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Cybercriminals have created fake versions of the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) website to steal personal information from individuals attempting to report cybercrimes. The FBI issued a public warning that these spoofed sites use typosquatting and similar domain tricks to deceive users into entering sensitive data, including names, addresses, emails, and banking details. Victims may also be targeted by scammers impersonating IC3 staff, who promise to recover lost funds in exchange for payment. The FBI advises the public to verify the IC3 website’s URL and avoid using search engines or sponsored links to access the site, as these may lead to fraudulent portals. This campaign follows a broader trend of law enforcement impersonation and secondary attacks on cybercrime victims.
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The FBI publicly warned that spoofed IC3 websites were active and being used to steal personal data from the public. Multiple reports on September 22-24, 2025 describe the same alert and advise users to verify they are using the legitimate IC3 site.
Scammers set up fake versions of the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) website to trick victims into submitting personal and financial information. The spoofing campaign used FBI branding and the IC3 theme as part of broader fraud schemes.
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The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (**IC3**) has warned that scammers are posing as FBI personnel and IC3 representatives to target people who have already lost money to cybercrime and fraud. The operation uses fake social media profiles, direct messages, phone calls, emails, online forums, spoofed IC3 websites, and **AI-generated videos** of senior FBI officials to falsely claim that stolen funds have been recovered or can be recovered, with the goal of stealing additional personal and financial information. The FBI said the fraudsters often contact victims on platforms such as Facebook Messenger before moving conversations to apps like Telegram, where they may send links that harvest data or contain malicious code. Deepfake videos have also been used to steer victims to fake complaint portals designed to mimic `ic3.gov` and collect sensitive details about prior losses. IC3 stressed that it has **no social media presence**, does not initiate contact through social media, chat apps, phone, or email to recover money, and never asks victims to pay fees for fund recovery; legitimate follow-up would come from an FBI employee or another law enforcement official.
Aug 11, 2026
The FBI has issued a warning about a significant increase in account takeover (ATO) fraud schemes, with cybercriminals impersonating financial institutions to steal money and sensitive information. Since the beginning of the year, over $262 million in losses have been reported from more than 5,100 complaints. Attackers use social engineering tactics—including texts, calls, and emails—to trick victims into revealing login credentials, multi-factor authentication codes, or one-time passcodes. Once access is gained, criminals reset passwords, lock out account owners, and quickly transfer funds, often to cryptocurrency wallets, making recovery difficult. The FBI highlighted that these schemes are becoming more sophisticated, with tactics such as search engine optimization (SEO) poisoning, where fraudulent ads mimic legitimate e-commerce or financial sites to lure victims. The warning comes ahead of the holiday season, a period when such scams typically increase. The agency urges heightened vigilance, especially as cybercriminals exploit fears of fraudulent transactions and use impersonation of both financial institution staff and law enforcement to manipulate victims into providing sensitive account information.
Jun 29, 2026
The FBI has warned that cybercriminals are abusing **Traffic Distribution Systems (TDSs)** to silently route users through layered redirects to phishing pages, fake login portals, malware delivery sites, and other fraudulent destinations. In a Public Service Announcement issued through IC3, the bureau said attackers are funneling victims into these chains through phishing emails and links, **SEO poisoning**, malicious advertisements, and compromised legitimate websites, using intermediate redirect nodes to obscure the final destination and evade security controls. The FBI said malicious TDS infrastructure can profile visitors by attributes including IP address, geography, browser, operating system, and device type, allowing criminals to selectively serve harmful content to intended targets while showing benign pages to researchers or users outside target regions. The bureau warned that resulting compromises can lead to credential theft, financial fraud, malware infections, and the resale of network access to ransomware operators, and urged organizations to strengthen defenses with **multi-factor authentication**, unique passwords, timely patching of CMS components and plugins, web application firewalls, endpoint monitoring for suspicious scripts, account audits, employee phishing awareness training, and incident reporting to **IC3** or local FBI field offices.
Jun 29, 2026