Guide
If you have already transferred funds
What is worth doing first, who can actually act, and what cannot be done for you.
Warning
If someone contacts you offering to recover your money for a fee, they are running the second half of the same scam. No regulator, bank, or lawyer charges an advance fee to release funds, and no one can promise a recovery. Treat every such offer, letter, and phone call as an attack.
Stop paying, today
If you are asked for another payment to release your balance — a tax, fee, or verification deposit — that is not a withdrawal condition. It is the next step in the loss.
Write it down now
Record dates, amounts, the receiving account, the names people used, and the website address. Every complaint form will ask for these, and you cannot recover them later.
Inform your bank or card issuer
The decision on refunds and chargebacks is theirs, not ours or the broker's. Time limits are set by the card scheme and run from the payment, so this step requires speed above all.
Contact the regulator that licensed the broker
If the broker is licensed, the issuing authority is the one that can take action. Its name and number are on our card for that firm; send the complaint to that authority, not to your local one.
Make a local report
A local report rarely returns money, but it is what puts a firm on a warning list — which is how the next person finds out before paying.
Where you can ask for the money back
Keep these
- □every email and chat log with the firm, exported, not screenshotted
- □the payment receipts, with the card, account or wallet used
- □screenshots of the account page showing the balance and any blocked withdrawal
- □the licence number the site displayed when you signed up