FBI: scammers posing as police and government officials demand money, mostly by phone; some use AI to appear on video calls
Checked
The FBI counted nearly 61,000 complaints and over $1.6 billion in reported losses from January 2025 to July 2026. The FBI says real authorities never call to demand payment.
How to protect yourself
Who is affected
Anyone. The FBI says its Internet Crime Complaint Center received nearly 61,000 complaints of law enforcement or government impersonation scams between January 2025 and July 2026, with reported losses of more than $1.6 billion. The FBI does not say how many of those involved AI.
What happened
The FBI says scammers posing as U.S. or foreign law enforcement or government officials contact people, mostly by unsolicited phone calls, and also by text message and email. They often spoof real agency phone numbers, email addresses, employee names and credentials. They accuse the person of a crime, a missed court date or jury duty, or an expiring license, threaten arrest or other consequences, and demand payment by prepaid cards, couriers, bank wires, cryptocurrency or cash put into cryptocurrency kiosks. They may tell victims not to tell family, friends, their bank or law enforcement about the call. The FBI says scammers use "new technologies, such as artificial intelligence," which "allow scammers to appear as law enforcement and government officials on video calls with victims."
Separately, FINRA warned in June 2026 that scam calls can use AI voice cloning to imitate investment professionals, and that brokerage firms have reported bad actors using these voice phishing techniques to get customer credentials, which can lead to account takeovers.
What to do now
- The FBI says law enforcement and government authorities will never call or text the public to demand payment or ask for personal or sensitive information, and will never ask for payment by prepaid cards, cryptocurrency or courier.
- Verify before you share anything. The FBI says to use official, publicly available contact information for the agency, not contact information from the person who reached out.
- Check links. The FBI says scam web addresses can closely mirror official ones, for example ending in .com instead of .gov.
- FINRA says that if a request involves money, account access or sensitive information, verify it through a different, trusted channel, never share verification codes over the phone or by text, and set up family code words to verify one another in emergencies.
- If you were targeted, the FBI says to stop all contact, notify your financial institutions to protect your accounts, file a report with local law enforcement, and file a complaint at ic3.gov.
Dates
- Event date: ongoing. The complaint figures cover January 2025 to July 2026.
- Published: Sept 17, 2026 (FBI IC3 alert I-091726-PSA, an update to its March 7, 2022 alert). FINRA article: June 18, 2026.
- Date checked: Oct 22, 2026.