A Six-Figure Wire, Gone Overseas, Recovered in Weeks

A client came to us after a routine vendor payment turned into a six-figure loss. The transfer went out in good faith. By the time anyone noticed the account details had been altered, the money was sitting in an overseas bank and roughly a month had passed. Most firms would have called it gone.

The window everyone said was closed

Wire fraud recovery is a race, and this one looked lost before it started. Money that leaves the country in the first few days is hard enough to claw back. After thirty days, the usual assumption is that it has been layered, withdrawn, and scattered. We did not assume that. We started tracing.

Following the money to a name

Our team worked the transaction from the point of interception forward, mapping where the funds moved and who controlled the account that received them. Identifying the people behind that account, not just the account number, is what makes recovery possible. Once we knew who was holding the money, we moved to freeze it before it could move again, and we connected the client with counsel positioned to file the motions that turn an investigation into a court order.

Every dollar back

Within a few weeks of the engagement, the client had recovered the full six-figure sum, despite the month already gone by. The evidence we built did double duty. It drove the recovery, and it gave the client’s attorneys a documented, admissible record of exactly what happened. That work is the core of our business email compromise and wire fraud practice.

Speed matters in these cases, but it is not the only thing that matters. Knowing how to trace a payment across borders and identify the person on the other end is what separates a recovery from a write-off. If a payment has been diverted, talk to our team. It is rarely as late as it feels.

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