What to Do If You Think You’ve Been Scammed

Being scammed sucks. And knowing what to do when it happens can be confusing and difficult. Here are the steps you should take.

Knowing If You’ve Been Scammed

Firstly, let’s be straight on what is and isn’t a scam. If you have met the person and given them gifts or money, then they ran away, that isn’t a scam. It’s an affair gone bad. She could have been a gold-digger, but she wasn’t a scammer. However, if you sent expensive gifts and money to someone you haven’t met, and she disappears, then chances are she is a scammer. And you need to know what to do.

Reporting the Scammer

It’s already too late to take precautions, because you’ve already been scammed. So, you need to take what steps you can to try and recover your cash.

• Take any proof that you have, including letters, pictures of the lady and anything else she sent you, Western Union receipts, wire transfers, and so-forth and gather it all together.
• Take your proof and go to your local or national police (in USA the FBI deals with this; in Canada, the RCMP, elsewhere your local police can help). There you will file a report. If you have sent copies of any of your ID you need to make the law enforcement agencies aware of this in case of identity fraud attempts!
• Report it to the embassy of your country in her location (Russia, Ukraine, wherever). Make sure they get all the same details that your police did. This includes any information you sent her, especially passports or ID!
• Report it to any of the scamming sites you see on the internet, such as antiscam.net or agencyscams.com, as well as any federal or local anti-scam agencies, such as RECOL: https://www.recol.ca/intro.aspx in Canada and The National Fraud Information Center: http://www.fraud.org/ in the USA.
• Contact Western Union or Money Gram and request information on where the money was picked up (it most likely isn’t where you think!) Also ask the representative what you can do to place the receiver’s name on a warning list.
• You can get full information and help on filing from http://russian-detective.com/scams/scammed.htm
• Be aware so it doesn’t happen again.

If you do these, then you have a chance, however slim, of recovering your money. If you don’t follow these steps, then you have no chance of recovering your money, and the scammer is free to try and scam other people.