The Fraud Evidence Checklist: What to Save Before You Report Anything

When you have been defrauded, the instinct is to delete everything in shame or panic. Resist it. The evidence you keep is the only thing that can trace and recover your money.

Money trail (most important)

• Bank statements showing every payment to the scammer.
• Card receipts and any reference numbers.
• Crypto: transaction hashes (TXIDs), destination wallet addresses, and screenshots of the transfer.
• Wire-transfer references (SWIFT/MT103, sort code, IBAN).

Communication trail

• Full chat history - dating apps, WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, email. Do not delete the account, export it.
• The scammer's profile names, phone numbers and usernames.
• Any "investment platform" URLs and screenshots of the dashboard.
• Emails with invoices, "tax" demands or withdrawal refusals.

Identity trail

• Names, company names and registration numbers they used.
• Bank account names the money was sent to.
• Any video or voice notes (useful as deepfake evidence).

Timeline

Write a simple dated log: first contact, each payment, the first refusal to let you withdraw. Investigators and courts think in timelines.

What NOT to do

• Do not confront the scammer or threaten them - they vanish and destroy evidence.
• Do not pay another "fee" to "release" funds.
• Do not hire an "ethical hacker" who DMs you promising recovery. That is the second scam.

Next step

Preserving evidence is step one; acting on it fast is step two. Our free recovery checklist is a one-page version of this you can work through, and a confidential assessment tells you what your evidence can realistically achieve.