How to recover money stolen from a Skrill wallet

In today’s article, I want to share my personal experience of how I managed to get back the money that was stolen from my Skrill wallet. This year, I personally encountered such an unpleasant situation, went through all the stages, and just a week ago, everything was successfully resolved, and the stolen money was returned to my Skrill wallet.

I believe that my experience may be useful to people who find themselves in a similar situation. As I understood from the increasing reports on various forums, money theft from Skrill, or as the payment system support calls it, “unauthorized transactions” sharply increased at the beginning of this year.

I warn you that there will be a lot of text, so if you are interested in the specific algorithm of actions for my case, skip to the end of the article.

Money Theft from a Skrill Wallet

So, everything started on a quiet winter evening in early February. I logged into the email account under which I registered my Skrill account and found this selection of messages from Skrill (with a time gap between them of literally about 1 minute):

Initially, I thought it was some kind of glitch. But after logging into the payment system’s website, I discovered a very unpleasant picture:

This theft of money was quite a shock for me since I had planned to request a payout to my card. Judging by the existing picture, it seems the fraudster initially tried to link their card, but apparently something went wrong.

After that, money was transferred from another wallet to mine (by the way, I still don’t understand to this day why this was done), and then the entire amount, minus a couple of dollars, was transferred to the ***@neteller.com wallet, meaning an account in the Neteller system.

My Steps to Get the Money Back

The money was stolen, and I immediately started figuring out what to do, where to turn, who to complain to. By the time these transactions took place, about 2 hours had already passed.

Contacting Skrill About the Missing Money

The first thing I needed to do was to log the request, so I wrote a message describing my issue through the form on the page https://help.skrill.com/ru/ContactSkrill. I wrote in English, providing all the details of the fraudulent transactions: the fraudster’s card number, transaction numbers, amounts, wallet names.

The request was sent within an hour of discovering the theft, but knowing the responsiveness of support to such written requests and understanding that there might still be a chance to block these operations in real time and quickly return the money, I decided to make a phone call to support.

And here I faced an unexpected obstacle: Skrill support only works during the day. By that time, no one had been available on the listed phone numbers for a couple of hours.

By the way, it’s interesting, did the fraudster intentionally time the theft from Skrill, or was it just a coincidence that it all happened when support was unavailable?

In any case, I couldn’t log the theft over the phone right away. The next day, I tried calling again, but it turned out to be impossible: all I heard was “Please wait to be connected to an operator, all lines are busy.”

By the way, the support phone number for Russia is +7 495 249 5439, or you can call the international number (London) +44 203 308 2520 and choose which language you would like to communicate in using the tone menu. And wait, wait, wait…

If you’re calling the international number, I recommend topping up your Skype balance and calling through it, as it’s much cheaper.

And then, I don’t remember where I read it, but I found out that it’s best to call the American number +1 855 719 2087 through Skype. All you need for such a call is an internet connection and Skype, plus some basic knowledge of English.

But since this number is free, you won’t need any Skype credits for the call. Yes, as far as I understand, they do have Russian-speaking operators, although I was never switched to one.

Interestingly, when I connected, half the time the operators introduced themselves with names like Anton, Tanya, etc., but they said they didn’t understand Russian. However, this number can be called 24/7 without breaks or weekends, and you don’t have to wait long. My connection with the operator was established either immediately or within 1-2 minutes.

Anyway, I described my situation to the operator over the phone, and they identified me using the details in my profile (wallet ID, address, date of birth, last four digits of the main card), confirmed the details of the transactions that were initiated by someone else.

At the end of the conversation, the operator informed me that my wallet would be temporarily blocked from spending operations, and I should change my password, registration email, and wait for further instructions via email.

Skrill Form with Questions

After some time, I received an email from Skrill with a questionnaire containing ten questions about my situation. The questions were fairly straightforward, and some required just brief answers.

The most cumbersome questions were: asking for a description of the disputed transactions (dates, amounts, IDs); requesting antivirus logs from your computer and information about reporting to local law enforcement agencies.

