What to Do If You Think You Gave Information or Money to a Scammer

First: stop the interaction

End the call, close the chat, and do not reply to further messages. Expect follow-up contact, sometimes from someone posing as a bank, an investigator, or a recovery service. People who have been defrauded once are frequently targeted again, and advance-fee recovery schemes are a category of their own.

If anyone gained remote access to your device, disconnect it from the internet and stop using it for banking or email until it has been checked.

The first hour: money

Ask each institution directly what protections apply to your situation and what they require from you. Do not accept an offer of help from anyone who contacts you afterwards claiming they can recover the funds for a fee.

• Call your bank or card issuer using the number on your card, and ask for the fraud department.
• For a wire transfer, request a recall immediately and ask the bank to contact the receiving institution — speed matters most here.
• For a payment app, report the transaction inside the app and to your linked bank or card.
• For gift cards, call the issuing retailer, report the fraud, and keep the cards and receipts.
• For cryptocurrency, report to the exchange or kiosk operator, and keep the transaction identifiers.
• Write down every date, amount, name, and reference number as you go.

The first hour: accounts

If you entered a password, change it on that account and on every other account that shares it, starting with email. Email is the master key: whoever controls it can reset almost everything else.

Turn on multifactor authentication where it is not already on, review the account''s recovery phone and email for entries you do not recognise, and sign out all other sessions or devices.

• Email accounts first, then banking and payment apps
• Check for forwarding rules or filters you did not create
• Review authorised devices and remove unfamiliar ones
• Replace any password reused elsewhere

If you shared identity details

A Social Security number, date of birth, or full account details support later identity theft. IdentityTheft.gov produces a personalised recovery plan and the letters that go with it. Consider a free credit freeze with each of the three nationwide credit bureaus; a freeze can be lifted temporarily when you need credit.

If it was an emergency call about a relative

Reach the relative directly, then tell the rest of the family what happened so the same call is recognised next time. Impersonation of a family member is increasingly produced with synthetic voice, which is why a family verification routine is worth agreeing in advance — see AI voice scams and how families can verify an emergency.

Report it

Reporting rarely produces an immediate refund, and it is still worth doing: reports are how patterns are identified and how some funds are frozen before they move offshore.

• FTC — ReportFraud.ftc.gov for scams generally
• IdentityTheft.gov — when personal identifiers were exposed
• FBI IC3 — ic3.gov for internet-enabled fraud, especially wire and cryptocurrency losses
• Your state attorney general''s consumer protection office
• Local law enforcement, for a report number your bank may request

The first week: check what changed

Review statements line by line for small unfamiliar charges, which often precede larger ones. Watch for mail that stops arriving or new accounts you did not open. Have the device examined if remote access software was installed, and reset passwords from a device you trust rather than the affected one.

If access to an account cannot be restored through the official recovery process, the provider''s process is still the only legitimate route. Be sceptical of anyone selling faster access.

Afterwards: fewer places to be caught

Two changes prevent the largest share of repeat incidents: multifactor authentication on email and banking, and a habit of verifying any unexpected request through a channel you chose. The warning signs in is this a scam? ten warning signs are the practical version of that habit.

SmallSpark helps people work through account recovery and device clean-up through SparkAccess, and covers fraud recognition in workshops through SparkAssist. We are not a law-enforcement agency, a bank, or a legal service, and we do not promise recovery of money or accounts — we help people take the right steps with the institutions that can act.