More lucrative to go civil; get default treble fraud damages with a 20% withholding on all their future income that survives bankruptcy because of the fraud. But then IANAL.

but going civil requires your own lawyers, while a criminal fraud case is initiated by the state prosecutor. if you can't afford a lawyer...

Having been taken for a lot of money by contractors in the past, getting the local DA to issue criminal complaints are near impossible. Recently had a GC on a job fake receipts, fake bank statements, everything you could think of to steal money from us. In the end, the DA wouldn't make it a criminal case, said it was just a civil matter.

In fairness, those things do, in fact, sound like the kinds of things that civil matters are intended to address.