How to report a cryptocurrency scam in the UK, step by step

Step 1 — Action Fraud (England, Wales, Northern Ireland)

Action Fraud is the national reporting centre. It does not investigate. Reports are assessed by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, which looks for viable lines of enquiry and links to other reports before deciding whether to refer a case to a police force.

Report at actionfraud.police.uk or on 0300 123 2040. Keep the crime reference number: every later step, from bank complaints to exchange requests, works better when it attaches to an open report.

Step 1 (Scotland) — Police Scotland

Action Fraud does not cover Scotland. Report to Police Scotland on 101 or through their online form. Cases proceed through the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service rather than the CPS.

Step 2 — Your bank or payment provider

• Notify in writing the same day if a card payment, Faster Payment or open banking payment funded the purchase.
• State clearly that you believe you were defrauded, and reference the payments by date and amount.
• Ask for the complaint to be logged and for a written response, and keep the acknowledgement.
• If the bank rejects your complaint, the Financial Ombudsman Service may be able to review that decision.

Step 3 — The exchange or service involved

If funds reached a deposit address at a regulated exchange, that exchange is the only party able to see what happened next. Compliance teams cannot discuss another customer's account with you, and they will not freeze funds on a member of the public's say-so — but a specific, evidenced report quoting a crime reference is recorded and can support a later law enforcement request.

Step 4 — The FCA and other regulators

• Report fake or clone firms to the Financial Conduct Authority so the warning list can be updated. The FCA does not recover funds for individuals.
• Report scam adverts and impersonation accounts to the platform hosting them, and to the Advertising Standards Authority where an advert was involved.
• Report phishing emails to report@phishing.gov.uk and scam texts by forwarding to 7726.

What to include in every report

• A dated timeline of contact and payments.
• Every transaction hash, sending address and destination address, copied as text rather than described.
• The network each transfer used, and the asset — a USDT transfer on Tron is not the same record as one on Ethereum.
• Screenshots of the platform, its URL and the account dashboard.
• The chat history, exported in full rather than as selected excerpts.

What realistically happens next

Most individual reports are not allocated to an investigator, because volume far exceeds capacity and many cases have no viable UK line of enquiry. That is a resourcing reality, not a judgement about you.

Reports still matter. They create the reference other institutions rely on, they link your case to others involving the same addresses, and they mean that if a wider operation is ever charged, you are on the record as a victim. A structured trace attached to a report is more likely to survive triage than a narrative alone.