Helping someone else

Two questions decide what you should do. Answer them in your head and take the matching route.

The two questions

First: has money moved, and how long ago? Minutes and hours are a different situation from weeks.

Second: can you act for them? Whether you can call their bank with them, or reach their accounts, changes what is worth trying.

If it is happening now, or money moved today

Go to the emergency steps and work through them with them if you can. Speed matters more than the conversation. The conversation can happen afterwards.

If the money went a while ago

The priority changes. Stopping the payment is unlikely now, so the work is preventing the next one: the same person is usually approached again, often by someone claiming they can recover the money.

Check whether anyone has contacted them offering to get it back. That is a second scam aimed at people who have already lost once, and it is common.

If they will not accept it

Do not lead with the word scam. Someone who has been told they are being scammed and has decided otherwise will defend that position, and arguing makes them defend it harder. There is a separate page for this.

Have this emailed to you

Send yourself this page so you can forward it, or read it later when you are not standing in a shop.

Email it to myself

Check the message together.

Ask them to send you the message, then paste it into Flggd. The reasons help when you explain it to them.

Check a message free

Or get the Flggd app

For banks, credit unions and fintechs: thirty minutes with the Flggd team.

Every example on this page is a real scam, recreated by Flggd
How we decide what is a scam