Public record · Court of Appeal, London06 Oct 2026

The trace was wrong. Someone else paid for it.

An English court ordered 89.6 bitcoin paid to a fraud victim from a wallet his expert said the fraudsters had used. On the evidence now, his bitcoin never reached it. An exchange customer appears to have paid instead, and four years later the Court of Appeal set the order aside.

  • Crypto tracing
  • Asset recovery

In September 2022 an English court ordered a crypto exchange to hand a fraud victim 89.6 bitcoin. The money was to come from a wallet his expert report said the fraudsters had used. The exchange paid him. Then, it appears, it took the bitcoin back out of one of its customers’ accounts.

That customer, Kyrrex, had nothing to do with the fraud. On 28 September the Court of Appeal set the order aside.

“The order was based on a misconception advanced on behalf of Mr Jones, yet its effect was to make Kyrrex the unwitting insurer of his loss.”

Lord Justice Peter Jackson, Jones v Persons Unknown [2026] EWCA Civ 1212, at [151]

Nobody in Jones v Persons Unknown is said to have acted dishonestly. The courts said the judge who made the order had been misled, and that the misleading was innocent. The trace was wrong, and nobody was in the room to say so.

What the trace said

Mr Jones lost 89.6 BTC to a fake investment platform between January 2019 and January 2020. His case was that his expert report had identified a deposit wallet at the exchange Huobi, called tHEL in the judgments, as “being used by the scammers”. On that evidence he won a freezing order in June 2022 and summary judgment in September. Only his side was represented.

The court was told the wallet held 14,986 BTC, and that the bitcoin in it “can only be Bitcoin which has been transferred to the wallet by individuals connected with the fraud”. Neither held up. The Court of Appeal could not square the 14,986 figure with the rest of the evidence. In September 2022 the wallet held about 1,547 BTC.

Step through it below, or press Play. Each step names the paragraph its figures come from.

FIG.02The claimed trail, and what it rested onFrom the judgments · we did not trace this case

Every step as a table
FromToAmountWhenSource

What the chain said

Kyrrex had its own expert go through the blockchain. On the original graph, the only tangible link from the fraud to tHEL was 0.58 BTC, from a wallet ending 1G5d1. On his analysis, that wallet had received transfers totalling 1.31 BTC and passed each one on almost at once, emptying itself every time. None of it went to tHEL. Mr Jones’s new expert did not engage with that analysis. The Court of Appeal said it “on its face appears compelling”, though it left the final answer for another day.

FIG.03The link the order rested onBTC · CA [6], [68]
Lost to the fraud
89.6
Linked to tHEL on the report’s own graph
0.58
Reached tHEL, on the chain
None
On Kyrrex’s expert’s analysis, which Mr Jones did not contest for the application. CA [68], [98].

The rest of the wallet looked nothing like a fraudster’s. tHEL was the address Kyrrex used to deposit its customers’ bitcoin with Huobi. On the court’s own sums, over 97.5% of what went into it came from Kyrrex, directly or indirectly. It was, in Lord Justice Nugee’s words, “very much Kyrrex’s wallet”.

By the 2025 hearing it was “now entirely accepted” that the claimant had wrongly said his bitcoin reached that wallet. In the Court of Appeal his counsel confirmed it was not contested, at least for that application, that the original tracing was flawed enough to make the 2022 order wrong.

Who paid

The order required 89.6 BTC from tHEL, plus £148,000 of costs paid as 8.6 BTC from the same wallet. Huobi locked 98.25 BTC in Kyrrex’s account, paid Mr Jones from a different wallet, then appears to have taken the 98.2 BTC out of Kyrrex’s balance. On Kyrrex’s evidence that account held about 192.57 BTC. Just over half of it went.

FIG.04Kyrrex’s account at Huobi, September 2022BTC · CA [19], [21]–[23], [65]
Ordered from tHEL: the judgment, then costs
98.25
Kyrrex’s balance, 21 Sept 2022
192.57
Kyrrex’s balance is from its own screenshot (CA [65]); the wallet as a whole held about 1,546.76 BTC (CA [80]). Why Huobi debited Kyrrex is not known (CA [87]).

Then came four years of trying to put it right. Huobi was struck off in 2023. Kyrrex needed a court application to see the evidence, then a report of its own. The High Court refused to reopen the judgment in June 2025, finding Kyrrex was not directly affected. The Court of Appeal disagreed, calling it “a judgment that now appears quite insupportable”.

FIG.05Four years from order to appealFrom the judgments
  1. Jan 2019 to Jan 2020Mr Jones buys 89.6 BTC and sends it to a fake platformCA [6]
  2. 28 Jun 2022Freezing order; tHEL frozen up to £1.75mCA [11]
  3. 5 Sep 2022Summary judgment. Only Mr Jones is representedCA [14]
  4. 27 Sep 2022Mr Jones is paid 98.2 BTC; Kyrrex’s balance appears to be debitedCA [23]
  5. Mar 2023Kyrrex gets the evidence, by consent orderCA [24]
  6. Oct 2023Huobi struck off in SeychellesCA [26]
  7. Nov 2024Kyrrex applies to set the order asideCA [27], [118]
  8. 10 Jun 2025High Court dismisses the applicationHC [52]
  9. 28 Sep 2026Court of Appeal sets the order asideCA [134]

Even now, nobody has been ordered to give the bitcoin back. Who is entitled to it is still to be decided.

Reaching an exchange is where the question starts

An exchange deposit wallet is a shared pipe. tHEL sent and received 103,232 BTC in about eighteen months. On the expert evidence about 1,100 BTC of what passed through came from scams, none linked to Mr Jones, and the court did not accept that any of it was still there in 2022. Even if some of his bitcoin had arrived, it would not have made the rest of the wallet his, or the fraudsters’. Arriving at an exchange is a lead. Whose balance it became is the finding, and a court needs the finding.

Before you rely on a trace

FIG.06Four questions for any crypto trace
  1. 01

    Does every hop add up against the whole wallet?

    Every transfer in and out of each wallet, not only the ones that fit the story.

  2. 02

    Where it reaches an exchange, whose account is it?

    A deposit address belongs to a customer. Arriving there is a lead; whose balance it became is the finding.

  3. 03

    Whose money will the order catch?

    A freeze on a shared wallet can land on everyone with a balance in it. Know who they are before you ask for it.

  4. 04

    Could a hostile expert repeat it from the report alone?

    Every address explained, every step shown, and the same answer at the end.

The trace in this case was tested against the story the claimant needed. Nobody tested it against everything else in the wallet until Kyrrex did, years later.

We had no part in this case; everything here comes from the published judgments. A freezing order built on a trace binds people who are not in the room. If a trace you rely on has to survive the other side, or a stranger’s application four years later, we would rather find the hole first.

Relying on a crypto trace? Start a conversation, in confidence.

Sources: Jones v Persons Unknown [2026] EWCA Civ 1212 (CA); Jones v Persons Unknown (No. 2) [2025] EWHC 1823 (Comm) (HC). Paragraph numbers in square brackets.