A tech startup based in Amsterdam had contracted an IT infrastructure firm for a 14-month project, making payments in stages against verified invoices. A routine audit near the end of the contract revealed that the contractor’s registered company had been dissolved months before the project began. By that point, the startup had transferred $520,000 to an entity that no longer legally existed.
Elena Castillo, a senior OSINT and forensic investigator at Pay-Recovery.com, was engaged by the startup’s legal counsel within days of the audit finding. Her first step was to establish a precise timeline linking the dissolution date to the first fraudulent invoice. That overlap became the foundation of everything that followed.
When the Fraud Is Inside the Paperwork
This case had no crypto, no offshore broker, and no emotional manipulation. It was wire fraud executed through documentation. The perpetrator had operated under a cloned company name with a single-letter variation from the legitimate original. The startup’s finance team had not caught it. Neither had the bank.
The Elena Castillo Approach
- Corporate Registry Forensics: Castillo pulled the complete filing history of both the legitimate and cloned entity from multiple European registries. She identified the exact dissolution date and cross-referenced it with the first fraudulent invoice. The timeline was clear and fully documented.
- Beneficial Ownership Tracing: Using OSINT and financial intelligence tools, Castillo identified the individual behind the cloned entity. The same director’s name appeared in three previously dissolved entities across two jurisdictions, each with a similar pattern of short-term contracting fraud.
- Payment Recovery Filing: The $520,000 had been transferred from the startup’s Dutch bank to a UK account. Castillo filed a fraud recall request directly with the UK receiving bank, supported by the full corporate evidence file.
- Law Enforcement Coordination: A complete dossier was submitted to the Dutch FIOD and the UK’s Action Fraud simultaneously. The coordinated filing accelerated the asset freeze timeline significantly.
The Result: $410,000 Recovered
$410,000 was recovered through the bank recall and asset freeze. The remaining $110,000 had been withdrawn in cash before the freeze was applied.
“Elena’s team moved faster than anyone we had worked with. The evidence file they built was something our own legal team could not have produced in that timeframe.”
Corporate Fraud Hides in Process
The most effective corporate fraud does not look like fraud. It looks like a slow, professional business relationship. Pay-Recovery specializes in forensic investigation for business fraud, with OSINT capabilities that go well beyond what standard legal teams can access independently. If something feels wrong after an audit, the earlier a specialist reviews the records, the more that remains recoverable.
