Where to Report a Scam in Switzerland (2026 Guide)

The short answer

Switzerland's official routes in 2026: report the incident to the Bundesamt für Cybersicherheit (BACS) at report.ncsc.admin.ch or via antifraud.ch; file a criminal complaint (Strafanzeige) with your cantonal police (Kantonspolizei), or call 117 in an emergency; check and report investment firms via FINMA's warning list; block a compromised card through your bank's 24/7 hotline; escalate a wrongly-refused unauthorised payment to the Schweizerischer Bankenombudsman; and get free help from your cantonal victim-support office (Opferhilfe). Crucially, Switzerland is not in the EU, so there is no PSD2-style statutory refund: your bank's terms normally cover an unauthorised payment if you were not negligent, but money you were deceived into sending yourself is generally not refundable.

"Alle 8,5 Minuten eine Meldung zu einem Cybervorfall."
"A report of a cyber incident every 8.5 minutes." — Bundesamt für Cybersicherheit (BACS), Halbjahresbericht 2024/1. BACS Director Florian Schütz described the government-impersonation calls behind much of that volume as "a business" — in the first half of 2024 alone, 13,730 reports involved fraudsters posing as officials, calling on weekdays from early morning to about 4pm.

If you have been scammed in Switzerland, two things matter most in the first 24 hours: stopping any further loss and creating a record while the evidence still exists. Everything downstream — which authority, which form, which refund argument — depends on getting those two right. The complication unique to Switzerland is that there is no single place to report and no EU safety net behind your bank, so the order below is built to be the fastest path through a deliberately federal, four-language system.

If you are reading this with a transaction you already regret, skip to if money has already moved. A same-day bank recall is sometimes the only thing that works.

The hard truth first: Switzerland refunds the hack, not the con

This matters most, because it sets your expectations before you spend a week chasing the wrong outcome — and Switzerland's position is subtly different from its EU neighbours.

In Germany or Austria, the refund rule for an unauthorised payment is statutory — it comes from the EU Payment Services Directive. Switzerland is not in the EU, so there is no such law. Instead, liability sits in your bank's general terms and conditions (Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen, AGB) and the Swiss Code of Obligations (Obligationenrecht, OR). In practice the outcome is similar: if your card or e-banking was used without permission and you were not negligent, Swiss banks normally bear the loss and reimburse you — provided you report it promptly, usually in writing within about 30 days of the statement.

But if you authorised the payment yourself because you were deceived — you logged in and sent the transfer because a convincing "bank security officer" or "investment adviser" told you to — that is a valid instruction. There is no Swiss equivalent of the UK rule that forces banks to reimburse this kind of authorised-push-payment fraud.

This is the same gap that strands victims across Europe — and the opposite of Britain's position. The UK's Payment Systems Regulator now requires banks to refund deception-based transfers up to £85,000, as we covered in the UK reporting guide. Switzerland has no such rule, and being outside the EU it is not even covered by the bloc's evolving PSD3 debate. So the realistic recovery levers here are speed (a same-day recall), the free Schweizerischer Bankenombudsman, or a civil claim — never an automatic refund.

There is no single front door: the BACS report and the cantonal complaint are two different things

This trips up almost everyone. Switzerland has a national cyber-incident reporting point, but reporting an incident is not the same as filing a criminal complaint, and you usually want to do both.

—The national incident report — Bundesamt für Cybersicherheit (BACS). Switzerland's federal cybersecurity office, known until January 2024 as the NCSC and now the BACS (Office fédéral de la cybersécurité, OFCS, in French). Report fraud, phishing and cyber incidents at report.ncsc.admin.ch or via antifraud.ch. This feeds the national threat picture and can trigger public warnings — but it does not, by itself, open a criminal case.

—The criminal complaint — your Kantonspolizei. Because Switzerland polices through 26 cantons, a Strafanzeige (plainte pénale) goes to your cantonal police, in person or via the cantonal online portal. This is the report that can lead to investigation and prosecution. The shared prevention and guidance portal is cybercrimepolice.ch, run with the Schweizerische Kriminalprävention (SKP).

—In an emergency, call 117. If a crime is in progress, you are in danger, or money is moving right now, the Swiss police emergency number 117 works nationwide (112 also reaches emergency services).

—Keep the case reference. Whatever channel you use, note any reference number you are given — your bank or the Bankenombudsman may ask for it.

The full Swiss reporting directory, by scam type

Different scams route to different bodies. Using the right one matters more than reporting to all of them.

—Any fraud where you lost money. File a Strafanzeige with your Kantonspolizei (in person or via the cantonal portal; 117 in an emergency), and report the incident to BACS at report.ncsc.admin.ch. The complaint is the criminal-side foundation; the BACS report feeds the national picture.

