Home / Report a scam
You’ve been scammed. Here’s exactly what to do.
Start at step one and work down. Don’t stop to work out how it happened, and don’t wait until you’ve told your parents. The first hour is worth more than the next three days.
Call the cyber crime helpline: 1930
Free, national, and the fastest route to getting a transfer flagged before the money moves on.
The first hour
Do these four things now
In this order. Each one takes a few minutes, and the sooner they happen the better your chances.
01
Stop the money
Call your bank on the number printed on your card or listed inside your banking app — never a number someone sent you. Report the transaction as fraudulent and ask them to raise a dispute and freeze the beneficiary account. If your card was used, block it in the app immediately.
02
Call 1930
The national cyber crime helpline. Tell them what happened, how much, and when. They can act on a transfer while it is still in the banking system, which is why this comes before anything else.
03
Save everything before it disappears
Screenshot the whole conversation, the sender’s number or profile, the UPI ID, the payment confirmation and the transaction reference. Do not delete the chat, do not block the account yet, and do not clear your call log.
04
File the complaint
Go to cybercrime.gov.in and file a formal complaint. You will get an acknowledgement number — save a screenshot of it. This is the record that lets your bank and the police act on the case.
Do not do these
Do not send more money to “release” a refund. Do not pay anyone who contacts you afterwards offering to recover your funds — recovery scams target people who have already been scammed, and they work because you are desperate. Do not delete the messages. Do not hand your phone or screen to anyone remotely.
Before you file
What to have ready
Gathering this first makes the complaint take fifteen minutes instead of an hour, and makes it far more useful to the people acting on it.
Your own name, address, mobile number and email
The date and time the fraud happened, as precisely as you can
The amount lost, and the account or card it left from
The transaction reference or UTR number for every transfer — the single most useful item
The scammer’s phone number, UPI ID, bank account number, email, website or social media handle
Screenshots of the messages, the payment confirmation and any documents they sent you
Your bank statement showing the transaction
A short written summary of what happened, in order
Opens the official National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal in a new tab. We are not affiliated with it.
Other numbers
For situations beyond cyber fraud
1930 is the number for financial cyber fraud. These two cover different kinds of emergencies.
112 — Police emergency
India’s general emergency number. Use this for immediate physical danger, or to verify a call claiming to be from the police.
181 — Women’s helpline
India’s national helpline for women, free and available for safety, harassment and support.
In person
Your local police and cyber cell
Filing online is the fastest route, but it does not replace a police complaint for larger amounts. You can do both, and for anything substantial you should.
Filing an FIR
Go to your nearest police station, or the cyber crime cell if your city has one, with printouts of everything in the list above. Ask for a First Information Report to be registered and ask for a copy with the FIR number on it. Take a parent or an adult you trust with you if you can — not because you need permission, but because it makes the visit easier.
If a station refuses to register it
You can send a written complaint to the Superintendent of Police for your district, and you can escalate to the State Police Complaints Authority. Keep a copy of everything you submit, along with the acknowledgement number from your online complaint. In practice, quoting your cybercrime.gov.in acknowledgement number resolves most of these situations.
If you are away from home
You can file at any police station regardless of where the crime happened — this is a Zero FIR, and it gets transferred to the correct jurisdiction. You do not need to travel back to your home city to report it.
Afterwards
What actually happens next
Being realistic about this is more useful than being encouraging about it.
01
Your complaint gets a number, not an instant answer
You will receive an acknowledgement immediately. An actual update can take weeks. Check the status through the portal rather than waiting to be contacted.
02
Money is sometimes recovered, often not
Recovery depends almost entirely on speed — whether the receiving account can be frozen before the funds are withdrawn or moved on. Reporting within the first hour genuinely changes the odds. Reporting a week later rarely does.
03
You may be asked for more information
Keep your evidence organised in one folder on your phone or laptop. Do not delete anything, even months later.
04
Expect the recovery scam
Some people are contacted afterwards by someone claiming they can get the money back for a fee, often quoting real details from the original fraud. It is the same network, or one that bought the data. No genuine agency charges you to recover your own money.
One more thing
You’re not stupid, and you’re not alone
The single most common thing people say after being scammed is that they should have known better. Almost none of them should have. These operations are run full-time by people with scripts refined across thousands of attempts, and they are built specifically to work on someone who is busy, hopeful, frightened or in a hurry.
Engineers get caught. Bankers get caught. People who have read articles exactly like this one get caught. What separates outcomes is not intelligence — it is how fast someone reports it, and whether shame kept them quiet for three days first.
Tell your parents today. Tell your friends what happened, in detail. The people who hear a first-hand account from someone they know are the ones who spot it next time.
Help the next person
If you tell us what happened, we can write it up properly and warn the students it goes to next. We never publish names or personal details.