International Fraud - how to proceed

[Pete70]

I'll try and compact a complex situation down into as few facts as I can.

I'm looking for some advice on how to proceed to get this resolved - at this point I don't even know which country would be a good starting point.

Involved parties:

- Me (Swiss Citizen, living in Thailand for a decade)

I don't have much of any connection to Switzerland anymore at this stage. No residential address, no bank accounts, etc. I'd suppose it's safe to say this leaves Swiss options off the table.

- Adrian (English Citizen, living in Vietnam for 2 years)

Still has residencies in England and has family there.

 

The problem situation:

- Been friends for 20 years. Consider Adrian my best friend.

- In April this year we decided to invest into Crypto mining together, at Adrian's location (electricity is cheaper there)

- For a quick background - 4 years ago, I had financial trouble due to job loss, and Adrian helped me out by sending me 5000 GBP. I've slowly paid that back over time and it was hassle-free.

- On April 19th, 2021 I sent him 400'000 THB (around 9000 GBP). Which was 50% of the planned investment of somewhere around 25'000 USD.

- Availability of the mining machines was difficult back then, and we had to wait.

- On May 7th Adrian said that he has transferred the funds for the Antminers, and that the local seller has confirmed arrival of new stock.

- May 20 Adrian stated that he has not received any response from the seller in "over a week". Up until this point he has still not shared the seller's details with me, despite me asking repeatedly. A few days after he stated that the money was transferred directly to an individual and not via a trading platform.

- June 1st when I kept pressuring for a straight answer he told me "I’ll find the guy , you can have your money back , until then take your <deleted>ty attitude and bossy manner and <deleted> off. " and proceeded to block me on Facebook (our main method of communication).

- It has now been a month, and I'm still blocked, he hasn't responded to emails nor attempts at making contact by others. Attempts to discuss it with his daughter have also resulted in silence.

 

I've had enough and I want to pursue this legally. This seems to be a clear-cut case of him trying to ghost me and minimizing his losses. From my point of view, he made the decision by himself, without even informing me that he made a deal outside of a platform such as Amazon or Lazada (or whatever the local one in Vietnam was called).

Note that he is by no means in financial trouble. He owns property in England and has a very well paying job working remotely for IBM in their consulting branch.

How do I get started here?

Do you know of any legal contacts in Vietnam or Thailand that are experienced in this sort of fraud?

I have all the planning and discussions in Facebook logs, which can be requested by a court, and can't be tampered with by neither him or me.

Thank you for your time

[metisdead]

Please do not post the same topic across multiple forums, please continue in the topic running here:

 

 

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