WAYFELD  ·  Travel Safety Tips

What to Do in the First 60 Minutes After Being Robbed Abroad

You won't feel ready. This page makes sure you don't have to be.

It's 11 PM in Lisbon. You just stepped off the tram at Praça do Comércio. Your crossbody bag is gone. You don't even know when it happened — somewhere in the crush of boarding, someone unzipped it and lifted your wallet, your phone, and the pouch with your passport.

You're standing on a cobblestone sidewalk in a country where you don't speak the language, with no money, no ID, no way to call anyone, and a hotel room you can't remember the address of.

Now what?

This post is the answer to that question. Bookmark it. Screenshot it. Print it if you're the kind of person who prints things. Because if it ever happens to you, you won't be Googling it — your phone will be gone.

Minutes 0–5

Stop. Get Safe. Don't Chase.

Your adrenaline will scream at you to run after them. Don't.

Seriously — don't. You don't know if they have a weapon. You don't know if there's a second person waiting. You don't know the neighborhood. And even if you catch them, you're a foreigner in a country where you have no legal standing to detain anyone. The best possible outcome of chasing a thief is getting your stuff back. The worst possible outcomes are much, much worse.

Instead: walk into the nearest hotel lobby, restaurant, or open shop. Anywhere with staff, lights, and other people. Say "I've been robbed" — even if they don't speak English, the body language tends to translate. Ask to use their phone. Sit down. Breathe. You're safe. Everything that was stolen is replaceable.

That last sentence is worth repeating to yourself a few times.

Minutes 5–15

Kill Your Cards. Lock Your Phone.

This is the single most time-sensitive thing on this entire list. A thief with your contactless debit card can drain hundreds of dollars in the time it takes you to walk to a police station. Every minute counts.

Cards first. If you can borrow a phone (hotel front desk, restaurant staff, a fellow traveler), call your bank's international emergency line. Most major banks have a 24/7 number that works from anywhere — and most will freeze the card over the phone in under two minutes. If you banked with a US institution, the number is usually on the back of the card you don't have anymore, which is why you should have it written down separately. (We'll talk about that in the prep section.)

Can't remember the number? Google "[your bank name] lost card international" from any borrowed device. Or just call the general customer service number and say "stolen card, I'm overseas." They'll route you.

Phone second. If your phone was stolen, use someone else's device to sign into your Apple ID (icloud.com/find) or Google account (android.com/find) and remotely lock it. Then mark it as lost. Then — and this matters — change the passwords for your email, banking apps, and anything with saved login credentials on that phone. A stolen phone with a saved Gmail login is a skeleton key to your entire digital life.

Do this before you go to the police. The police report can wait fifteen minutes. Your bank account can't.

Minutes 15–40

File the Police Report

I'll be honest with you: in most countries, the local police are not going to recover your stuff. Petty theft against tourists is so common in major cities that many police stations process these reports like an assembly line. You'll fill out a form, get a reference number, and that will likely be the last you hear of it.

File the report anyway. Here's why:

Your travel insurance company will not process a claim without a police report number. Your embassy will want one before issuing an emergency passport. Your bank may ask for it when disputing fraudulent charges. And if you ever need to prove to anyone — an airline, a border agent, an immigration officer — why you don't have a passport, a police report is the document that makes your story official instead of just a story.

Some practical tips for the station:

If there's a language barrier, write everything down before you go. The hotel front desk can often help you draft a short summary in the local language. Include: what was stolen, where it happened, approximately when, and a basic description of the thief if you saw them. Having this written out speeds up a process that can otherwise take hours.

Ask for a physical copy of the report or, at minimum, an official reference number. Get the officer's name and badge number. Take a photo of the document with your borrowed device if you can.

In Thailand, call the Tourist Police at 1155 — they have English-speaking officers and are far more helpful than regular police for traveler incidents. Many countries have similar tourist police units. Worth a quick search before you travel.

Minutes 40–60

Contact Your Embassy

If your passport was stolen, you need your country's embassy or consulate. They can issue an emergency travel document — a temporary passport that gets you home or to your next destination.

