FBI: Fake cop and government impersonation scams cost victims $1.6B

Scammers impersonating law enforcement or government officials have cost victims more than $1.6 billion since January 2025, the FBI reports.

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received close to 61,000 complaints of this type between January 2025 and July 2026, putting the average per-complaint loss at more than $26,000.

The most common type of scam is one involving criminals convincing targets to pay a sum of money to remove charges the fraudsters claim were filed against them.

Typically contacting targets via unsolicited phone calls, the scammers usually claim that the target has committed or is connected to a crime, and threaten consequences such as arrest and prison time if a payment is not made.

Accounting for roughly 11 percent of the complaints is a different type of scam, which involves alleging victims did not fulfill their assigned jury duty or missed a court date, then threatening them with a fine or arrest unless they pay.

Of these 6,833 complaints, scammers caused losses amounting to nearly $36 million.

A more profitable variant involves a more targeted approach.

Scammers will complete some due diligence on a target, such as ascertaining their profession, and tailor the scam to their job.

The IC3 has seen cases in which scammers contact medical practitioners, for example, claiming their medical license is expiring or that it was used in the commission of a crime.

Payment is then demanded either under the guise of renewing the license or as part of an extortion attempt to "protect their professional reputation." Victims reported 3,322 instances of this kind of targeted scam, with total losses exceeding $37 million.

A far less common tactic, deployed in 496 of the total complaints, saw scammers claim that documents such as driver's licenses or passports had expired and demand payment to renew them.

Despite accounting for a minority of cases, criminals still netted $348,000 using this method.

Finally, and arguably the most elaborate tactic the IC3 outlined, was the targeting of Americans from different ethnic communities, foreign nationals, and international students in the US.

The nature of the targeting was not the aspect the criminals invested the most effort in.