When you’ve fallen for a scam, time is of the essence. You need to act quickly in order to inform the necessary people and organisations. This ensures that services can respond swiftly and, if your money has been lost, your bank can attempt to get it back. Here’s exactly what you need to do when you’ve realised you’ve been scammed.
Contact your bank
As soon as you realise you have been scammed, contact your bank. If you are on the phone with the scammer, end the call, ensure the line is clear if you’re using a home phone, and contact your bank directly.
It’s important to do this using a contact number you have found yourself, not a phone number listed in an email or provided by a caller - these could lead you right back to the scammer.
The bank is likely to request the following information:
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Who scammed you?
Any contact details for the scammer/scammers, including phone numbers and email addresses -
How were you contacted?
Be as specific as you can, including dates and times that you were contacted -
What happened?
What the scammer said or did, the personal information that they had about you, and the personal information you shared with them. -
What transactions were made?
Including the date and time of each transaction, the account details of both you and the recipient(s), the amount and how you paid for each transaction. -
Do you have records?
Where possible, it can help to provide screenshots or a bank statement of the transactions, as well as call logs, and screenshots of any correspondence between you and the scammer.
Once you have collected this information, it makes sense to store it somewhere that you have access to, so that you have a written record of what happened.
Your bank will guide you through the process of reporting your scam, and will let you know the action that they’re going to take. Where possible, they should be able to help you reclaim your money, freeze your cards and ensure that no-one else has access to your account.
Contact your IT support team
If you have made contact with a scammer through your IT equipment, either over email or you’ve allowed a scammer to access your computer through remote access, it’s important that you contact your IT support team.
Your IT support team will be able to ascertain the risk to your devices and data, and take further action if they suspect that something may have been installed on your machine, such as a keylogger, virus or ransomware, or if your IT security has been compromised.
Contact Action Fraud
Following your call to the bank, the next thing you need to do is contact Action Fraud. You can contact them by telephone (0300 123 2040) or you can use their online reporting tool, which is available 24/7.
Action Fraud will request much of the same information that you provided to your bank, including the type of scam you have been a victim of, the fraud details, the suspect and payments and any additional details. Action Fraud will then be in touch with you via email, or telephone.
Made a payment through cryptocurrency, gift cards/vouchers or wire transfer?
If you’ve made a payment through a cryptocurrency transaction, as a gift card or voucher, or a wire service, it’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to get your money back. Scammers request these methods of payment because they are very tricky, if not impossible to reverse, and there’s little way to track the recipient, and where your money has gone.
That being said, you should still contact your bank to report the scam, and contact Action Fraud. This helps banking services and the police know the kind of scams in operation, and could help potential victims in the future.