For US citizens, the State Department runs a 24/7 line: +1-888-407-4747 (from the US) or +1-202-501-4444 (from abroad). They can connect you to the nearest consulate, even on weekends and holidays. Every embassy has a duty officer program — if someone tells you the embassy is closed, tell them it's an emergency and ask for the duty officer.

What you'll need to apply for the emergency document: a police report (or reference number), a passport photo (many embassies have a booth), proof of citizenship (this is where your cloud-stored passport photo saves you), and a completed DS-11 form. The process can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, depending on the embassy and how busy they are.

One thing people don't realize: an emergency travel document is usually valid only for direct return to your home country. It's not a full replacement passport. You'll need to apply for a proper replacement when you get home.

After the First Hour

The Next 24 Hours

Once you've stopped the bleeding — cards frozen, phone locked, police report filed, embassy contacted — you're in recovery mode. Here's what comes next, roughly in order:

Call your travel insurance provider. If you have coverage (and you should — this is exactly why), initiate a claim as early as possible. They'll want the police report number, a list of stolen items with approximate values, and receipts if you have them. Many policies cover stolen electronics, emergency accommodation, and even the cost of replacing your passport. Some premium policies will wire you emergency cash.

Get access to money. If your backup card is in the hotel safe (and it should be — the 3-layer system exists for this exact moment), you're fine. If not, your embassy can help arrange an emergency fund transfer from family. Western Union and MoneyGram work in most countries. Some banks can also send an emergency wire to a partner bank abroad — call and ask.

Replace your phone. This one stings, but you need a communication device. A cheap prepaid phone with a local SIM card costs $20–40 in most countries and gives you back your maps, messaging, and ability to call for help. Don't spend days navigating a foreign city without a phone just to save money — it's a safety issue, not a luxury.

Tell someone at home. This sounds obvious, but a lot of people in crisis forget to do it. Call or message a family member or close friend. Tell them what happened, where you are, and what your plan is. If things get more complicated — if the embassy takes longer than expected, if you need money wired, if your flight needs to be changed — you'll want someone at home who already has context.

The Part You Should Read Now

The 10-Minute Prep That Changes Everything

Everything above gets dramatically easier — or dramatically harder — depending on one thing: whether you did ten minutes of preparation before you left home.

Here's the prep list. Do it tonight. Seriously — tonight, before this post scrolls out of your memory.

Photograph your passport, visa, insurance card, and both sides of every credit/debit card. Store these in a secure cloud folder (Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox — password protected). If everything physical is stolen, these digital copies are the foundation for every recovery step.

Write down your bank's international emergency phone number. Not in your phone — on a card in your hotel room, or in an email you can access from any device. You can't call a number saved in a phone that's been stolen.

Carry a backup card in your hotel safe. Not in your day bag. Not in your wallet. A separate card, from a separate bank if possible, that stays in the room. This is your financial parachute.

Enable "Find My" on every device before you leave. iPhone: Settings → [your name] → Find My. Android: Settings → Security → Find My Device. This takes 30 seconds and gives you the ability to remotely lock and wipe a stolen device from any browser.

Save your embassy's address and phone number in multiple places. In your phone, yes — but also in your email, written on a card in your luggage, and memorized if you can manage it. The US State Department emergency line again: +1-202-501-4444.

Buy travel insurance that covers theft. Specifically: check that your policy covers stolen electronics, emergency passport replacement, and emergency accommodation. Read the claims requirements — almost all insurers require a local police report filed within 24 hours. Some require receipts for stolen items. Know this before you need it.

"Getting robbed abroad doesn't ruin your trip. Getting robbed abroad without a plan ruins your trip. The theft takes three seconds. The recovery — with the right prep — takes about an hour."

Look — nobody wants to think about this stuff. Trip planning is supposed to be fun: choosing restaurants, mapping walking routes, debating whether you really need a third pair of shoes.

But ten minutes of prep and a single screenshot of this page could be the difference between "I got robbed in Lisbon and it was a nightmare that ended my trip" and "I got robbed in Lisbon and I had it sorted in an hour, then went and ate pastéis de nata by the river because the city's too beautiful to waste on self-pity."

Do the ten minutes. Then go travel.

WAYFELD
Prepared beats lucky. Every time.
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