From the marginalia — the deposit pathway:

• Claimant-to-platform deposit transactions on the deposit chain used by STEP Markets.
• Operator-controlled forwarding wallets where deposits consolidate ahead of laundering or off-ramping.
• Cross-chain bridge events to chains with deeper exchange liquidity.
• Privacy-service interactions, where present in the trail.
• Off-ramp wallet — the named centralised-exchange endpoint.

The annotation continues — off-ramp endpoint:

• Endpoint counterparty in the STEP Markets casefile is named — typically a major venue such as OKX or Bybit, sometimes Gate.io or KuCoin, occasionally Binance or Huobi when liquidity allows.
• STEP Markets’s off-ramp wallet is then matched against compliance feeds the Professor maintains a standing read on.
• Leverage is applied to that named counterparty — the STEP Markets packet is assembled to a standard the off-ramp’s compliance desk reads and acts on.
• If the STEP Markets off-ramp is non-cooperative, the casefile escalates to IC3, the relevant state AG, and (where dollar value warrants) a civil-discovery overlay for KYC.

Pathway to recovery — what happens after the trail is mapped:

1. Read the STEP Markets submission — written go/no-go returned.
2. Map the STEP Markets wallet trail — every hop captured with chain-of-custody hashes.
3. Name the STEP Markets off-ramp — endpoint counterparty identified.
4. Build and file the STEP Markets recovery packet — to IC3, state AG, off-ramp compliance, civil-discovery overlay.
5. Stay on the STEP Markets file — until written next steps exist.

What the Professor tracks across STEP Markets casefiles:

• Deposit + forwarding chains for STEP Markets — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron USDT-TRC20, plus the smart-contract chains (BSC, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism) that cross via bridges.
• Off-ramps the STEP Markets casefile may resolve to — centralised exchanges that respond to compliance filings.
• Filing pathways on STEP Markets — IC3, state AG, off-ramp compliance, and civil-discovery overlay.

Lines we never cross — by published policy:

• On the STEP Markets casefile — never request a seed phrase. Ever.
• On the STEP Markets casefile — never request remote-access logins to a wallet or exchange.
• On the STEP Markets casefile — never demand an upfront cash retainer to scope the matter.
• On the STEP Markets casefile — never promise a guaranteed recovery. The trail does not promise one.
• On the STEP Markets casefile — never call the claimant unsolicited. Written-only.