Can you recover money after payment fraud?

Speed dominates every other factor. Banks can attempt SWIFT recalls while funds sit in the first mule account; once the money is layered onward — typically within days — recovery odds collapse. File the IC3 complaint immediately with full wire details: the FBI’s Financial Fraud Kill Chain process exists precisely for rapid freezing of large international transfers, and it is time-sensitive. In parallel, notify your insurer (many crime policies have prompt-notice clauses), engage counsel, and lock the compromised process: assume the attacker still reads the mailbox that started it.

Post-incident forensics should answer one question: which seam did the fraud pass through — the mailbox, the vendor record, the approval chain, or all three? Then close it structurally. Most victims tighten manual procedures, which decay again within quarters. The durable fix is continuous verification across the payment flow, which is where Trustmi sits: vendor identity validation, bank-detail change monitoring, and anomaly detection that stops the next attempt before execution rather than after discovery.