Before anything else
- Stop sending funds, including any amount described as the last one needed.
- Do not tell the other person you suspect fraud yet — accounts and chat histories are often deleted immediately afterwards.
- Save everything first: the profile, the chat history in full, any photos or documents sent to you, the platform used, and every payment.
- Then stop contact.
What to save, specifically
- Screenshots showing dates, usernames and URLs, not cropped images of text alone.
- The full chat export where the app allows it, rather than selected messages.
- Every transaction hash and receiving address, from your wallet or exchange withdrawal history.
- Bank or card statements showing the payments that funded the purchases.
- The name of any trading platform or app you were asked to install.
Who to tell
- Your bank, the same day, if funds left a UK account or card.
- The exchange you bought from, with the receiving addresses and hashes.
- Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or at actionfraud.police.uk, and keep the reference.
- The dating app or platform where you were approached, so the profile can be removed.
- Someone you trust. This is not a small point — isolation is part of how these approaches work, and the pressure to keep paying usually continues.
What a trace typically shows
In these cases the receiving address is rarely a personal wallet. Funds are usually forwarded quickly into a consolidation wallet handling deposits from many people, and then onward toward an exchange deposit address or a bridge.
That pattern is worth documenting, because it shows the approach was operated rather than personal, and because a deposit address at a regulated service is the one point where a report can lead to action.
Expect a second approach
After a loss of this kind, people are frequently contacted by someone offering to retrieve the funds — often within weeks, sometimes referencing details that appear to confirm they know the case. Assume the first contact is connected to the second.
No legitimate firm asks for your seed phrase or private keys, requests remote access to your device, or takes payment in cryptocurrency to unlock funds. Scope and price should be written down before anything is paid.
If you are looking at your own case rather than reading generally, our cryptocurrency investigation service explains how a case is scoped and worked, the asset tracing hub covers the network-specific work, and our overview of cryptocurrency scam recovery in the UK sets out what is realistic. Asset pages: USDT tracing, Bitcoin tracing and Ethereum tracing. You can also contact the investigations team directly.
Common questions
- Will the police take this seriously?
- Report it regardless. Action Fraud collects reports centrally and assesses them for viable lines of enquiry; a report with hashes, addresses and a clear timeline is considerably easier to act on than a narrative alone.
- Can the funds be recovered?
- Sometimes value is retrieved where funds reach a regulated service quickly and a legal route exists, and often it is not. No one can tell you the outcome in advance, and anyone who does should be treated with suspicion.
- Is it worth tracing a smaller loss?
- Ask us and we will tell you honestly at the free assessment. Where the cost of the work is out of proportion to the loss, we say so rather than taking the case.
Have a case you want reviewed?
We scope at intake and tell you honestly whether the onchain data supports a traceable case.
Key terms in this guide
Plain-English definitions from the Wallsec glossary.