What to do if you have been scammed: the first hour

There is a moment when you know.

The withdrawal will not go through. The account manager has stopped answering. Or a friend says the words out loud, and you hear how it sounds.

What you do in the next hour matters more than anything you do next month.

Here is the order.

1. Stop paying. Right now.#

You may be told that one more payment releases the money. A fee. A tax. A verification deposit.

It does not. It never does.

Every pound you send after this moment is lost on top of what you have already lost. That is the single most common way a bad day turns into a ruinous one.

2. Ring whoever moved the money#

Not the platform. The bank, the card company, or the app.

Say these words: "I have been the victim of a fraud, and I need to report a fraudulent transaction."

What they can do depends on how you paid. The US consumer watchdog, the FTC, sets it out by payment method, and every line of it starts with the same word — immediately.

The FTC's instruction for a card is simply this: "Report it to the credit card issuer immediately." The same word repeats down the whole list.

3. The number that should make you pick up the phone#

People assume it is hopeless. It is not always hopeless.

The FBI runs a team whose whole job is freezing fraudulent transfers before they vanish. In 2025 it worked on 3,900 cases. Thieves had tried to take $1.16 billion. The team froze $679 million of it.

That is a 58% success rate.

Read that again, because it is the part nobody tells you. More than half the time, when it was reported fast enough, the money was still there to stop.

Speed is the whole thing. A transfer is a moving target for hours, not months.

4. Lock the doors they came through#

Change the password on your email first. Everything else resets through it.

Then change it anywhere you used the same one. Turn on two-step login where you can.

If you gave anyone remote access to your computer or phone, treat that device as compromised. Nothing sensitive goes near it until it has been checked.

5. Write it all down today#

Memory fades fast, and websites disappear faster.

Write down the names they used. Phone numbers. The email address they wrote from. Every date and amount. Take screenshots of the account, the chat, the adverts.

You are building the file that your bank and the police will work from. Nobody else is going to build it for you.

6. Report it, even if you expect nothing#

Two reasons, and neither is about your money.

A report is what lets a watchdog publish a warning, which is what stops the next person. And your bank will often ask for a report reference before it will look at a claim.

We wrote a separate guide on exactly where to file, country by country: how to report a scam.

7. Expect the second approach#

This one matters. Please read it before you close the page.

Within weeks, someone will contact you offering to get your money back. He will know the platform. He will know roughly what you lost. He will ask for a fee.

That is a recovery scam, and it is aimed at people exactly where you are now. The list of who paid is the most valuable thing the first operation owns.

Nobody who can truly get your money back asks you to pay first. Nobody.

And one last thing#

You were not stupid.

These operations run on scripts tested on thousands of people. They are staffed, funded and rehearsed. In one case the US regulator brought in December 2025, the "trading platforms" were entirely fake and no trading happened at all — and the victims were people who had checked, asked questions, and been given answers.

Being deceived by a professional deception is not a character flaw. It is what the deception was built to do.

If you want a second pair of eyes on what happened, tell us. We will go through it with you, free. We will never ask you to pay to get your money back.

Sources

• FTC (United States), What To Do if You Were Scammed — the payment-method steps, checked 30 September 2026: https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-do-if-you-were-scammed
• FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, 2025 IC3 Annual Report — Recovery Asset Team figures for 2025: https://www.ic3.gov/AnnualReport/Reports/2025_IC3Report.pdf
• FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, Domestic Financial Fraud Kill Chain brochure: https://www.ic3.gov/Outreach/Brochures/IC3-FFKC_Domestic.pdf
• SEC (United States), SEC Charges Three Purported Crypto Asset Trading Platforms and Four Investment Clubs with Scheme That Targeted Retail Investors on Social Media, 22 December 2025: https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2025-144-sec-charges-three-purported-crypto-asset-trading-platforms-four-investment-clubs-scheme-targeted