United States
Federal Trade Commission — ReportFraud.ftc.gov
The FTC's official site for reporting fraud, scams and bad business practices, confirmed live on the .gov domain.
How to spot a fake grant offer
Every real programme on this site links to an official government or institutional source. Scammers copy that language — "government grant", "approved", "free money" — to sell you the opposite. The rule that catches almost all of them: no real government grant ever asks you to pay a fee to receive it.
The one-line test. If someone contacts you first — by phone, text, email or social media — claiming you have been "selected" for a grant, and asks for a processing fee, a tax payment, gift cards, or your bank login to "release the funds", it is a scam. A real grant application is something you go looking for, on the funder's own official page, and a genuine award never requires you to pay first.
Signs of a fake grant offer
- They contacted you first. Government agencies and legitimate funders do not cold-call, text or DM people to offer them a grant out of nowhere.
- Any request for money up front — an "administration fee", "tax", "insurance", gift cards, or a wire transfer — before you receive anything. This is the single most reliable signal.
- Pressure to act immediately, or a claim the offer expires in hours. Real deadlines are published on the funder's own page, in advance, for everyone.
- A request for your bank login, one-time passcode, or full card number to "verify" you or "release" the money. No legitimate funder needs your online banking password.
- The sender's address doesn't match the agency it claims to be. A message claiming to be from a national government body sent from a free email address (Gmail, Outlook, WhatsApp) rather than that body's own domain is a red flag.
- It cannot be found on the funder's own official page. Search the programme name plus the funder's name yourself, on the funder's own domain — never through a link the message gave you.
What to do
- Do not click the link, call the number, or reply. Look up the funder's official contact details independently and ask them directly whether the offer is real.
- Do not send money, gift cards, cryptocurrency, or your bank details to anyone claiming to release a grant.
- If you already paid or shared bank details, contact your bank immediately and report it to the agencies below.
- Report it — reporting does not just help you, it helps the agency warn the next person and, over time, take the operation down.
Report it — official channels by country
Verified live on 2026-09-25. If a link below has moved, the agency's own government domain will still be findable by searching its name.
United Kingdom
Action Fraud (the UK's national fraud and cyber crime reporting centre)
https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/
Confirmed live. A newer Report Fraud service at reportfraud.police.uk also takes reports for England, Wales and Northern Ireland; in Scotland, report to Police Scotland on 101.
France
Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr (assistance and advice) and SignalConso (report a scam offer)
https://www.cybermalveillance.gouv.fr/
Both are French government services, confirmed live; SignalConso is the DGCCRF's consumer-complaint portal.
European Union
OLAF — the European Anti-Fraud Office
https://anti-fraud.ec.europa.eu/olaf-and-you/report-fraud_en
Confirmed live: OLAF takes anonymous reports of fraud against EU funds, in any official EU language.
India
National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal
Confirmed live: the Indian government's portal for reporting cybercrime, including fraud, run by I4C.
How this site is different. Programme pages here point you to the funder's own official source and show when the record was last checked, and this product never asks you to pay a fee to "release" a grant — the free check is free, and the paid plans are a flat subscription you choose to buy, stated up front on /pricing/, never a condition of getting money that is already yours.