This page is written for clients, former clients, and family members helping someone else. It covers what a card dispute, a bank transfer recall, and a platform complaint each require, which records matter, and how the route changes depending on how the money left the account.
These notes exist because the same few misunderstandings come up again and again when people write to us after dealing with a fraudulent broker. Read them before you decide what to do next, and before you describe your case to a bank, a card issuer, or anyone else.
Shield publishes explanatory material about investment fraud and payment disputes. We do not hold client funds, we do not file claims on your behalf, and we cannot freeze an account or force a platform to return money. Nothing on this site should be read as a promise of recovery. If a page or a message claims otherwise while using our name, treat it as fraudulent.
The term is often stretched to cover every kind of dispute, but a chargeback specifically applies to a payment made with a debit or credit card, raised through the card issuer under the relevant scheme rules. A bank transfer, a wire, or a crypto payment does not follow the same route. Those depend on a recall request, the receiving institution's cooperation, or in many cases nothing at all. The payment method determines which procedure is even available to you.
Whether a dispute can proceed depends on the date of the transaction, the reason code that fits the circumstances, the evidence you can produce, and the issuer's own assessment. Two people with similar stories can get different outcomes. We describe how the process generally works, but we cannot tell you in advance whether your specific case qualifies.
Card dispute windows are counted from the payment date, not from the day you realised something was wrong. If you spent months waiting for a withdrawal that never arrived, part of that window may already be gone. This is one of the reasons we suggest gathering documents early rather than after a platform goes silent.
Useful material usually includes bank or card statements showing the payments, the platform's terms and any bonus conditions, chat and email threads with account managers, screenshots of deposit and withdrawal screens, and records of any fee requests made after you tried to withdraw. Keep originals. Exported PDFs and unedited screenshots carry more weight than retyped summaries.
People who have already lost money are frequently approached a second time by outfits promising to retrieve it for an upfront payment. This is a known follow-up pattern. A legitimate process does not begin with a fee paid to a stranger, and no one can guarantee an outcome before the facts are reviewed. Be cautious with anyone who contacts you first.
Depending on your country, the appropriate routes may include your card issuer's dispute team, your bank's fraud department, the national financial regulator, or the police. Reporting to a regulator does not recover funds by itself, but it creates a record. If you are unsure which body applies to your situation, our contact page lists how to reach us with a question, and the guide center covers the practical steps in more detail.
If you have already lost money to a broker platform, the first useful thing is not a phone number. It is knowing what the payment route was, what the platform asked you to do next, and which of those details a bank or card issuer will actually look at. The three pieces below cover the parts clients ask about most often.
A walkthrough of the small, deliberate steps a fraudulent broker takes in the first two weeks to make a stranger feel safe, and the point where the tone usually changes.
Read the breakdown
The pattern behind unlock fees, tax prepayments, and liquidity top-ups that appear right after a withdrawal request, plus the chat logs and receipts worth keeping.
See the fee pattern
Card chargebacks, transfer recalls, and internal bank complaints do not share the same deadlines or the same evidence requirements. Here is how to tell which one fits your case.
Compare the routesThese are informational write-ups. They describe how the processes generally work and what records tend to matter, not what outcome any individual case will have.