Online Money Requests: How to Check Before You Send
A step-by-step guide to checking a money request — family emergency and fee-to-release patterns, out-of-band verification, irreversible payment methods, and what to do first if you have already paid.
Almost every money-request scam depends on one thing: that you act before you check. The story is built to make a pause feel unkind or expensive. This guide covers the four shapes these requests take, how to verify one in two minutes, and what to do in what order if money has already gone.
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| Before you start | Short answer |
|---|---|
| What is the one rule that covers most cases? | Verify on a channel they did not choose. Call a number you already had, not one from the message. |
| How long should verifying take? | About two minutes. Any real emergency survives two minutes. |
| What if I have already sent money? | Tell your bank immediately, then report it. Speed is the only thing that improves the odds of a freeze. |
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Step 1 — Recognise the four shapes
The cover story changes constantly. The underlying structures do not, and there are only four of them.
How it runs: a message from a relative’s account, or from a new number claiming to be them, describing an accident, an arrest or a hospital. The phone is broken, so please do not call — just send. The tell: the story always includes a reason you cannot use voice. That instruction is the scam, because a thirty-second call ends it.
How it runs: a hacked or cloned account of someone you know asks for a small transfer, promising to return it tomorrow. The amount is deliberately modest. The tell: the request arrives by text only, from an account that has never asked before, and the tone is slightly off.
How it runs: a parcel is held at customs, a prize needs a processing fee, a job needs a registration payment, a refund needs a small verification transfer. The tell: you are asked to pay in order to receive. Legitimate refunds, deliveries and employers do not work that way.
How it runs: an appeal for a medical case or a disaster, forwarded into a group, with a personal payment handle rather than an organisation. The tell: the money goes to an individual account, and the appeal cannot be found anywhere outside the message.
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Step 2 — Verify on a channel they did not choose
This is the whole defence, and it takes two minutes. The scam controls the channel it contacted you on. It cannot control a channel you pick yourself.
- Call the number you already have saved. Not the number that messaged you, and not a number inside the message. If the account is cloned, the real person answers and knows nothing about it.
- Ask something only they would know. Not a birthday or a school name, which can be found. Something small and shared — where you last met, what you talked about.
- For a company, look the number up independently. Use the number printed on your card, your bill, or the official app — never the one you were given.
- If you cannot reach them, wait. Waiting has never made a genuine emergency worse. It has ended a great many fake ones.
Step 3 — Read the payment details before the story
The account you are being asked to pay usually gives the game away faster than the narrative does.
| Check | What should make you stop |
|---|---|
| Account holder name | It does not match the person asking, or it is a business name you do not recognise. |
| Who is being paid | A third party — "send it to my friend, my account is blocked". Real emergencies rarely need an intermediary. |
| How new the handle is | A payment handle or account created recently, for a person who claims a long history. |
| The amount | Round, specific and just inside what you could send without thinking. |
| The deadline | A cut-off expressed in minutes or hours. Urgency is the pressure that stops you verifying. |
Step 4 — Know which payment methods you cannot undo
Not all transfers are equal. Some can be disputed; some are gone the moment they leave. Fraudsters steer towards the second kind, and the method being pushed is itself a signal.
- Gift card codes are final. Reading a code aloud is the same as handing over cash. No legitimate biller, court, tax office or employer is ever paid this way.
- Cryptocurrency transfers are final. There is no reversal mechanism and usually no recoverable identity behind the wallet.
- Instant bank and UPI-style transfers clear immediately, and recovery depends on the receiving account being frozen before the money moves on — which is why reporting speed matters so much.
- Card payments have the most protection, because a chargeback process exists. This is exactly why you will be pushed away from them.
Step 5 — If money has already gone, act in this order
The first hour matters more than anything else you will do. Work down this list without stopping to feel foolish about it — these are built by people who do this full time.
- Call your bank now and say the words "I have been defrauded". Ask them to attempt a recall and to flag the receiving account. Do this before anything else.
- Report it formally. In India, the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal at cybercrime.gov.in and the 1930 helpline exist for exactly this, and reporting quickly is what gives a freeze a chance to work.
- Keep every piece of evidence. The transaction reference, the account or handle you paid, screenshots of the conversation, the phone number or profile.
- Change the password on any account involved, and turn on two-step verification if it is not already on.
- Warn the person whose identity was used. If a friend’s account was cloned, they usually have no idea, and others are being messaged at the same time.
- Tell one person you trust. Shame is what keeps most of these unreported, and unreported is what keeps them working.
Step 6 — Build in some friction before you need it
Four things, set up once, that make a rushed mistake much harder.
- Agree a family code word. One word, shared out loud, never written down. Any emergency money request has to include it.
- Lower your daily transfer limit in your banking app to something closer to what you actually use. Raising it takes a cooling-off period, which is exactly the pause you would want.
- Turn on transaction alerts so anything leaving your account is visible immediately.
- Restrict who can message and call you to your saved contacts, in whichever app you use most.
Common questions
No. Account takeover is common, and a cloned profile using the same photo and name looks identical in a notification. The account being real is not the same as the person behind it being real, which is why the out-of-band call in Step 2 is the check that matters.
Sometimes, and it depends almost entirely on speed. If the receiving account can be frozen before the money is moved onward, a recall has a chance. Hours later, much less. This is why the first call comes before anything else.
The small amount is a deliberate design choice, because it sits below the level where people check. It is also frequently a test — a first success is usually followed by a larger request.
A request for money from someone you have never met in person is the clearest signal there is, regardless of how long you have been talking or how genuine the person seems. Nothing else in this guide needs to be checked once that request has been made.
These are run as a business, with scripts refined across thousands of attempts. Being caught by a professional operation is not a failure of intelligence, and reports are what get accounts frozen and numbers blocked for everyone else.
The six steps in one place
- Know the four shapes — family emergency, friend repayment, fee to release, urgent cause.
- Verify on a channel they did not choose, using a number you already had.
- Read the payment details before you read the story.
- Notice which method is being pushed — gift cards and crypto cannot be undone.
- If money has gone: bank first, then report, then evidence, then passwords.
- Set up friction in advance — code word, lower limits, alerts, contacts-only.
