Amicus Finance: The Loan That Took the Collateral and Never Paid Out

Amicus Finance offered an Auckland builder a stablecoin loan against his Bitcoin without selling it. The collateral went in; the loan never came out — only escalating ‘release’ fees. NZ$104,000.

Operator

Amicus Finance Limited → dossier

Vector

Crypto-Collateral Loan Scam

Instrument

BTC collateral

Reported Loss

NZ$104,000 NZD

Sealed On

24 Feb 2026

Status

58% recovered

Claimant

Builder, Auckland NZ

Point of Entry

An Auckland builder needed working capital but didn’t want to sell his Bitcoin. Amicus Finance offered a stablecoin loan against it, with a ‘relationship manager’ to handle onboarding.

He moved his BTC into what he was told was a ‘segregated collateral wallet,’ expecting a credit line in return.

Where Custody Broke

No loan arrived. Instead came a ‘risk-buffer deposit,’ then an ‘insurance premium,’ then ‘liquidation protection’ — each fee unlocking the next.

The collateral wallet was no smart contract; it was an ordinary address that swept his BTC on arrival. When he stopped paying, the account went ‘under review,’ then dark.

“I kept paying fees to get back coins I already owned. Each one came with a new official reason.”— Reece M., Auckland

The Recovery Ledger

L01Intake & capture. We documented the BTC transfer to Amicus’s ‘collateral wallet,’ the onboarding paperwork, and every release fee demanded.
L02Wallet attribution. The collateral address immediately swept the BTC; we clustered it to a single controlling entity.
L03Off-ramp & fee-wallet mapping. We split two flows: the collateral heading to an exchange, and the fees landing in a second collection wallet.
L04Dual freeze. We filed attested freeze requests with both receiving service providers.
L05Recovery. The exchange holding the larger tranche froze and returned it; some BTC had already been cashed out.

58%

Funds Returned to Claimant

A partial recovery. The larger tranche was frozen inside an exchange and returned; some Bitcoin had already been converted to cash before our request landed.

Breach Signatures

Being asked to pay fees to release a loan or withdraw your own collateral.
Collateral sent to a plain wallet address, not an auditable smart contract.
A ‘relationship manager’ applying steady pressure with an answer for everything.
No verifiable lending licence behind the platform.
A ‘compliance hold’ that appears only when you stop paying.

Pledged crypto as collateral and lost it?

Collateral scams leave a clear on-chain trail. The sooner we map it, the better the odds of a freeze.

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