Warning
Anyone who contacts you offering to recover your money for a fee is running the second half of the same scam. No regulator, no bank and no lawyer charges an advance fee to release funds, and no one can promise a recovery. Treat every such offer, letter and phone call as an attack.
Guide
If you have already paid
What is worth doing first, who can actually act, and what nobody can do for you.
Stop paying, today
A request for one more payment to release your balance — a tax, a fee, a verification deposit — is not a condition of withdrawal. It is the next step of the loss.
Write it down while it is fresh
Dates, amounts, the account you paid into, the names people used, the address of the site. This is what every complaint form will ask for, and what nobody can reconstruct for you later.
Tell the bank or card issuer that took the payment
They decide on refunds and chargebacks, not us and not the broker. Time limits are set by the card scheme and run from the payment, so this is the step that rewards speed above all others.
Complain to the regulator that issued the licence
If the broker holds a licence, the authority that issued it is the one that can act on it. Its name and number are on our card for that firm; the complaint goes to that authority, not to the one in your own country.
Report it locally as well
A local report rarely returns money, but it is what puts a firm on a warning list — which is how the next person finds out before paying.
Routes
Keep these
- □every email and chat log with the firm, exported, not screenshotted
- □the payment receipts, with the card, account or wallet used
- □screenshots of the account page showing the balance and any blocked withdrawal
- □the licence number the site displayed when you signed up
Sources:www.cysec.gov.cyregisters.esma.europa.euregisters.esma.europa.eubappebti.go.idregisters.esma.europa.euafsa.aifc.kzwww.gov.kzregisters.esma.europa.euwww.knf.gov.plregisters.esma.europa.eufsaseychelles.scwww.vfsc.vuwww.fsca.co.za