No bank, agency, or company will ever ask you to move, withdraw, convert, or hand over your money to keep it safe, so any such request identifies the person making it as the threat.

How to do it

1. 1Learn the shape of the ask, because the story changes and the shape does not: someone warns that your money is in danger (hackers, a corrupt employee, an investigation, a suspicious transaction) and then tells you where to move it (a "safe" account, cryptocurrency, gold, gift cards, a courier, a "federal locker").
2. 2Stop at the first mention of moving money. Do not evaluate the story; the story is the product.
3. 3Say that you will contact the institution yourself, end the contact, and use the callback rule on a number you find independently.
4. 4If you are told to keep the transfer secret from your bank, your family, or the teller "because they may be involved", that instruction is itself the confirmation of a scam. Tell exactly the people you were told not to tell.
5. 5If money has already moved, call your bank's fraud line immediately and report to law enforcement (in the US, ic3.gov and reportfraud.ftc.gov). Fast reports sometimes allow transfers to be recalled; slow ones almost never do.

When to use it

• •A "fraud department", "government investigator", or "tech support agent" says your accounts are compromised and offers to help you secure the funds.
• •A pop-up or call reports a hacker on your computer and then connects you to your "bank".
• •You are told a transaction is under investigation and you must cooperate quietly, including by withdrawing cash or handing it to a courier.

Counters

Evidence and how strong it is

The "move your money to protect it" script is the core of what the FBI calls the Phantom Hacker scam, a three-stage impersonation (a tech-support agent, then the bank, then a government agency) whose 2023 public service announcement reported that tech-support-scam complaints in the first half of that year alone involved more than $500 million in losses, most of it from people over sixty. The FTC's consumer guidance states the rule in almost these words: nobody legitimate will ever tell you to move your money to protect it. The rule works because it does not require the target to detect a lie; it converts a persuasive, well-rehearsed story into a single observable act, and the class of legitimate requests it forbids is empty. Evidence strength: regulator and law-enforcement consensus grounded in complaint data; there is no trial evidence, and none is needed for a rule with no legitimate exceptions.

1. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) (2023). "Phantom Hacker" Scams Target Senior Citizens (Public Service Announcement I-092923-PSA). ic3.gov
   Description of the three-stage impersonation scam built around moving money to "protect" it, with first-half-2023 loss figures.
2. US Federal Trade Commission (2024). How To Avoid a Government Impersonator Scam. FTC consumer advice
   The guidance that no legitimate agency or company will ask you to move money to protect it, and that gift cards, cryptocurrency, and couriers are scam payment signals.
3. Hadnagy, C. (2018). Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking (2nd ed.). Wiley
   The pretexting mechanics (authority plus urgency plus a helpful role) that the protect-your-money script relies on.