Our courses will go live on October 26, 2026.
Our courses will go live on October 26, 2026.
Supporting victims beyond the fraud
The payment has stopped; the harm has not. This module follows the weeks and months after a fraud — first aid, the second wound, money grief, the late crash — and what you do at each point so recovery stays possible.
Format
Self-paced
Commitment
2 weeks · ~2h/wk
Level
Practitioner
Assessment
Knowledge checks · practice arena
This is where most fraud training ends, and where this module begins.
The payment has stopped. The harm has not
Try it yourself · A call, three weeks after
First, feel the moment for yourself. This is Marie, from Module 1. Her fraud is three weeks old. The case work is done: payments stopped, report filed. Take the seat that fits your work: at the bank, she calls your fraud desk about ‘one last question’. At the police, she calls about her report number. In victim support, she was referred two weeks ago and calls for the first time. The moment is the same in every chair. Choose your answer, before any lesson, before any theory.
Now listen to the audio fragment.
AUDIO — Marie
Marie: I don’t really know why I’m calling. The money is gone, I know that. It’s been three weeks. Everyone around me says I should be over it by now. So… I suppose I just wanted to ask if there is anything new.
Practice scenario
Scenario practice
What do you say to Marie, right now?
Marie is quiet for a moment. Then it comes out: the sleepless nights, the shame, her daughter’s anger. Nothing about the case changed. Everything about the next six months did.
NOTE
What we learn from this: the fraud is over, and this call was still the most important one of her case. No single professional determines whether someone recovers. What the person on your side of the phone can do is help create the conditions that make a safe next conversation more possible, or make it far less likely. This module teaches you to make that difference on purpose.
NOTE
One honest note: in this module you will sometimes see what Marie really thinks and feels inside. You can see it because we wrote it. In a real conversation you never get that window. That is exactly why you will learn to ask, and to keep asking, in the weeks when nobody else does.
What you just felt, the difference between closing a file and opening a door, is where this module starts.
Ayleen speaks to you now, on camera.
AYLEEN — ON CAMERA
Ayleen
In Module 3, you learned how to help someone break the spell of a scammer’s influence.
Module 4 begins when the truth lands.
The money may be gone.
What they believed in may never have been real.
The family may be angry.
And the next criminal may already know exactly who they are.
The case may be closing.
For the person, it is not over.
Their recovery has only just begun.
This module is about what comes next, and how to stay beside them, beyond the fraud.
Everything you have built so far comes together here one more time: the psychology and the phases of Module 1, the words of Module 2, and the patience of Module 3, now applied to the weeks and months after the crime. Your goal can be said in one word: recovery. Not doing the recovery for someone, because nobody can do that for another person. Your goal is to make recovery possible: to keep the second wound from happening, to make the first steps small enough to take, to guard against the next attack, and to still be there when the heaviest weeks arrive late. Recovery is the victim’s road. You build the ground under it.
Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.
Fred Rogers, quoting his mother (documented since 1986). In the weeks after a fraud, you are who she meant. This module teaches you to be findable.
One method for everything that follows: the AFTER protocol
This module contains a lot of practical craft, and you should not have to remember it as a pile of separate lists. So everything here hangs on one method, in five moves. You will meet it in every lesson, and at the end of each lesson you will be asked the same question: where is this person on the Recovery Map, and which AFTER move does that call for?
THE S.A.F.E. AFTER PROTOCOL
A · Anchor and assess. Be the first fixed point. Steady yourself before you speak, then read the situation across four areas at once: is anyone still losing money, how is this person actually doing, what is the financial damage, and what has to be reported or claimed. You do this before you do anything else, and you do it again whenever something changes.
F · First aid, together. Stop the bleeding and save the proof, at the same time. Cut the criminal’s access, then secure the accounts from a device you can trust, and keep everything: messages, screens, reference numbers. Document and report once those two are running. The word that matters is together: the first step is taken with you on the line, never handed over as a list.
T · Treat the second wound. Say out loud that you believe them, before anything practical. Keep the three harms out of your words: no blame, no coldness, no minimising. And where a colleague or another organisation has already wounded them, repair it rather than defend it, which is a skill you will learn in this module.
E · Extend the bridge. Do not hand out a number and call it help. Ask what they want shared and with whom, introduce them yourself, stay until they are received, and leave one concrete next step with a name, a date and a time. A bridge you walk across with them, never a number thrown over a wall.
R · Restore agency, and reduce repeat harm. Two jobs, and they are the same job. Warn them in detail about the approach that is coming, so they recognise it when it arrives. And hand decisions back rather than taking them over, because the harm that outlasts the debt is a person who no longer trusts their own judgement. Involve the people around them only with their consent.
One honest note about this method, and about every model in this module. AFTER is a practice framework built from victim-support experience, published research and Ayleen’s lived experience. It is a way of organising good work, not a clinical protocol and not a validated instrument. Use it as a checklist for your thinking, never as a substitute for looking at the person in front of you.
Here is what the coming two weeks will teach you.
The numbers behind this module
2 in 3 UK fraud victims who said they did not want help or treatment for the effects on their health (2026 study, 311 victims)
1 in 12 Who reported no emotional symptoms at all: recovery is not the same for everyone
1 in 2 Worried about being targeted again: the most widely shared concern in that study (same 311 victims)
NOTE
Full details on the sources page. Read these three together, because the first one is easy to read the wrong way. It does not mean that offering support is pointless. In the same study, the more symptoms someone reported, the greater the likelihood that they wanted support. That does not tell you what any one person needs, or whether their needs may change later. It does mean that the people who are hit hardest do want support, and you cannot tell from one early conversation who they are. Add the third figure and the task of this module is set: some people genuinely need nothing, others need a great deal, almost everyone is afraid it will happen again, and the only way to find out which is which is to stay in contact over time.
What you will learn In This Module
- What the second wound is: how helpers hurt victims without meaning to, and how to make sure it never happens on your watch.
- How to be the anchor at any point in it: stable, practical and connecting, across safety, feelings, money and law.
- How to lead the first conversations after a fraud: validation, one small step at a time, and the warm referral.
- The Recovery Map: the four phases after a fraud, shock, the practical weeks, the late crash and rebuilding, and what each one asks of you.
- What money grief is, how recovery really moves over months, and how to use the grief knowledge from Module 1.
- The money after the money: debt, complaint routes and honest answers about reimbursement.
- What to do when the crash comes, later than people expect, when the support has thinned out.
- Financial and legal first aid: two tracks at once, stopping further harm while preserving and securing, then documenting and reporting.
- How to warn against the next attack before it comes, and turn ‘I was naive’ into ‘I survived professional manipulation’.
- How to run structured aftercare that catches the late crash, and how to hand over without making anyone start from zero.
- How to support the family around the victim, and how to look after yourself in work this heavy.
HOW THIS MODULE WORKS
Two weeks, split into short lessons you can pause and return to whenever you need. It is self-paced: there is no prize for rushing. This module is practical and protocol-heavy, but every protocol in it exists to protect a human being, so the person stays in view throughout. Marie walks with us as the running case.
After every practice scenario you will find a short block called ‘What we learn from this’. That is the debrief, and it is where the real learning happens.
NOTE
Every module in this course is built from the same set of blocks. If you have not seen the list before, it is on the How it works page: what each block is, and what to do with it.
NOTE
This module looks closely at what happens to people after a fraud: shame, grief, family strain, and sometimes despair. Throughout, you will find Mindful Moments. Use them. Writing stays on paper or in your own notes — the platform does not store what you write.