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"This is the police": the fake-officials scam the FBI says cost $1.6 billion

26 October 2026 · 2 min read

On 17 September 2026 the FBI issued a public warning about criminals who pretend to be law enforcement or government officials. Between January 2025 and July 2026 its Internet Crime Complaint Center received nearly 61,000 complaints about these schemes, with more than $1.6 billion in reported losses.

How the script goes

Most contacts start with a phone call, but texts and emails are common too, and the caller ID or sender address is often spoofed to look like a real agency. The story is always a threat followed by an offer to make it go away:

• you are accused of a crime and will be arrested unless you pay;
• you missed jury duty or a court date and there is a warrant or fine;
• your passport, driver's licence or professional licence is about to be suspended unless you pay a fee;
• doctors, nurses and other licensed professionals are told their licence is under investigation;
• international students and foreign nationals are threatened with deportation.

The FBI notes that scammers now add AI-generated video calls, fake uniforms and staged "offices" to look official.

The tells

The FBI lists the same warning signs again and again:

• you are told not to tell anyone: family, your bank, or the real police;
• the caller is urgent or aggressive and wants to keep you on the line until you pay;
• payment must be made by gift card, cryptocurrency, courier, wire, or cash into a crypto kiosk;
• links point to sites that look official but are misspelled or don't end in .gov.

Real agencies do not collect fines by gift card, do not keep you on the phone while you go to an ATM, and do not ask you to keep a "case" secret from your own bank.

What to do

1. Hang up or stop replying. You are allowed to end the conversation.
2. Call the agency yourself, using a number from its official website, not the one you were given.
3. Never pay by gift card, crypto or courier, and never share personal details with an unverified caller.
4. Tell someone. Scammers rely on secrecy; a five-minute conversation with a colleague often breaks the spell.
5. Report it to your bank if money moved, to local police, and at ic3.gov.

For organizations

These scams increasingly target people at work: the receptionist told the CEO faces arrest, the bookkeeper told a vendor's account is frozen. A simple written rule helps: nobody pays anything because of an unexpected call or email, without a second person checking. KnoxDefender's "Executive impersonation" and "Account-recovery and tech-support scams" courses cover these pressure tactics, and mail that pretends to come from your own domain is flagged before staff see it.

Source

• FBI IC3 public service announcement I-091726-PSA: Scammers Impersonating Law Enforcement and Government Officials in Fraud Schemes (17 September 2026)

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