Fraud in the Netherlands: the law, your rights and how to recover money

Fraud in the Netherlands is punishable as oplichting under article 326 of the Wetboek van Strafrecht (Criminal Code): inducing another person to hand over goods, to pay money or to enter into an obligation by assuming a false name or false capacity, by cunning tricks (listige kunstgrepen) or by a web of lies (een samenweefsel van verdichtsels), with the aim of unlawful gain. The offence carries a maximum of four years imprisonment or a fine. Alongside the criminal route, a victim can reclaim the money in civil proceedings, and where a payment left the account without authorisation the bank has a statutory duty to refund it.

What counts as fraud under Dutch law

Not every disappointment in a transaction is fraud. Dutch criminal law requires more than a broken promise or a bad bargain, and the difference decides whether the police take a report forward. Three elements have to be present together.

The first is one of the statutory means of deception. The Criminal Code lists them exhaustively: adopting a false name, adopting a false capacity (for instance posing as a bank employee, a police officer or a landlord), cunning tricks, and a web of lies. A single untrue statement is generally not enough; the courts require a set of circumstances designed to create a false picture, which is why a fake website, a forged screenshot or a script that keeps the victim on the phone is so often the decisive element in a file.

The second is that the deception actually moved the victim to act, by handing over property, paying money, providing a service or taking on a debt. The third is the intention to obtain unlawful gain for oneself or for someone else. Where money was handed over for a reason unconnected with the deception, or where nothing was in fact handed over, the offence is not complete, although an attempt may still be punishable.

The conduct of the person deceived is part of that assessment. The question the court asks is whether the means used were capable of misleading, judged against the circumstances. Carelessness on the part of a victim does not make the conduct lawful, but a story so implausible that no reasonable person could have been taken in by it can fall outside the offence. In practice this rarely helps offenders and it never means that a victim is to blame.

The offences that sit around fraud

Files that begin as fraud rarely stay there, because the same conduct usually engages several provisions of the Criminal Code at once. Embezzlement (verduistering) applies where someone lawfully received goods or money and then appropriated them, which is the charge in many cases involving intermediaries and contractors. Forgery (valsheid in geschrifte) covers falsified invoices, contracts, payslips and identity documents. Money laundering (witwassen) covers the handling of the proceeds afterwards and is the provision most often used against those who moved the money on.

Digital fraud adds a further layer. Unlawfully entering a computer system is a separate offence, as is the misuse of another person identifying data with the aim of concealing an identity, which is what identity fraud amounts to in Dutch law. Where a bank card and code are used to withdraw money, the charge is often theft by means of a false key rather than fraud, because the money was taken rather than handed over. That distinction matters more than it sounds: it changes the charge, the evidence required and, for the victim, the route to getting the money back.

A category that deserves separate mention is the money mule. Someone who makes a bank account available to others, for a fee or out of misplaced helpfulness, is not merely a bystander. Making an account available for the proceeds of crime is prosecuted as money laundering, and the consequences reach beyond the criminal case: banks close the accounts and register the person in the sector-wide incident registers, which makes opening an account elsewhere difficult for years. Young people are targeted for this specifically, and the criminal record it produces is real. Our article on crypto and criminal law deals with the version of this that runs through digital assets.

The forms of fraud seen most often in the Netherlands

The mechanics vary but the structure does not: contact is made through a channel the victim trusts, a plausible identity is adopted, urgency is manufactured, and payment is requested through a route that is hard to reverse.

Bank helpdesk fraud, or spoofing, works by displaying a genuine bank telephone number and persuading the account holder that their savings must be moved to a safe account. Message fraud through WhatsApp or text uses a new number and a family relationship to request an urgent payment. Phishing uses a message that imitates a bank, a delivery company or a government body and leads to a page that captures login details or a signature for a payment. Investment fraud offers returns on a platform that shows a rising balance which cannot be withdrawn, and now regularly involves cryptocurrency. Marketplace fraud takes payment for goods that do not exist, and the reverse version persuades a seller to click a small verification payment link. Romance fraud builds a relationship over months before money is requested. Invoice and CEO fraud target businesses rather than consumers, by changing bank details on a genuine invoice or by imitating a director instructing a payment.

Two things are constant across all of them. The first is that the request always includes a reason not to check through the normal channel. The second is that the payment route is chosen for its irreversibility: an immediate transfer, a payment request link, a cryptocurrency transfer or a gift card code. Anything that resists verification and cannot be reversed should be treated as the warning sign in itself.

What to do in the first hours

Speed determines what can still be recovered, because a transfer that has not yet been executed or credited can sometimes be stopped, while one that has been forwarded on cannot. The order of the steps matters more than the number of them.

• Call your bank on the number on your own bank card or in the banking app, not on a number given to you, and ask for the payment to be stopped or recalled and the account blocked.
• Change the login details and codes for any account whose details you may have disclosed, and check whether a payment authorisation or a new device has been added to your banking app.
• Secure the evidence before it disappears: screenshots of the conversation, the telephone number, the account number and the name of the beneficiary, the payment confirmations, the advertisement or the website, and the email headers where you have them.
• Report the offence to the police. This can be done online for common forms of internet fraud and in person at any police station. Our guide on filing a police report in the Netherlands explains what a report should contain.
• Report it to the Fraudehelpdesk on 088-786 7372, which registers reports, advises victims and warns the public about current methods.

If you are under eighteen, or if you would rather speak to someone first, De Kindertelefoon and Slachtofferhulp Nederland can be contacted free of charge. Reporting is worth doing even where you are not certain that an offence has been committed: the report is what allows the police to connect an account number to other cases, and it is also what a bank and a civil court will ask for later.

When the bank has to refund you

Dutch law distinguishes sharply between two situations, and almost every dispute with a bank turns on which one applies.

