A new U.S. class action against Circle raises a fundamental question for the digital financial system: when does a crypto infrastructure provider stop being a neutral technology layer and become legally accountable for enabling the movement of stolen assets? A New Test Case for Crypto Infrastructure Liability A class action
The criminal case we have been following for years has now reached a major procedural milestone. On 27 January 2026, the Regional Court of Cologne (Landgericht Köln) delivered its judgment in the joined criminal proceedings arising from 112 KLs 6/21 and 112 KLs 2/24. The written reasons were later signed
A new lawsuit against Meta deserves attention well beyond the world of social media moderation. On April 21, 2026, the Consumer Federation of America filed a class action complaint and jury trial demand in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, alleging that Meta misled D.C. users about the
The UK Financial Conduct Authority and the Financial Ombudsman Service have launched CP26/9, “Modernising the Redress System”, presenting it as a package designed to improve predictability, transparency and early intervention in consumer redress. The FCA says the aim is to create a smoother system for consumers while giving firms greater
Fraud does not operate on lies alone. It operates on accounts. On payment rails. On internal transfers. On outgoing wires. On institutions willing to keep the machinery running long after the warning signs should have triggered harder questions. That is why the newly filed U.S. class action against JPMorgan Chase
The FTC’s message is clear: online fraud is growing, fast In its 25 March 2026 testimony, The Rising Scam Economy: Modernizing Federal Approaches to Protect Americans from Foreign Fraudsters, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission delivered a blunt warning to Congress: the scam economy is expanding. In 2025 alone, U.S. consumers submitted
Asset recovery in Europe remains deeply dysfunctional. From a victim perspective, the system still too often fails at the most basic level: returning frozen money within a reasonable time. At EFRI, we have seen this repeatedly. In the P2P GmbH case, prosecuted in Cologne, approximately €1.8 million was frozen in
Newly obtained chat records raise a central question for Europe: when does payment infrastructure cease to be neutral and become part of the machinery that keeps fraud alive? Persistence matters German prosecutors have proved exceptionally skilled at keeping victims away from the underlying court files: ongoing investigations, ongoing proceedings, documents
The UK’s new Fraud Strategy 2026–2029 is an important and overdue step – but on its current design it is unlikely to stop global scam networks on its own. From EFRI’s perspective, the core missing piece is a hard, enforceable “primary gatekeeper” regime for payment service providers and major online
Crypto coverage is already treating the Uniswap dismissal as another big win for the sector. That reaction is understandable, but it overreads the judgment. On 2 March 2026, Judge Katherine Polk Failla dismissed the Second Amended Complaint with prejudice in the class action Risley v. Universal Navigation Inc. Yet the
