Banks, card issuers, exchanges, and agencies each want a slightly different thing, but all of them are reading quickly and deciding whether a case is actionable. Cases that succeed tend to be the ones assembled clearly, not the ones that were most severe. The work below takes a couple of hours and materially improves every route available to you.

Start with the timeline

Write a plain chronological list: date, what happened, and any amount. Begin at first contact, not first payment, because the grooming period frequently establishes that you were targeted rather than merely mistaken. Keep it factual and free of interpretation. One page is usually enough, and it will be reused in every submission you make.

Financial records

  • Bank statements covering every payment, with the relevant lines clearly marked.
  • Card transaction records, including the merchant descriptor exactly as it appears.
  • Crypto transaction hashes and the full destination addresses, copied rather than screenshotted where possible.
  • Any invoice, receipt, or payment instruction you were sent, including fee demands.

Communications

Export conversations rather than screenshotting them where the platform allows it, since exports preserve timestamps and ordering. Where you must screenshot, capture full screens including the account name and date rather than cropping to the message. Include the earliest friendly exchanges, not only the financial ones.

The counterparty

  • Website URLs, app names, and any app-store listing.
  • Company name, registration number, and any licence number claimed — plus the result when you checked the register.
  • Names, phone numbers, and account handles used by everyone you dealt with.
  • Screenshots of the platform dashboard showing your balance and any locked withdrawal.

Your own actions

Record what you have already done: when you contacted your bank, reference numbers for any report filed, case numbers from agencies, and the outcome of any dispute. Institutions frequently ask what other steps you have taken, and having it written down prevents inconsistency between submissions.

Practical rules

  • Capture before you confront. Telling an operator you know is fraud commonly ends in an immediate account deletion.
  • Keep copies in two places, at least one outside the device involved.
  • Never edit or annotate original files. Keep originals intact and put your commentary in the timeline.
  • Use the same account of events everywhere. Inconsistency does more damage than a weak fact.

How to submit it

Lead with a short summary — what happened, total lost, payment methods, dates — then attach the timeline and supporting files. A reviewer who understands the case in thirty seconds is far more likely to progress it than one who has to reconstruct it from a folder of screenshots.