What to Send Your Bank When You Report Fraud

01Call first. Assemble the file second

The order matters more than the completeness. Whether a transfer can be recalled depends largely on whether the funds are still sitting in the receiving account, and that is a question of hours. Reporting a partial account now beats reporting a thorough one this evening.

So make the call with whatever you have, tell them a file is coming, and put the documents together afterwards.

02The facts they will ask for in the first minute

• The date and time of each payment, and the exact amount of each.
• The method: card, bank transfer, instant transfer, a peer-to-peer app, or a wire.
• The receiving name, sort code and account number, handle, or reference — whatever your statement shows.
• The transaction reference from your own records.
• Whether more than one payment went out, and whether any are still pending.
• Whether you gave anybody card details, a one-time code, a password, or access to a device.

That last one changes what they do next as much as the amount does. If a code or a credential was shared, the account itself may need securing regardless of what happens to the payment.

03Say the words that route the call

Say fraud. It moves the call to a different team from a disputed purchase or a billing query, and the distinction affects both who assesses it and how quickly.

Then be explicit about one thing: whether you made the payment yourself after being told to. Being instructed to move money — by somebody claiming to be your bank, the police, a supplier or a trader — is a specific pattern that fraud teams assess separately from a payment made without your knowledge. Describing it plainly is not an admission of anything; it is the fact that determines which process your case belongs in.

04The documents that make a claim assessable

• The full message thread, from the first contact rather than only the part about money.
• The listing, profile or website as it appeared, with the address visible.
• Any invoice, receipt, shipping notice or contract you were sent.
• Screenshots of the payment confirmation from your side.
• The exact identifiers as text — handle, wallet address, domain, phone number — so they can be searched rather than retyped.
• Your police or fraud-reporting reference, once you have one. Some claims require it.

Send them in one message with a short covering note, in date order. A fraud team reads a great many of these, and one attachment set with a clear index is treated faster than six separate emails.

If you filed a report on this platform, the app can export your own report as a PDF, which is a convenient way to hand over the identifiers and the timeline in one document. How many exports you get depends on your plan; the free tier includes one a month.

05Describe it in the order it happened

A short chronology beats a narrative. How they reached you, what they claimed, what they asked for, what you sent, when you realised. Dates against each line.

Leave out what you have inferred about who they were. What is being assessed is a sequence of payments and the circumstances around them, and speculation makes that harder to read rather than more compelling.

06Keep your own file

• The reference number for the report, taken at the time.
• Who you spoke to, and when.
• What you were told would happen next, and by when.
• A copy of everything you sent, in the state you sent it.

If a claim is declined and you want it looked at again, this file is what that request is built from. Assembling it afterwards, from memory, is considerably harder than keeping it as you go.