—A phishing email or fake bank/parcel SMS. Report it to BACS via report.ncsc.admin.ch or antifraud.ch. Phishing — frequently fake parcel-delivery or refund messages — ran to 6,643 reports in the first half of 2024 alone. Tell your bank too if it impersonated them.

—Investment, crypto, or fake-broker fraud. FINMA (Eidgenössische Finanzmarktaufsicht). Check its warning list (Warnliste) before investing and report an unlicensed provider. FINMA cannot recover funds, but a listing flags the operation publicly and supports any criminal case.

—Identity theft or misuse of your data. File the Strafanzeige with your Kantonspolizei and report the incident to BACS. Ask your bank to flag your accounts for additional checks, and watch for activity you did not initiate.

—A scam you spotted but did not fall for. Still report it to BACS via antifraud.ch, and to FINMA if it was a fake investment offer. No-loss reports still build the intelligence picture that targets the operators.

—You need a human to talk to. Your cantonal victim-support office (Opferberatungsstelle) under the Opferhilfegesetz — free and confidential, found via opferhilfe-schweiz.ch.

If money has already moved: the first 24 hours

Speed is the whole game, especially in Switzerland where there is no automatic refund to fall back on. This is the maximum-recovery order:

1Block the card through your bank's 24/7 hotline or app if your card or e-banking may be compromised. Then call the bank's fraud line. If the transaction was unauthorised (you did not make it), say so clearly, ask them to attempt a recall of any transfer, and confirm your dispute in writing — under most Swiss bank terms a non-negligent unauthorised loss is reimbursed. Get a reference.

2File a Strafanzeige with your cantonal police (Kantonspolizei), in person or via your canton's online portal; guidance is at cybercrimepolice.ch. In an emergency, 117. Keep the case reference.

3Document everything in one place. Screenshot the conversation, the scammer's numbers, emails and fake websites, and the transaction details (date, time, amount, recipient name and IBAN). Save it as a single PDF before the accounts vanish.

4Report the incident to the Bundesamt für Cybersicherheit (BACS) at report.ncsc.admin.ch or via antifraud.ch, and forward any phishing message there too.

5If it was investment fraud, check the firm against FINMA's warning list and report an unlicensed provider. See the honest recovery odds by payment method for what realistically works.

6Block the scammer everywhere and stop engaging. Any "recovery" offer that follows — a lawyer, an agency, someone claiming to be the police, BACS or FINMA — is the second scam. We covered the pattern in the recovery-scams piece.

7If the bank wrongly refuses to refund an unauthorised payment, escalate free of charge to the Schweizerischer Bankenombudsman. For a deception-based transfer you authorised, the ombudsman and, if needed, a civil claim are the realistic routes — there is no automatic reimbursement.

8Contact your cantonal Opferhilfe office (via opferhilfe-schweiz.ch) for free, confidential support. A good first human call if the process feels overwhelming.

Within days of any public post or report about your loss, "recovery scammers" will find you. They will pose as a law firm, a Rückbuchung or "fund recovery" specialist, or even the police, BACS or FINMA, and ask for an upfront fee or your banking details. Real Swiss channels — your bank, the cantonal police, BACS, FINMA, the Bankenombudsman, your Opferhilfe office — never charge upfront to recover money, and authorities never cold-call demanding payment. See the recovery-scams piece for the full pattern.

The Swiss numbers, for context

The BACS semi-annual reports (Halbjahresberichte) for 2024 are the most recent national picture. The headline figures, all from named sources:

—62,954 cyber-incident reports reached BACS in 2024. Roughly 34,789 in the first half and 28,165 in the second — and the annual total was about double the previous year, the office's director Florian Schütz noted.

—Fraud is consistently the most-reported category. It made up around two-thirds of all reports — 18,270 fraud reports in the second half of 2024 alone.

—Government-impersonation fraud is industrial in scale. In the first half of 2024, 13,730 reports involved callers posing as officials. Schütz called it 'a business', noting the calls cluster on weekdays from early morning to about 4pm.

—Phishing is climbing fast. 6,643 phishing reports in the first half of 2024 — about 2,800 more than a year earlier — frequently disguised as fake parcel-delivery notices or refund claims.

—The reported cases are only the reported ones. As everywhere, the true figure is higher. Under-reporting is exactly why filing both the BACS report and the cantonal Strafanzeige matters: unreported fraud is invisible fraud.

The habits that keep you out of the reporting machinery entirely

Reporting is downstream. Prevention is upstream, and three habits stop most Swiss scams cold:

—Never transfer money or release an e-banking code because of a call you did not initiate. Real banks, the real Kantonspolizei, and real authorities never phone to demand an urgent transfer to a 'safe account' or a code to 'secure' your money. Hang up and call the institution back on the number from your card or its official site.

