The bad news is you have been defrauded of your investment in Axiom Legal Financing Fund. Your money has been embezzled by the Fund's controlling person, Timothy Schools, and other insiders. The sooner you accept this, the sooner you can start taking steps to recover some of your losses. The worst thing you can do is hold out any hope that the Fund is going to get back on its feet. Trust me, that's not going to happen. It's inevitable that the Fund will go into liquidation.

The good news is that the level of incompetence, unprofessionalism and negligence by the Fund's advisers and those entrusted with looking after your interests is possibly the worst I have seen in 27 years as a journalist. This means that Axiom's liquidators, when they are eventually appointed, will almost certainly recover millions of dollars in damages from them or their insurers in lawsuits that I expect to be slam-dunks. Unfortunately, the liquidators and their own professional advisers will keep much of this as fees and costs. The eventual liquidation dividend to investors is likely to be much less than your losses. I'm sorry but that's just the nature of the beast and the price you must pay for investing in an overtly-ridiculous scheme that had red flags plastered all over it.

You, as investors, have no direct claims against the Fund's professional advisers. It is up to the liquidators to bring such actions on your behalf. If you do sue them, your actions will be stayed in deference to lawsuits filed by the liquidators. So don't waste your time, effort, or money pursuing this course of action.

You can, however, sue financial advisers and others who directly induced you to invest in this fraudulent scheme. Frankly, they are sitting ducks for successful litigation. Time is of the essence, though, since there will be a statute of limitations on filing a claim. For more details on suing a financial adviser for recommending a fraudulent investment product that was exposed by OffshoreAlert, I recommend that you read this informative blog from 2005 by Bevans law firm in England.

Good luck and learn this lesson: Before you invest in another scheme, do some credible due diligence.