Pricing

Three engagement modes

Witness covers the full ladder from $100/mo subscription to $50,000 multi-actor forensic investigation. The mode that fits your situation depends on whether you need AI-agent triage (subscription), a scoped court-admissible deliverable (project), oropen-ended senior-practitioner time (hourly). Most consumers start at the subscription tier. Most attorneys start at the project tier. Both are scoped on the free first call.

The personal pricing ladder

Each rung is roughly 2x the previous floor. The ladder is structured so that you only pay for the rung that matches your situation — most people do not need the highest rung. We start at the rung that fits the work, scope it in writing, and only escalate with a written scope update you authorize first.

1. Triage Assessment — $995 flat. Suspect compromise, harassment, or partner surveillance, and you do not know what is real. Used when something feels wrong but the picture is not clear yet. Flat fee, fixed scope, written triage report.
2. Single-Device Forensics — $2,500 to $4,500. Triage confirmed something real on one device (phone, laptop, tablet). Forensic acquisition, examination, written court-admissible report. Floor $2,500; typical $4,500; premium $7,500 for unusually complex single-device cases.
3. Multi-Device Divorce / Family — $5,000 to $15,000. Active divorce, custody dispute, family-law evidence work. Multiple devices, deleted-content recovery, account-activity timeline, chain-of-custody documentation, expert testimony coordination. Floor $5,000; typical $8,000; premium $15,000.
4. Active Harassment / Stalkerware — $5,000 to $10,000. Ongoing stalking, ex-partner harassment, active surveillance. Stalkerware investigation across all devices, account hardening, attribution work, evidence package for protective order or police report. Sliding scale routinely applied in DV cases.
5. Complex Multi-Actor — $15,000 to $50,000. Identity-theft rings, multi-actor harassment, layered scams (romance-to-crypto, executive sextortion, pig-butchering rings). Coordinated investigation across multiple devices, accounts, and jurisdictions. Often coordinated with breach counsel and law enforcement.
6. Expert Witness — $5,000 retainer + rate card. Your case proceeds to litigation. $5,000 engagement retainer; bills against the published case-review ($450/hr), deposition ($600/hr), and trial testimony ($650/hr) brackets. Available for rebuttal of opposing-side reports.

Hourly rate card (consumer services)

The published consumer-side rate stack. Standard is the rate for planned work.Surge is a 1.35x multiplier reserved for active 24/7 incidents only (active ransomware, active BEC, active exfiltration, active harassment). Travel is billed at 50% of standard, door-to-door, plus expense passthrough.

Rate logic: deposition rate is +33% over case-review prep, trial rate is +8% over deposition. The bracket structure mirrors industry-standard premium-boutique expert-witness pricing. Hourly engagements without a retainer carry a 4-hour-per-session minimum.

Cross-cutting policies

Free first call

The 30-minute consultationis free, NDA-protected, and confidential. If your case can be handled at the Witness Standard subscription tier, with the free version of Witness, or with a referral to a different specialist (police, IC3, a licensed Florida PI, breach counsel, the platform's own recovery process), we will tell you that and decline the engagement. We do not take cases for billing reasons. We take cases where forensic work is actually the right answer.

Written scope before any billable work

Every engagement is scoped in writing before any retainer is collected. The estimate names the hour range, the deliverables, and the milestone gateswhere scope is reviewed before additional time bills.

Refundable retainer

Project engagements use a $5,000 refundable retainer (proportional for larger work). The retainer is held against the rate card; unused balance is refunded at engagement close. Expert-witness engagements use a $5,000 engagement retainer that bills against the case-review / deposition / trial brackets.

Multipliers (when they apply)

• Surge 1.35x — active 24/7 incidents only (active ransomware, active BEC, active exfiltration, active harassment).
• After-hours 1.5x — nights, weekends, holidays at client request, non-surge work.
• Rush 1.25x — client-driven turnaround under 5 business days, non-active-incident.
• Travel 0.5x — door-to-door, plus expense passthrough.

Sliding scale for survivors

Domestic-violence survivors, active-threat cases, and victims of cyber crime where money is a barrier are eligible for sliding-scale pricing applied during the first call. No paperwork required. We do not publish the reduced rate publicly because it depends on the case. Tell us during the consultation and we will work it out. No survivor will be turned away for cost.

Attorney volume

Attorneys with 3 or more active cases per quarter receive floor pricing on subsequent personal-side cases (internal volume policy). The $995 triage anchor, surge work, and expert-witness rates are not discounted.

Need B2B, enterprise, or federal pricing?

Witness is the consumer-facing brand. Enterprise DFIR, vCISO, MDR, managed cybersecurity, SOC 2, CMMC, FedRAMP, HIPAA, ISO 27001, ITAR, red team, pentest, and federal advisory work runs through our sister brand at varcoe.ai. Same legal entity (Blueberry Security Global, Inc.), same Quinn, different brand voice for the B2B audience. The full B2B rate card lives at varcoe.ai/pricing.

What we will not do

• Bill for work outside the written scope without a scope update first
• Quote a low rate for senior-practitioner work and then deliver junior work
• Take a case where simpler steps (police report, IC3 filing, platform-native recovery, the Witness Standard subscription) would resolve the situation
• Promise outcomes we cannot guarantee
• Discount the $995 triage anchor, surge work, or expert-witness rates

How to schedule

1. Free first call. 30 minutes. NDA-protected. Book on Calendly or call (239) 241-8095.
2. Written scope and estimate. Within 24 hours of the call, you receive a written engagement letter naming the engagement mode (subscription, project, or hourly), the rate or rung, deliverables, and retainer.
3. Retainer + start. Project engagements start with a $5,000 refundable retainer (proportional for larger work). Unused balance is refunded at engagement close. Subscription engagements start with the 1 week free trial at /download.
4. Investigation, report, optional testimony. Court-admissible methodology, written report, expert testimony coordination if your case ends up in court.