The first is an unauthorised payment transaction: money left the account without the account holder consent, for instance because a fraudster obtained the login details and executed the transfer. Book 7 of the Civil Code, implementing the European payment services rules, then puts the loss on the payment service provider. The bank must refund the amount immediately, in principle no later than the end of the following business day, and it carries the burden of proving that the transaction was authenticated and correctly recorded. The exception is narrow: the account holder bears the loss where they acted fraudulently or intentionally, or where they failed with gross negligence to observe the obligations attaching to the payment instrument, such as keeping codes secret and reporting misuse promptly. Gross negligence is a high threshold, and whether it is met is decided on the facts of the individual case.

The second is an authorised transaction: the account holder made the payment themselves, having been deceived into doing so. There is then no statutory right to a refund, because the payment was consented to. That is the position in bank helpdesk fraud, message fraud and investment fraud. Banks nonetheless apply a discretionary framework published by the Dutch Banking Association for bank helpdesk fraud, under which compensation can be granted if the victim acted as could reasonably be expected. It is a voluntary scheme rather than an entitlement. Where a bank refuses, the complaint can be taken to the bank internal complaints procedure and then to Kifid, the financial services complaints institute, or to the civil court.

In both situations the same practical advice applies: put the complaint in writing, set out exactly what happened and when, and keep the bank to its duty to give reasons. Our article on proving digital deception in the Netherlands deals with the evidence that carries weight in these files.

Recovering the money through the civil courts

The criminal process is not primarily a recovery mechanism. It can produce compensation, because a victim who has suffered loss as a direct result of the offence can join the criminal proceedings as an injured party and the court can impose a compensation measure that the State then collects. But that route depends on the offender being identified, prosecuted and convicted, which in online fraud is often slow and sometimes does not happen at all.

The civil route runs independently and to a lower standard of proof. A claim can be brought against whoever received the money on the basis of unlawful act or of unjust enrichment, and the recipient of a fraudulent transfer is frequently traceable even where the person behind the fraud is not, because a Dutch bank account is held in a name. Where the money was obtained by deceit in a contract, the contract itself can be annulled for fraud or mistake, which turns the payment into an amount received without a legal basis.

Two procedural instruments do most of the work. The first is prejudgment attachment (conservatoir beslag): with the leave of the court, obtained without hearing the other side, the disputed amount can be frozen in the recipient bank account or on their assets before proceedings are decided, which prevents the money from disappearing while the case runs. Our article on asset freezing and prejudgment attachment explains how leave is obtained and what has to be shown. The second is urgent relief proceedings, which can produce an order for repayment within weeks where the facts are clear. In both, the material assembled in the first hours after the fraud is what makes the difference between a claim that can be substantiated and one that cannot.

Fraud against businesses

Companies encounter a different set of methods. Invoice fraud changes the bank details on a genuine invoice, usually after a mailbox has been compromised, and the payment goes to the fraudster while the supplier remains unpaid and insists on payment. Whether the debt has been discharged is then a civil dispute between two innocent parties, decided on which of them could more reasonably have prevented the error, and it is settled far more easily where the company can show a verification procedure that was followed. CEO fraud instructs an employee to make an urgent, confidential payment in the name of a director. Procurement and recruitment fraud and false credit applications complete the picture.

Internal fraud raises separate questions. An employee who embezzles or manipulates invoices commits a criminal offence, but the employer decisions are employment law decisions: whether the conduct justifies summary dismissal, how the investigation is conducted, whether evidence obtained by monitoring is admissible, and how the loss is recovered. Investigations that ignore the privacy rules tend to unravel later, so the sequence of steps should be settled before the first interview takes place, not afterwards.

If you are suspected of fraud

Not everyone who appears in a fraud file is an organiser. Account holders who allowed their account to be used, intermediaries who passed on goods or payments, and people who were themselves deceived into a role are routinely questioned as suspects. Three things matter in that position. You are not obliged to answer questions, and the caution given at the start of an interview is not a formality. You are entitled to consult a lawyer before the interview and to have a lawyer present during it. And what is said in a first interview shapes the whole file, because it is very difficult to correct later.

The consequences also extend beyond the criminal case. A conviction or a penalty order for fraud or money laundering is recorded in the judicial documentation and affects an application for a Certificate of Good Conduct, professional registrations and, for foreign nationals, a residence application. Advice at the start of the case is therefore worth more than advice at the end of it.

Mistakes that make recovery harder

Verifying through the channel the other party supplied is the first and the most common. A telephone number in a message, a link in an email and a chat window on a website are all controlled by whoever sent them. Verification only means anything when it uses a number or an address you already had.

Deleting the conversation out of embarrassment is the second, and it is the one that most often makes a case unwinnable. The messages, the account number and the payment confirmations are the evidence, and they are also what allows the police to link the account to other reports.

Waiting to see whether the money comes back is the third. Reversal and recall only work in a short window, and prejudgment attachment only works while there is still something in the account.

Paying again to release an earlier payment is the fourth. Investment fraud and marketplace fraud both rely on a second request framed as a fee, a tax or a verification payment needed before the balance can be released. There is no balance, and the second payment is simply a further loss.

Frequently asked questions about fraud

How Law & More can help

Our lawyers act on both sides of a fraud file. For victims we advise on the report to the police, take up the dispute with the bank about an unauthorised payment or a refused compensation request, obtain leave for prejudgment attachment where money can still be traced, and conduct the civil claim against the recipient as well as the compensation claim in the criminal proceedings. For businesses we advise on invoice and CEO fraud, on internal investigations and on the employment consequences. For those who are themselves suspected, we provide assistance from the first police interview onwards. Contact us to discuss your situation.