Tell your bank: getting money back after a romance scam

The uncomfortable truth, then the useful one

The uncomfortable truth: recovery depends almost entirely on how you paid, and some payment methods were chosen by the scammer precisely because they cannot be pulled back. The useful one: more money is recovered from romance fraud today than at any point in the last decade, because rules changed, banks built scam teams, and speed plus the right words genuinely move outcomes. This page is those words, payment method by payment method.

Bank transfer

This is the scammer's favourite and, in some countries, now the most recoverable.

In the UK, a scam transfer is called authorised push payment fraud, and saying exactly that phrase to your bank routes you to the right team. Under rules in force since October 2024, UK banks must reimburse most APP fraud victims, up to a cap of £85,000 per claim, and in the regime's first year around 88% of in-scope losses were paid back. You are not asking for a favour. You are making a claim under rules written for exactly this.

Everywhere else, the mechanics are recall-based: your bank contacts the receiving bank to freeze and return what remains. That is why hours matter; mule accounts are emptied fast. Ireland is the sharpest case, where recall before the money moves on is essentially the whole game. Call, give the exact payment details, ask for the fraud team, and get a case reference.

Two things strengthen every claim: a crime reference number from your national reporting service, and the honest, complete story. Do not edit out that you authorised the payments; the rules exist because victims authorise payments under deception, and inconsistencies damage claims far more than the truth does.

Card payments

Debit and credit card payments can be disputed through chargeback, the card schemes' own reversal process, and the typical window is around 120 days from the payment, sometimes longer from when you discovered the deception. Ask your card issuer to raise a chargeback for each payment and give them the full picture.

UK credit card users have a second, stronger route: Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act makes the card company jointly liable for purchases between £100 and £30,000 where there has been misrepresentation, which a fake relationship engineered to extract money very much is. Ask about both routes; they are not the same thing.

Cryptocurrency

Here is the honest version. Crypto payments have no chargeback, no recall and no issuer, which is exactly why investment scams insist on them. Direct recovery is rare. What is not pointless: report every wallet address to your national fraud service, because the blockchain is permanently traceable, exchanges freeze flagged funds, and law enforcement seizures do happen at network scale, occasionally producing compensation years later. Tell your bank too if you bought the crypto by card or transfer; the purchase leg is sometimes disputable even when the crypto leg is gone.

And hold the line on one rule: anyone who contacts you offering to trace and recover your crypto for an upfront fee is the second scam. Recovery fraud is an industry built entirely on lists of people in your exact position. Legitimate recovery, where it happens, comes through law enforcement and costs nothing.

Gift cards, vouchers and wire services

Gift cards are the hardest category, chosen for that reason. Your one move is speed: contact the card issuer (Apple, Amazon, Google, whoever) with the card numbers and receipts, because unspent balances can sometimes be frozen. Wire services like Western Union and MoneyGram can stop a transfer that has not yet been collected, so call them immediately, then report as normal. Treat anything already collected or spent as a matter for the police report rather than recovery, and put your remaining energy where it can still work.

If the bank says no

A refusal is not the end in most territories. In the UK, complain formally to the bank first, then escalate to the Financial Ombudsman Service, free, independent, and with a strong record on fraud cases where banks missed warning signs. Ireland has the FSPO, Australia has AFCA, and most of our territories run an equivalent scheme; your bank must tell you the route when it issues a final response. Persistence is not rudeness here. It is procedure.

The money rule, applied backwards

If someone you have never met in person asks you for money, it is a scam. Every time. You know that now, which is painful and also useful, because the same rule filters everything that happens next: every "agent", "lawyer" and "recovery specialist" who appears from nowhere asking for a fee to fix this is the rule triggering again. Nothing legitimate about getting your money back starts with you sending more.