The last question, judging by the forum posts, seems to confuse and stop many people from continuing the process of resolving the issue with Skrill. It confused me too, to be honest. After all, knowing our law enforcement, I started to doubt the practicality of this step. But, according to Skrill’s rules, this moment is mandatory for further investigation, otherwise, you would most likely have to say goodbye to the money.

There were all sorts of fears and dilemmas. I was afraid that they might demand my working computer or hard drive for some kind of forensic analysis and then never return it. If the amount stolen from Skrill had been 50-100 dollars, I might have stopped there. But the amount was more significant, so I decided to file a report with the police as Skrill required for their investigation.

It turned out to be not that difficult. I printed out screenshots of the pages with fraudulent transactions, the registration data page, and removed everything unnecessary, in my opinion. At the police station, I wrote a statement with the investigator, attached my screenshots, they registered it, refused to make a copy for me but allowed me to take photos of all the documents, and later gave me a case number.

In the end, I answered all the questions, attached the police documents, antivirus software logs, and sent them to the payment system.

A couple of days later, I called the 24/7 support again and asked if I had provided all the necessary information for the investigation or if there were any other questions. The support specialist confirmed that the documents had been received, the investigation was ongoing, and I just had to wait.

Also clarified another point regarding the blocking of wallet transactions. It turned out that nothing is automatically withdrawn. They asked me again about changing the email and password, and whether two-factor authentication works on my wallet. After that, I was told that everything was fine with the wallet.

Investigation Results

Then began the usual wait for the results.

Honestly, I had little confidence in a positive outcome, as I had read a lot of user posts on forums saying that if the money wasn’t returned within 1-2 days, after a while you just get a response saying that the investigation didn’t lead to a refund.

However, I decided not to just sit around, but at least occasionally remind them of my case. Every 2-3 weeks I called customer support and asked to be informed about the progress of the investigation. Each time I received polite explanations that the investigation was ongoing, the case was complicated, and I needed to wait.

By the way, while the investigation is ongoing, the request on Skrill’s website will remain active, and only when everything is finished will the request be closed. It doesn’t make sense to open new requests on the same issue, as they get closed with a duplicate status.

After more than 3 months, I found an email in my inbox first notifying me of a deposit into my wallet with the designation “AT Reimbursement Adjustments” in the payment details. The payment was exactly the amount that had been stolen from my Skrill account.

A couple of days later, I received an email from the payment system’s investigation specialist confirming that everything had been resolved in my favor and the money had been returned to my balance.

Actions to Take After Discovering Theft from Skrill

Of course, it’s hard to generalize based on just my case, but if your money has been stolen (or transferred without your knowledge) from your Skrill account, here is a small algorithm of necessary actions:

1. Contact support and describe your problem. In Russia, call +7 495 249 5439, in the UK +44 203 308 2520. These numbers are available during working hours from Monday to Friday. The best option is to call the US number +1 855 719 2087 via Skype. This number operates 24/7.
2. Don’t forget to submit a request with a description of the issue through the form https://help.skrill.com/ContactSkrill.
3. Change the password and email used to register the wallet.
4. Wait for the questionnaire form from Skrill and provide the necessary information. Keep in mind that without copies of documents confirming your visit to the local police station about the missing funds from Skrill, the payment system will likely not conduct an investigation.
5. Clarify with customer support whether Skrill’s security team has received the required information to conduct the investigation.
6. Check that your wallet is unlocked for both incoming and outgoing transactions.
7. Wait for the results of the investigation and don’t forget to periodically inquire about the progress of the investigation with customer support.

Also, I want to remind you that you can significantly increase the security of your Skrill wallet by using a token for generating keys (costs 15 euros) – help.skrill.com/Article/security/security-token/what-is-the-skrill-security-token-and-how-do-i-order-one.

If you cannot purchase the token, at least enable two-factor authentication in your account settings – help.skrill.com/Article/security/two-factor-authentication/two-factor-authentication-2fa.

This article is also available for reading in the following categories: Finance