Start here, in this order
- Stop. Buy no further vouchers. Send no further codes, including any you have already bought and not yet passed on. Do not answer the callback. Do not send a message explaining that you know. There is no advantage in warning them and no version of this where the next payment closes the matter.
- Find the ticket and the till receipt. You need the serial number, the code, the amount, the date, the time and the name of the shop. Photograph both sides of the ticket before anything else happens to it.
- Contact the voucher issuer immediately. Use the number or the website printed on the ticket, or the brand's own site typed into the browser — never a number given to you by the person who asked for the code. Say it plainly: this code was obtained from me by fraud, please block it and tell me the balance. Give the serial number and the time it was disclosed. Ask for a reference for whatever you are told.
- If you paid by card, telephone your bank now. Use the number on the back of the card. Tell them what happened, ask them to review the account, and ask for a new card if your details were on screen or spoken aloud.
- Write the timeline down while it is fresh. Times, amounts, what was said, what you were told to say. Memory for this degrades quickly and every report you make afterwards will ask for it.
- Report it, as set out below.
What the issuer can and cannot do
A code that has not been spent can sometimes be blocked. A partly spent one occasionally holds a residual balance that can be protected. Both are worth asking about within minutes rather than hours.
Be prepared for the usual answer. The standard pattern is that a code handed to a fraudster is drained almost at once, frequently before the call you were on has ended. That is precisely why they stay on the line, why they want the digits read aloud rather than posted, and why they ask for a photograph of the ticket the moment you leave the shop.
Issuers are also under no general obligation to refund a code that the holder disclosed voluntarily. These products are designed so that whoever holds the code owns the value, which is the same property that makes them useful to criminals. Ask anyway, ask politely, and ask for the answer in writing.
If the issuer tells you the balance is untouched, spend it yourself today on something ordinary. A live code sitting in a drawer is a code that can still be taken.
What your bank can and cannot do
Where you bought the voucher with a card, the transaction did what it said: a shop sold you a voucher and gave it to you. That makes a chargeback difficult, and it is better to know this before you ask than after.
Call regardless. The reason is not the refund. It is that the people involved may now have your card details, may have watched your screen, or may have had control of the computer you bank on. The bank can watch the account, block the card and flag the pattern. If someone had remote access to your machine at any point, say so explicitly — it changes what they do next.
Evidence worth keeping
- The voucher ticket itself, even after the balance reads zero.
- The till receipt and the card statement line.
- Screenshots of the entire conversation, taken before you block anyone. Blocking frequently removes your access to the thread. Screenshot first, block second.
- Telephone numbers, email addresses, profile names, links, wallet addresses, and the exact wording of the demand.
- Your written timeline, with the total.
Where to report it
- The police, or your country's fraud reporting service. Most countries run one, usually through the police or a financial regulator. A crime or report reference is often needed by banks, insurers and employers later.
- The platform where contact began — the dating app, the job board, the marketplace, the messaging service, the social network. They can close accounts and preserve records that you cannot.
- The voucher issuer, if you have not already.
- The retailer, particularly where several vouchers were bought at one shop. Larger chains have loss prevention teams who track this.
Reporting rarely brings money back, and it is better to say so than to imply otherwise. What it does is aggregate. One report is a strange afternoon; a run of them naming the same channel is something a regulator or a police unit can act against.
The second scam arrives next
Days or weeks later, someone will offer to get your money back. Asset recovery firms with impressive websites. Blockchain investigators. Lawyers. A caller claiming to be from a police cybercrime unit. Sometimes a person presenting themselves as another victim who was made whole. They will ask for a fee, or your identity documents, or remote access so they can "trace" the funds.
Hold these four lines:
- No genuine police force or government agency charges a fee to recover stolen money.
- No genuine recovery service asks to be paid in prepaid vouchers or cryptocurrency.
- No genuine recovery service contacts you first.
- Anyone who already knows the exact amount you lost has either read your report or bought your details.
It is also worth understanding what a voucher exchange can and cannot do, since people sometimes arrive at one hoping for a reversal. An exchange buys a code from the person lawfully holding it, verifies it with the issuer before paying anything, and establishes who that person is before any money moves. It has no mechanism for pulling value back out of a code that has already been spent, and nobody else has one either. Any service offering that is selling you the second loss.
If you were asked to handle someone else's money
Some versions of this do not take money from you at all. You receive funds, or you receive voucher codes, and you are asked to pass value on. The unsolicited job offer and the long romance both end here. That is handling the proceeds of crime, and being deceived only helps you if you come forward yourself. Stop, keep every record, and tell your bank and the police before anyone tells them about you.
Afterwards
Tell one person you trust. Shame is load-bearing in every one of these frauds: the isolation is engineered, the coached lie to the cashier exists to make you complicit, and the people who lose the most are almost always the ones who kept going alone. There is nothing foolish about being defrauded by professionals who run this script for a living.
If this happened to an older relative, resist the urge to make them account for it. Take the practical steps, make the calls with them, and leave the interrogation out. People who are made to feel stupid stop telling anyone, and that is what the next caller depends on.
Three last pieces of housekeeping. If you sent photographs of identity documents, treat that as an identity theft risk and watch for accounts opened in your name. If you reused a password anywhere in the conversation, change it everywhere. Expect further approaches, on the same number and by email, and understand why: your details now sit on a list that gets sold. Knowing how the pattern works is the part that stays useful long after the money is gone.