How to get deposit returned after agency has been liquidated?

I seek suggestions on how to get a rental deposit returned after the agency has been liquidated. My letting agency often delayed rental payments for months and always had to be chased to hand over the rental income so I moved the letting to another agency.

This transfer happened 5 years ago and at the time I believed that the deposit had been transferred. The original agency did confirm in an email that the deposit had been under the Deposit protection scheme (DPS). But now that my tenants have vacated I find that I was mistaken and the original agency had kept the deposit despite a lot of prodding from all parties. I don’t think that the deposit was protected since my current agent searched and found no record.

The original agency had been in financial difficulty and was liquidated in 2014 but a new letting agency has sprung up in part of the original agency premises and the Director of the new company is the same person from the liquidated agency.

Legally the deposit had to be protected, the agency said it was protected, the Director hung onto the deposit even though the property was no longer managed by his agency and now the tenants deposit has disappeared. If the law had been followed then the deposit would have been protected from agency liquidation. It seems to me that the loss of deposit is not something arising from business failure but more likely the result of an illegal act to ignore the requirement to protect the deposit and deliberately retain the deposit for some other use than intended.

The original agency does not exist so cannot return the funds but I think there could be grounds to sue the Director as a person that has acted fraudulently. I would appreciate property118érs thoughts on this and any suggestions for alternative action.

Thanks, Derek