Reporting and recovery

Reporting destinations serve different purposes, and, where applicable, contacting the financial institution and the relevant reporting system may both be useful. A financial institution may attempt a recall or assess a reimbursement claim. A reporting centre may coordinate information for a freeze. A support service may help complete forms and find appropriate referrals.

The following diagram shows where reports can go and the distinct action associated with each destination.¹⁴

flowchart TD
    A[Suspected transfer] --> B[Financial institution]
    A --> C[IC3]
    A --> D[Elder fraud hotline]
    B --> E[Recall or claim review]
    C --> F[Freeze coordination]
    D --> G[Forms and referrals]

Figure: Parallel reports support recall, freezing, claim review, and help with forms or referrals.

The FBI advises a person who discovers a fraudulent transfer to contact the financial institution immediately, request a recall and provide required documents. It also advises reporting full transaction details to IC3 regardless of the amount.¹ In 2025, the FBI Recovery Asset Team acted on a selected caseload of 3,900 Financial Fraud Kill Chain incidents involving about 1.164 billion USD in attempted theft and froze 679.0 million USD. Its reported 58% success rate applies only to that recovery caseload, not to all US fraud reports.¹

A freeze is not the same as money returned. In US fiscal year 2025, FinCEN’s selected Rapid Response Program referrals covered more than 362.6 million USD. Foreign partners froze 182.2 million USD, while 95.5 million USD of the frozen amount was returned to victims during that fiscal year.²

Reimbursement is another route. For UK APP claims reported to providers and closed from 7 October 2024 through 30 June 2025, providers reimbursed £112 million and returned 88% of claimed scam-loss value. These figures cover reported and closed Faster Payments or CHAPS claims, not every fraud incident.³

The practical response is parallel: contact the financial institution promptly about recall and claims, provide detailed transaction information to the relevant reporting system, and use a support service when help with forms or referrals is needed.

Boundary. Reporting cannot guarantee a freeze, recovery or reimbursement. No nationally representative US source cited here measures what share of ordinary consumer scam losses is recovered, and no primary source cited here supplies a recovery curve showing the effect of each elapsed hour or day. UK reimbursement has eligibility limits,⁵ while FBI and FinCEN results describe selected programs rather than all victims.¹²³