This Is Happening To Me Right Now

*If you are in the middle of it right now, the short version is on [this page](/help) and it is the same advice with less reading.*

The next hour

Work down this in order. Do not stop to work out how it happened.

1. Tell your bank now, by phone. Say the words "I have been defrauded" and give them the date, the amount and the account it went to. Speed is the whole game: money moves out of a mule account in minutes, and the only window anybody has to freeze it is measured in hours. Do this before you understand the situation, not after.

2. Stop sending. Including to anyone who contacts you afterwards offering to recover it. Especially them.

3. Do not confront them, and do not delete anything. Screenshots, account names, phone numbers, transaction references, the profile, the whole conversation. Once you block them the account often disappears, so capture first and block second.

4. Report it. Where depends on where you are, and the honest expectations differ — see the lesson on reporting. In the United States file at ic3.gov the same day, because the FBI's Recovery Asset Team can ask a receiving bank to freeze funds and it needs the banking details from your complaint. In the Netherlands ring 0900-8844; most fraud types cannot be reported online. In the UK, reportfraud.police.uk and your bank; in the EU, your national police.

5. If they have your identity documents or the answers to your bank's security questions, treat that as a separate emergency: change the credentials, and in the US go to identitytheft.gov, which is an action site rather than a database.

If you paid by gift card

Ring the card issuer today and ask them to freeze the unspent balance. This works more often than people expect and it is the one route with a real chance attached. Keep the cards and the till receipt. The US Federal Trade Commission maintains the current fraud numbers for the major issuers and says plainly: no matter how long ago it happened, report it.

What is probably not recoverable

Cryptocurrency. Once it is sent, no exchange, court or network can reverse it.

The second wave

Being contacted about money you have already lost is, more often than not, the same industry under a different name. Your details are on a list.

The FBI puts this beyond argument: there are no law firms that are official partners of US government agencies, no government agency charges a fee for law-enforcement services, and IC3 never contacts anybody directly and has no social media presence. Anyone who knows the exact amount and date of your loss knows it because they bought the file.

And the part nobody puts in a checklist

Tell one person tonight. Not for advice. Shame is what keeps this quiet, quiet is what keeps it profitable, and being alone with it at two in the morning is the worst position from which to make the next decision.