Cold emails and WhatsApp messages are telling crypto-fraud victims that today's Senate CLARITY Act cloture vote will "freeze" stolen coins unless a commission is paid before 2:15 p.m. Eastern. Cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 3633 does not move a wallet, does not instruct an exchange, and does not create a refund. Sixty votes would open debate. They would not pass the bill. The same desks spent last week selling a "CPI freeze" and will spend the rest of this month selling an "FCA gateway refund" before applications open on 30 September. The Solicitors Regulation Authority warned on 4 September that emails and WhatsApps are still misusing the name and SRA number of a genuine solicitor, Peter Williams, ID 478047, to sell cryptocurrency recovery for a commission. The emails came from peter.williamss1133@gmail.com. WhatsApp used +44 7919 729883. Other numbers in the SRA alert include +447377773319, +44 333041 5298, +44 7782 220473, +44 20 80735654, and +4433191163. The genuine solicitor has confirmed he has no connection to any of them. A Gmail address with an extra "s" is not a Senate filing. See how that impersonation hitched a ride on CPI week.
If pounds left a UK current account, call the bank first. Eligible authorised push payment claims can be reimbursed up to £85,000. That scheme does not cover coins already sent to a wallet. Then file Report Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or reportfraud.police.uk. Scotland uses 101. Keep the crime reference. If the pitch claimed regulation, check the FCA register on a page you typed, then report the clone. If it claimed a solicitor, search sra.org.uk/solicitors/register yourself. Do not click the link in the message. The FCA still cannot get your coins back and will not email you to say a cloture vote is holding them. Almost 5,000 fake-FCA scam reports arrived in the first half of 2025. A "CLARITY commission" in bitcoin is the same trick with a different headline. APP reimbursement stops at Faster Payments and CHAPS. It does not follow ether out of MetaMask. Legitimate practices do not invoice in bitcoin first, do not ask for AnyDesk, TeamViewer, seed phrases, or private keys, and do not guarantee a refund against a Senate clock, an SRA "commission," or a "gateway fee."
What a real file looks like on vote day
Once coins sit in a wallet the clone controls, the exhibit is a forensic pack: transaction hashes, dates, amounts, exchange names, chat logs, URLs, and screenshots. Hong Kong-registered tracing in the aidataintelligence.io style is the map. Swiss-registered counsel such as Sarah Legal start with that map. Recovery is never automatic. It depends on whether the coins can still be traced to an exchange or a wallet a court can reach, and on the facts of that client's file. A firm that can start before 2:15 p.m. for anyone, and wants payment in crypto today because "CLARITY will freeze the wallet," is not doing court work. For the sequence after the bank call, see how crypto recovery works. A crime number is evidence. A countdown clock in a WhatsApp is not. For what the vote actually decides, read the cloture explainer, not the invoice.