They will try you again

If money has already gone, there's one more thing you should hear now rather than later.

Someone will contact you about getting it back. Not because of bad luck. Because your name is on a list, and that list is bought and sold.

It's the single most predictable thing in fraud, and people are ashamed to talk about it, which is exactly why the second approach works so well. So let's take the surprise out of it.

What the second approach looks like

It arrives in the weeks and months after, and it's kinder than the first one. It's usually one of these:

• A recovery service that has "traced your funds" and can get them back.
• A lawyer or a law firm taking action against the people who did it.
• An investigator, sometimes claiming to be from the FBI, the FTC, or a state office.
• A cryptocurrency tracing company, if that is how the money went.
• The same people again, under a different name, who already know what happened to you because they did it.

They know details. Of course they do. They know the amount, the date, sometimes the name of the person you thought you were dealing with. That knowledge feels like proof and it's nothing of the kind.

And there's always a fee. A retainer, a filing cost, a tax, a bond, a conversion charge, a payment "just to cover the wire."

The one rule, and it has no exceptions

No legitimate agency, and no legitimate lawyer who found you, ever asks for money up front to return money you lost.

Federal employees do not take payments from victims. If a fee is mentioned by anyone who contacted you first, the conversation's over. You don't need to work out whether the rest of the story is true.

The full pattern is on the recovery scam page, if you want to see how the call is built.

What real recovery actually looks like

So you can tell the difference:

• Your bank, if you report fast. Hours, not days.
• A card dispute, if you paid by card.
• A court-ordered payment after a prosecution. It arrives by mail, often years later, usually for part of what was lost, and it never asks you for anything.
• An FTC refund, which is real and always free. Check it yourself at ftc.gov/refunds rather than taking anyone's word that you are owed one.

Every one of those is either something you start, or something that turns up in the mail. None of them calls you and asks for money first.

What to do when the second call comes

1. Hang up. You don't owe an explanation.
2. Tell one person, the same day. Shame is what the second call runs on, and saying it out loud takes most of its power away.
3. Report it, even though you reported the first one. A second report from the same person is a pattern, and patterns are what investigators work from. The steps are on I think I was scammed.

Three things worth doing this week

• Tell your bank you were targeted. Not the details, just the fact. Many banks will put a note on your account, and it gives a teller a reason to pause if somebody talks you into a withdrawal later.
• Freeze your credit at all three bureaus. Free, reversible, and it stops somebody opening an account in your name.
• Set up the checks on before it happens, especially the code word. Being targeted once means being targeted again, and that's the page that still works when you're frightened.

One more thing

Being scammed doesn't mean you were careless, and it doesn't mean your judgment is going. It means somebody who does this full time, with a script, picked your phone number out of a list.

The people who work on this professionally have all been fooled by something. The only thing that separates the people who lose money twice from the people who don't is knowing what the second call sounds like, and now you do.