Police & courts

How to report crypto theft to the police

A police report is not paperwork you file to feel better. It is the key that unlocks everything else: exchanges will not hold funds on the word of a stranger, banks will not reverse a payment without a case, and no court order exists without a case number. This is how to write a report that gets registered and passed to someone who can act, and what to do when the first officer tells you nothing can be done.

Updated 16 October 2026 · about 9 minutes to read

Why the report matters more than it feels

Victims often skip this step because they expect nothing from it. The expectation is half right — most reports do not lead to an arrest — and completely wrong about what the report is for:

• Exchanges need it. A compliance team can note your complaint, but to hold funds for more than a short administrative period most platforms want an official request or at least a registered case number. A freeze request with a case number is a different document from a freeze request without one.
• Banks need it. Recalls, chargebacks and fraud claims are decided on documents, and a police reference is the strongest one you have.
• Courts need it. Any freezing order or disclosure order against a platform starts from a documented crime.
• Patterns need it. Your address and domain may be the fifth report about the same operation. That is how cases get consolidated and how domains get taken down.
• Taxes sometimes need it. In several countries a documented theft changes your tax position for the year.

Collect this before you write

Thirty minutes of preparation decides whether an investigator can work with your report:

• The money trail in plain text: every transaction hash (TXID), every address you sent from and to, amount, asset, network, date and time with the time zone. Plain text, because an officer has to copy it.
• Explorer links for each transaction, so the facts can be verified without any special tools.
• The value in your national currency at the date of each transfer, with the rate source you used.
• Everything about the other side: usernames, phone numbers, profile links, email addresses, bank accounts or cards you paid to, the website or app, the name they used.
• Exported chats, not screenshots alone. Telegram and WhatsApp both export full histories; do it before you block anyone.
• Your own identity and ownership proof: that the sending wallet or the exchange account is yours — withdrawal history, purchase receipts, account statements.
• A one-page timeline: ten to fifteen numbered lines, each with a date, a time and one fact.

How to write it so it gets read

Investigators read hundreds of complaints. Structure beats emotion. Use this order, which is also the order of our free police report template:

• One opening paragraph with the whole case: dates, what was taken, how much in your currency, by what method, and what you are asking for.
• The timeline, numbered, facts only. No guesses about who the criminals are and no theories — write what was said, sent, clicked and transferred.
• The evidence list, numbered to match the files you attach.
• Specific requests. This is the part most reports miss and the part that creates work an officer can actually do: ask them to request account-holder data and logs from the named exchange that received the funds, to ask that platform to hold the amount while the request is processed, to request data from the phone operators and banks involved, and to request registrar and hosting data for the domain.
• Name the receiving platform if you know it. “The funds arrived at an address belonging to [exchange] on [date], transaction [hash]” converts an impossible case into a routine request to a company with a compliance department.
• Ask to be recognised as the injured party and to be notified in writing of the decision taken.
• Keep it to two or three pages. Everything else goes into the attachments.

Where to file, country by country

• Everywhere: your local police, in person or through the official online portal. Ask for the registration number and a stamped copy or an electronic receipt — that number is the thing you will quote for months.
• United States: the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov, in addition to local police. Include the wallet addresses; IC3 complaints are aggregated and used to link cases. Also consider the Commodity Futures Trading Commission or the Securities and Exchange Commission if the scheme was sold to you as an investment product, and the Federal Trade Commission for the consumer-fraud record.
• United Kingdom: Action Fraud (or Police Scotland directly in Scotland). Keep the Action Fraud reference; it is what banks and exchanges ask for.
• European Union: national police, usually with an online cybercrime form; Europol does not take reports from individuals but national units feed into it. Your national financial supervisor is the right address for complaints about a licensed platform’s conduct.
• United Arab Emirates: the local police cybercrime channel (for example the eCrime platform) and the police station of your emirate.
• Anywhere else: the national police cybercrime unit, and your country’s financial regulator if a licensed company is involved.
• In addition, always: report the receiving address and account to the exchange itself through its fraud or compliance channel — platforms act on their own risk signals as well as on official requests.

If the scammers are clearly in another country, file at home anyway. International cooperation starts from a domestic case; you cannot start it yourself.

If they refuse to take it

This happens, usually from unfamiliarity rather than bad faith. Three things work:

• Change the framing. This is not “a crypto question”, it is fraud or theft of property with a documented amount and an identified receiving company. Lead with the amount in national currency and the name of the exchange.
• Ask for the refusal in writing, with a name and a reason. Refusals rarely survive that request, and when they do, they are appealable.
• File the same report through another channel — the official online portal, registered post, or the prosecutor’s office where that exists. A dated record of submission is what matters; it starts the clock on the authority’s own deadlines.

After filing: what actually happens

An honest picture, so you can plan rather than wait:

• Weeks, not days. Requests to foreign exchanges go through formal channels and take time. Meanwhile your own freeze request can reach the platform within hours — do both. Our templates page has the letter for that.
• You will have to follow up. Politely, in writing, with your case number, every few weeks. Ask specifically whether the request to the platform has been sent; that single question moves more cases than any complaint.
• Funds are sometimes held but rarely returned quickly. A hold is an administrative step; getting the money back usually needs a decision by a court or an authority about who owns it. That is slow even when it goes well.
• A tracing report helps only where it leads somewhere. If the money ended at a regulated platform in a reachable jurisdiction, it is worth having. If it ended at an address nobody controls, it is a document, not a remedy — see the 48-hour guide for how to tell the difference early.
• You will be contacted by “recovery” services. Reports in some countries become partly public, and victim lists are traded. Anyone who promises to return your money for a payment up front is the second crime — check them with our free seven-question test and read the warning signs.