Advance-fee fraud: paying to receive money

• The first fee is small and the reward is large, so the risk seems worth taking.
• Each later fee is presented as the last.
• Money already paid weighs heavily: stopping means accepting it is lost.
• It often arrives when money is needed, as an offer of a loan to someone who has been refused elsewhere.

• Any payment required in order to receive money.
• A prize in a draw you did not enter, a legacy from someone you did not know, a loan nobody assessed.
• Fees to be paid by transfer to a person, in crypto-assets, or with gift-card codes.
• Official-looking documents with errors, generic greetings and free e-mail addresses.
• Requests for secrecy, and pressure of time.

One sign alone proves nothing, and a fraud may show none of them at first. The Check this offer list puts fourteen such questions side by side.

• If copies of identity documents or bank details were sent as part of the “application”, tell your bank, and watch for accounts or credit opened in your name.

1. 01Stop paying. Send nothing more, whatever the reason given: a tax, a fee, a deposit to “unlock” the account, a charge to recover what was lost. A further payment is the usual next step of the fraud.
2. 02Stop the conversation. There is no need to explain, argue or warn. Do not delete it, either: it is a record.
3. 03Keep records. Messages, names and numbers used, the addresses of websites, payment receipts, account and wallet details, screenshots of anything that might disappear. Note the dates.
4. 04Tell your bank or payment provider at once. Use a number you find yourself, on a card or a statement, not one from a message. Say it is fraud. Time matters, and they will say what they can and cannot do.
5. 05Report it to the authority in your country. That is usually the police or a national fraud-reporting service, and the financial regulator. A report helps others even where it does not help you.
6. 06Secure what was shared. Change passwords that were given out or reused, remove any remote-access software that was installed, and tell the provider of any account or card whose details were passed on.
7. 07Expect a second approach. People who have lost money are contacted again, by “recovery agents”, “lawyers” and “officials” who ask for a fee first. See the page on recovery-room fraud.
8. 08Tell someone you trust. These frauds are built by people who do it for a living, and they work on careful, intelligent people. Silence helps only the fraudster.

Nobody can promise that money lost to fraud will come back. Sometimes some of it does; often it does not. Anyone who guarantees a recovery, or asks to be paid first, is describing another fraud.

Regulators publish free warning lists and registers of authorised firms; this site lists several under Nice & Need: stay safe. To check an address that claims to be this site, use Verify a GIO4X link.

Do genuine lenders ever charge an upfront fee?

Some genuine credit arrangements carry fees, set out in a written agreement from an authorised lender, and rules about them differ by country. What marks the fraud is a fee demanded before anything is provided, paid by an unusual method, to a lender who cannot be found on the regulator’s register.

Why do people keep paying after the first fee?

Because each payment is small beside the sum expected and beside what has already been paid. Stopping means admitting the earlier payments are gone. The fraud is designed around that reluctance.

Is a fee to withdraw from a trading platform the same thing?

It is the same mechanism at the end of a different fraud. A balance that can be withdrawn only by sending in more money is an advance-fee demand, whatever the fee is called.