How to use TrueMoneyTalk — and what to do first
Three tools, one purpose: turn a loss into evidence you can actually hand to a bank, an exchange or an investigator. This page shows the order that works, what each tool really does, and the mistakes that cost people a second time.
Three steps, in this order
The order matters because the fastest-moving deadlines are financial, not legal. A bank dispute or a card chargeback can close in days; an investigation runs for months.
- 01 Get the receiving address. One address or one transaction ID is enough to start. You do not need a name, and no public ledger can give you one.
- 02 Run the trace. Paste the address into the Wallet Tracer. It reads the public record and builds a dated evidence file you can download.
- 03 Report it. Take that file to the Report Builder and generate the complaint, the email and the police narrative — then send them the same day.
Before anything else: if any part of the loss came from a card, a bank transfer or a payment app, contact that provider today. Those deadlines are shorter than anything else in this process, and no amount of tracing gets that time back.
Finding the address you need
Almost everyone gets stuck here, and it is easier than it looks. You are looking for a string that starts with 0x (Ethereum) or a shorter base58 string (Solana). It appears in places you probably already have open.
If you sent the money
Open your wallet's activity list and tap the outgoing transfer. The receiving address sits at the top of the detail sheet, next to the amount and the timestamp. Screenshot that screen — you will want it later as evidence.
If you were promised a balance you could not withdraw
Open the platform's deposit page and find the address it showed you for funding. That address is the one your money actually went to, and it is usually the most useful single item you can give an investigator.
If you only have a transaction ID
A transaction ID (also called a hash or txid) works just as well. Paste it into any public block explorer and the explorer will show you both the sending and the receiving address, which is exactly what the tracer needs.
If the money moved through a bank or an app
Then there is no blockchain record at all, and no tracer can help. Work from your statements instead: the receiving account name, the reference number and the exact time are your evidence, and the Report Builder is built to arrange them.
A note on what an address is not. An address is not an account holder. Public ledgers record movements between addresses, never identities. Turning an address into a person requires a subpoena, which is a power only an investigator, a lawyer with a court order, or a regulated exchange can exercise.
The Wallet Tracer
The tracer reads publicly available blockchain data and turns it into a written, dated record. It runs entirely in your browser: there is no account, no upload and no server holding your address.
Running a scan
- 01Open the Wallet Tracer page.
- 02Paste the address into the field at the top. The tracer tells you immediately if the format is invalid, so you will not waste a scan on a typo.
- 03Press Trace. A live log shows each stage as it completes, so you can see the scan is progressing rather than stalled.
- 04Read the result panel, then press Download to save the plain-text evidence report. Keep that file even if you think nothing will come of this.
What the result contains
- •Balance — what the address holds now, which is rarely what was taken from it.
- •Transaction sample — the most recent movements, with timestamps you can line up against your own records.
- •Activity window — the first and last time this address was used, which shows whether it is dormant or still active.
- •Risk signal — a 0–100 indicator built from public patterns. It is a signal to look closer, never a verdict.
- •Provenance rows — which public source produced each figure, so anyone reviewing your report can check it independently.
What the tracer can do
- Show where funds went, and through which addresses.
- Produce a dated, reproducible record of public data.
- Give a bank, an exchange or an investigator a concrete starting point.
- Separate a dormant collection address from an actively used one.
What it cannot do
- Recover funds. It is an evidence tool, not a recovery service.
- Reveal a name, an address, a phone number or a device.
- Prove who was behind an address, or prove intent.
- Freeze anything. Only an exchange or an authority can do that.
Privacy by design. Your address never leaves your browser except as a direct query to public blockchain data providers. There is no account, no tracking of what you scan, and nothing stored on this site.
The Report Builder
A trace on its own changes nothing. What moves a case forward is a short, well-ordered document that lands on the right desk. The Report Builder assembles five of them from one set of facts you enter once.
How to use it
- 01Open the Report Builder and fill in the fields once. Nothing is transmitted anywhere — the documents are generated in your browser.
- 02Be specific where it counts: dates, amounts, the exact receiving address, and the name the platform or the person used with you.
- 03Press Generate. Each document is written from your entries, so you are editing a draft rather than starting at a blank page.
- 04Use the tabs to review all five, then Copy, Download or Print each one. Send them in the order below.
Send the right document to the right place. A bank wants the transaction facts and the reference number. An exchange compliance desk wants the receiving address and the transaction ID. Police want a chronological narrative. Sending the right one first is what stops a report being filed as an information-only note.
Five documents, in the order they work
- Complaint letter — the formal written complaint, addressed and dated.
- Email — the short version for a support inbox, a bank or an exchange.
- Police report draft — a chronological narrative you can hand over or read out.
- Regulator narrative — the structured summary regulators ask for, written first person.
- Demand letter — the letter before claim, for when a named party is liable.
These are drafts, not legal advice. They are templates built to help you say what happened clearly. Have a lawyer review anything you intend to file formally, and never sign a document containing a fact you cannot support.
The guides and tutorials
Forty long-form pages, written to be read start to finish. Recovery guides work through what to do after money has gone. Prevention tutorials work through how a particular scheme operates, so it is recognisable before the next approach.
Start with a recovery guide
Bank and payment-app losses, crypto tracing, reporting to the FBI's IC3 and the FTC, and the freeze request that actually gets read.
Browse recovery guidesRead the prevention tutorials
Fake exchanges and trading apps, pig butchering, romance and job scams, wallet drainers, approval scams and the second-scam playbook.
Browse tutorialsCheck before you act
Someone promising to recover your funds is running the most common follow-up fraud there is. Read this before replying to anyone.
Read about recovery scamsThe first twenty-four hours
This is the sequence that gives you the most options later. Doing it out of order costs you the things that cannot be replaced: time, and records that are still live.
- 01Stop all contact. Do not negotiate, do not send more money to unlock a withdrawal, and do not accept help from anyone who approaches you first.
- 02Call your bank or card issuer. Report it the same day and ask explicitly what your dispute or chargeback window is.
- 03Preserve the evidence. Screenshot the conversations, the deposit page, the wallet addresses and the payment receipts before anything is deleted or the site disappears.
- 04Run the trace on the receiving address and download the report.
- 05File where it counts. Your national fraud reporting centre, and the exchange if funds reached one, citing the transaction ID.
- 06Change your credentials. If you shared a seed phrase or approved a transaction, move anything remaining to a new wallet first.
The mistakes that cost people a second time
- Paying a recovery fee up front. Nobody legitimate needs a crypto payment before doing work.
- Believing a guaranteed result. No honest analyst can promise a recovery outcome.
- Handing over a seed phrase. Anyone who asks for one is taking everything, immediately.
- Deleting the chat. The conversation is evidence, including the parts that are painful to re-read.
- Waiting for a perfect case. Filing today with what you have beats filing next month with a tidy folder.
One freeze request beats a hundred diagrams. A single well-addressed request to an exchange compliance desk, quoting the receiving address and the transaction ID, is worth more than any amount of additional tracing.
Help — frequently asked
Run the trace, then build the report
Five minutes now gives you a dated evidence file and a set of documents you can send today. That is the whole point of this site.
TrueMoneyTalk publishes information and document-preparation tools. We do not guarantee recovery, we do not request seed phrases or private keys, and we never ask for payment to trace funds. Anyone who promises a guaranteed recovery is running a second scam.