The platform froze my account or wants more documents
This happens both to people on a regulated exchange going through a routine check, and to people on a platform that was never going to pay out. The steps are the same until you can tell which one you are on.
- Read what was actually asked for, word for word A proof of address, a selfie, a source-of-funds explanation and a tax number are four different requests with four different answers. Most accounts stay frozen because something adjacent was sent instead of the thing named.
- Answer once, in full, inside the platform itself Upload through the account, not through anyone who contacted you about it. Partial answers restart the queue, and every restart is another wait. Never send a document to a person in a chat group, a "case manager" who wrote first, or an address that is not the platform's own domain.
- Get the reason and the expected timeframe in writing Ask, in the ticket, for the specific rule being applied and the working-day window for review. A platform that will answer this is in a different category from one that will not.
- Check whether it is only you Platform status page, the support channels, the subreddit or Telegram group. A freeze that landed on thousands of accounts the same week is a system event. One that is only yours is about your account.
- Look up the licence yourself, not the claim about it Find the regulator for the country the platform says it is registered in, and search that register for the company name. A licence number printed in a footer is a string of characters until it appears on the register.
- The moment a fee is required to release your own balance, stop A tax, a "verification deposit", an unlock payment, insurance, a conversion fee paid from outside. No regulated platform needs money from you to give you your money. This one sign outweighs everything else on the page.
- Put the complaint on the record The platform's formal complaints channel first, then the regulator it is licensed by, in writing, with dates and ticket numbers. If it is not licensed anywhere, there is no complaints route — which is itself the answer to what the platform is.
Two different situations that look identical from the inside
A regulated exchange freezes accounts constantly, and usually for dull reasons: an address that no longer matches, a deposit from a third party, a pattern that tripped a monitoring rule, a document that expired. It is slow, it is badly explained, and it ends with your balance intact.
A platform that was never going to pay out produces the same screen. The difference is not in the wording of the freeze — the wording is often more polite and more helpful on the second kind. The difference is in what comes next.
The test that separates them
Three questions, in order of how much they tell you:
Is money being asked for? A fee, a tax, a deposit, a top-up to "reach the withdrawal tier" — anything that requires you to send more in order to take out what is already there. This is the single reliable marker, and it does not have an innocent version.
Does the company appear on a register you reached yourself? Not a certificate image, not a licence number in the footer, not a page on the platform's own domain. The regulator's own search, opened from the regulator's own site.
Did the platform exist before the offer reached you? A real operating history, a domain older than a few months, and an existence outside the group or the person who introduced it. Pig butchering describes the long version of this, where the platform is built specifically for you.
What waiting is reasonable
Document review on an established exchange runs from hours to a couple of weeks, and a source-of-funds review can run longer, especially if the funds arrived from another exchange or a third party. That is unpleasant but normal. What is not normal is a window that keeps moving, a review that resets each time you ask, or a requirement that appears only after you tried to withdraw.
While it is frozen
Keep everything: ticket numbers, screenshots with timestamps, the exact text of each request, and a note of who said what and when. If this ends in a complaint, a chargeback claim or a police report, the record you built in the first week is the whole case. And treat the balance as unavailable rather than lost — the two are different, and acting as though it is already gone is how people end up paying a second time. How the recovery scam works covers who shows up next.
This is general information about how these processes usually run, not legal advice about your situation.
Anyone who contacts you offering to recover this is the next thief
It follows losses within days, sometimes hours, and it copies the names of real firms, regulators and police units. Nobody legitimate finds you first. How the recovery scam works →
Last checked 19 Oct 2026. This page is procedure, not legal advice — what a report achieves depends on where you live.