—Treat the 'falsche Polizei' and fake-official scripts as automatic red flags. A caller claiming to be the police, a prosecutor, or a bank's fraud team, pressuring you to move money or hand over codes, is running the exact script behind those 13,730 impersonation reports. The same voice-and-pressure playbook drives the shock-call and family-imposter scams covered in the family-impersonation piece.

—Treat any money conversation that moves onto a messaging app as hostile until verified. Investment 'advisers', recruiters, and romance contacts in Switzerland overwhelmingly pivot to WhatsApp or Telegram. The move off a verifiable platform onto a private chat is the single most reliable scam signal.

If you are unsure whether something is a scam before any money moves, the fastest second opinion is the Scam Checker on this site, or our free case review. Both are read by a human and answered within 24 hours.

From the field. The Swiss case we see most in 2026 is the fake-official call — the BACS data calls it the single biggest fraud category for a reason. A "bank security officer" or "police officer" phones, says your account has been compromised or is implicated in a crime, and walks you, calmly and urgently, into moving your money to a "safe account" or releasing an e-banking code. Because you enter the instruction yourself, the bank treats it as authorised, and outside the EU there is no statutory rule forcing a refund. That legal reality is exactly why the prevention rule below matters more in Switzerland than the entire reporting machinery downstream of it: once you authorise the transfer, the contract — not a consumer law — decides whether you ever see the money again.

One rule, end to end

If you take one habit from this piece, take this: any unsolicited call, message, or email that pressures you to move money or share a code is a scam until you have hung up and verified it by calling the institution back on a number you already trust. In a country with no statutory refund rule, that one pause is worth more than the entire reporting system downstream of it.

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Common questions about reporting a scam in Switzerland

Is there one place to report all scams in Switzerland?

No. Switzerland has a national reporting point for cyber incidents — the Bundesamt für Cybersicherheit (BACS), at report.ncsc.admin.ch — but that is an intelligence channel, not a criminal complaint. Because policing is organised by the 26 cantons, a criminal complaint (Strafanzeige / plainte pénale) goes to your cantonal police (Kantonspolizei), in person or through the cantonal online portal; the police emergency number is 117. The practical order: report the incident to BACS so it feeds the national picture, file a Strafanzeige with your Kantonspolizei, and route investment fraud separately to FINMA. There is no single front door that does all three.

Will my Swiss bank refund money I lost to a scam?

It depends on whether the payment was unauthorised or authorised — and, crucially, Switzerland is not in the EU, so there is no PSD2-style statutory refund right. Liability is governed by your bank's general terms and conditions (Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen, AGB) and the Swiss Code of Obligations (Obligationenrecht, OR). In practice, if your card or e-banking was used without permission and you exercised due diligence, the bank will normally cover the loss and reimburse you — report it in writing, typically within about 30 days of the statement. But if you authorised the payment yourself because you were deceived, that is treated as a valid instruction, and Switzerland has no equivalent of the UK rule forcing banks to refund this kind of fraud. So it refunds the hack, not the con.

How do I report a phishing email or fake SMS in Switzerland?

Report it to the Bundesamt für Cybersicherheit (BACS) through its reporting form at report.ncsc.admin.ch, or via the federal anti-fraud portal antifraud.ch. Phishing — often fake parcel-delivery notices or refund claims — is one of the fastest-growing categories BACS tracks, with 6,643 reports in the first half of 2024 alone. If the message impersonated your bank, tell the bank directly so it can warn other customers. If you actually entered data or lost money, also file a Strafanzeige with your cantonal police.

How do I check whether an investment platform is legitimate in Switzerland?

Use FINMA, the Eidgenössische Finanzmarktaufsicht (Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority). Before sending money, check FINMA's warning list (Warnliste) of unauthorised providers and confirm the firm holds the licence it claims. FINMA cannot recover your money, but its warning list is how a large share of fake-broker, cloned-bank, and bogus crypto-platform operations get publicly flagged in Switzerland. Fake cryptocurrency platforms and 'guaranteed return' schemes that pivot the conversation onto WhatsApp or Telegram are the dominant Swiss investment-fraud pattern.

Where can a scam victim get free human help in Switzerland?

Switzerland has a statutory victim-support system under the Opferhilfegesetz (OHG). Every canton runs a free, confidential victim-support office (Opferberatungsstelle); you can find yours via opferhilfe-schweiz.ch. These offices give free advice and can help you through reporting and any aftermath. For disputes with your bank over an unauthorised payment, the Schweizerischer Bankenombudsman offers free, neutral mediation. None of these will ever charge an upfront fee to 'recover' your money — anyone who does is running the second scam.

Sources & further reading

Every figure in this piece is drawn from these authorities. Click any of them to verify.

Where to report a scam in Switzerland: no national hotline, 26 cantonal forces, and a refund that rests on your bank's terms, not a law.