Reporting a scam in the UAE means knowing which emirate you are in, because the police channels are emirate-specific even though the law is federal. There is also one federal route that works anywhere, and a separate body for complaints about your bank.
Your bank first
Call the number on your card and ask for the transaction to be stopped and the card blocked. Nothing in the rest of this page moves money; only the bank can, and only while the transfer is still reachable.
The police report
The federal route is the Ministry of Interior’s app, which carries the eCrimes service and works in every emirate. In Dubai, ecrime.ae takes you into Dubai Police’s cybercrime service. In Abu Dhabi, the service is Aman, on 8002626, by SMS to 2828, or at aman.adpolice.gov.ae. The Public Prosecution also runs an app, My Safe Society, for reporting cybercrime directly. For anything urgent, 999.
These open a real case under the federal cybercrime law, which has been in force since January 2022. They investigate and prosecute. None of them is a refund button.
If the complaint is about your bank: Sanadak
Sanadak is the independent unit set up by the Central Bank to handle complaints against banks, finance companies and insurers, and it is free. There is one gate: you must complain to the institution first and then wait fifteen calendar days before Sanadak will take the case. It also will not touch a matter that is in court, already settled, duplicated, or outside the Central Bank’s remit.
Note what that route is for. It decides whether your bank treated you properly. It is not a claim against the scammer, and there is no published UAE rule requiring a bank to reimburse someone who was tricked into authorising a payment. Ask your bank what applies to your case and get the answer in writing.
What to have ready
Your Emirates ID, the transaction references and IBAN, screenshots, the sending numbers and web addresses, and — for Sanadak — the bank’s own complaint reference and the date you raised it, because that is what starts the fifteen-day clock.
The local trap worth knowing
Dubai Police have warned about something specific to this moment: people searching online for where to file a consumer complaint land on cloned “consumer protection” sites that harvest their banking details. A gang impersonating consumer protection staff has been arrested for exactly this. In other words, the search for how to report a scam is itself being targeted.
Use addresses on u.ae or the official app stores, and treat any page that asks for your card number or an SMS code as the fraud rather than the remedy. The same goes for video calls from people in police uniform — an established local technique — and for anyone asking you to approve a UAE PASS request you did not initiate.
The website itself
If the scam ran through a site, its hosting provider and domain registrar can take it down, usually within hours of a clear report that names the exact address. That is faster than any police process, here as everywhere.
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