ether in these cases differs; it does not settle every possible claim involving those assets.

Measure success by value actually returned to victims, not by the number of orders obtained.

Sources

• Rb. Rotterdam 24.03.2025, ECLI:NL:RBROT:2025:3774
• Rb. Midden-Nederland 31.03.2026, ECLI:NL:RBMNE:2026:1482
• Rb. Den Haag 23.01.2026, ECLI:NL:RBDHA:2026:1407
• Wilden v Person Unknown & Anor [2026] EWHC 1355 (KB)
• Smithers & Anor v Persons Unknown [2026] EWHC 207 (Comm) and [2026] EWHC 1907 (Comm)
• D’Aloia v Persons Unknown Category A & Ors [2024] EWHC 2342 (Ch)
• Parr et al. v. BitPay et al., No. 4:25-cv-850 (E.D. Tex. 23.09.2025)
• G.J.P. Molkenboer, note on Rb. Amsterdam 28.08.2023, ECLI:NL:RBAMS:2023:6218, JOR 2024/20, pp. 188–192
• D. Sheehan, “Third things, tracing and crypto-tokens”, (2025) 141 LQR 346–351 (author’s accepted manuscript)