Imagine you’re a business owner and you receive an email with an invoice from one of your overseas suppliers. You transfer them a large sum of money to pay for the invoice, only to realize sometime later that the email was really from scammers impersonating your suppliers and you’re not going to receive any goods for the money you transferred.
This type of “invoice scheme” is just one of the multitude of ways online scammers try to trick unsuspecting people out of their hard-earned money. Phishing attacks, data theft, CEO fraud, romance scams, investment fraud, and Bitcoin scams are some other high-profile tactics that scammers use.
Finding out you’ve been victimized by some type of internet fraud can be devastating. Your first thought is often “I’m never getting my money back after being scammed.” But, here’s the good news: you CAN recover money from a scammer. Keep reading to find out how to get money back after being scammed online.
What NOT to do after being scammed online:
- Don’t panic — there are steps to take to get money back after a scam
- Don’t reply if the scammer continues to contact you
- Don’t make any more payments to the fraudulent parties in an attempt to recover funds
4 ways to get your money back after being scammed online
Chargebacks for card paymentsIf you made a payment to scammers via your credit or debit card, you may be able to get your money back through a chargeback. For the best chances of success, start this process right away when you realize you’ve been scammed. In fact, most card issuers provide a 120-day window for chargebacks from the time you suspect you’ve made a card payment to fraudsters.
To start the process, write a letter to your card issuer explaining all the details of the scam, including the dates and sums of all the payments you want to charge back to your card. Provide any supporting evidence you have, such as emails from/to the scammers, URLs of scam websites, and anything else that can be used as evidence for your case.
This should only take you a day or so to get together, and after that all you have to do is wait for your card company to approve the chargeback. Card issuers take an average of 30 days to review your case. This makes chargebacks one of the easiest and quickest ways to get money back from a scammer.
Another common way scammers receive funds is through direct bank transfers. If you’ve transferred money to scammers from your bank account, you might be wondering “will my bank refund me if I get scammed?” Well, as long as you notify your bank immediately, they may be able to reverse the transfer
When you realize you transferred funds from your account to a scammer’s account, inform the bank about what happened and give them the number of the account you transferred to and the exact sum of the money you transferred.
Many banks have voluntarily signed agreements to take certain steps to protect and reimburse customers when they are the victims of bank transfer scams, also known as authorized push payment scams.
If your bank decided to refund you based on the evidence, you can have the funds back in your account in as little as 0-3 business days.
