Scam alert: asked to pay to withdraw your money? Fake taxes, fees and insurance
In this article
In short: if an investment platform asks you for new money before it lets you withdraw, do not pay. It makes no difference whether they call it a tax, a fee, insurance or verification. A real intermediary does not ask you for new money to release your balance: if there is a charge, it deducts it. If they insist that you send more money, it is because that balance does not exist. Paying releases nothing: it only opens the next request.
The sentence that exposes it
You don’t need to ask your “advisor”. Just think about this sentence:
“Deduct it from my balance and send me the rest.”
If you have 40,000 euros in the account and they tell you there is a 4,000 fee, whoever really holds your money can subtract it and send you 36,000. Taxes are different: you declare them yourself to your country’s tax authority. Whoever does not hold your money will give you a reason why that is not possible: that the law forbids it, that it is another department, that the payment has to come from outside.
None of those reasons is true. The number on your dashboard was written by the scam itself, and there is no money behind it. And if they said yes, don’t believe that either: a deduction on a screen is not money in your bank.
The most common excuses
The names change, but they all end the same way: you have to pay before you get paid.
| What they tell you | Why it makes no sense |
|---|---|
| “You have to pay tax on the profits” | Taxes are declared to your country’s tax authority. None of them collects through an account or a cryptocurrency wallet given to you by an advisor. |
| “It is a withdrawal fee” | A real fee is in the terms from the start and is deducted from the amount. |
| “You need insurance for the transfer” | There is no compulsory insurance for receiving a transfer. |
| “The regulator has frozen the account” | A regulator does not ask you for money to unblock anything. Australia’s ASIC makes this clear in its warnings: it never asks anyone to pay taxes to withdraw funds. |
| “It is an anti-money-laundering check: prove the money is yours” | You prove it with documents, not with another payment. |
| “You have to upgrade your account level” | It is the same old sales pitch under another name. |
| “There is a lack of liquidity or a verification deposit is needed” | The platform is asking you for the money it says it has. |
| “You typed a detail wrong and the payment has to be repeated” | A mistake does not oblige you to pay again. |
They also tend to set a deadline: “if you don’t pay within 48 hours you lose everything”. That rush is part of the deception. It is there so that you don’t talk to anyone.
Why it works
It is not that people who pay are naive. The trap is well designed:
- You have already seen profits. For weeks you have watched the balance grow. Sometimes they have even let you withdraw a small amount so that you trust them.
- The sum looks easy. Paying 4,000 to recover 40,000 seems reasonable. That is why they ask for a share of the invented balance.
- Trust is already there. The advisor has been calling you for a while, knows about your life and tells you that he is sorry too.
- If you don’t pay, you admit the loss. It is very hard to accept that it was all fake. One more payment lets you go on believing that it wasn’t.
What happens if you pay
Paying does not end the process. According to regulators and victims, after each payment another reason appears. The Washington State Department of Financial Institutions describes it as advance-fee fraud and says that people who pay receive more requests or stop getting replies.
It ends when you stop paying or run out of money. Then the platform stops answering. And soon afterwards a company that promises to recover everything usually turns up, in exchange for another payment. Spain’s CNMV calls it a “recovery room” and warns that you should never pay in advance for that service.
What to do today
- Do not pay anything more, not even “one last time”.
- Cut contact. Don’t tell them you have found out and don’t try to negotiate.
- Call your bank and tell them it is a scam. Ask about a chargeback if you paid by card and about recalling the payment if it was a transfer. The sooner, the better.
- If they made you install AnyDesk or similar, follow these steps first of all: they may still be getting into your accounts.
- Keep the evidence: screenshots of the dashboard, emails, messages, phone numbers, wallet addresses and payment receipts.
- Report it to the police and the regulator. We explain where to do it in each country.
If you have been paying for some time, also read the victim guide. If it is a relative who won’t stop, here is how to talk to them.
Could there be an exception?
A real intermediary may ask for your ID or a proof of address before paying out a withdrawal. That is normal and costs nothing. It may also charge a fee, but it is in its price list and comes out of the amount you withdraw.
Also check whether it is really authorised, by going to the regulator’s register yourself. If it does not appear there, there is no doubt left. And if it does appear, check that the website and contact details match those in the register: scams also copy authorised firms.
Where this comes from
Our contributors sign up on these websites with test data, but they do not deposit money. So we have not seen this stage first-hand: this article is based on regulator warnings and on what victims report. What we do see is what comes before: 86 of 144 redirects ended up inside an account with a deposit button.