Falling victim to a scam is terrible, but being targeted a second time by fraudsters posing as law enforcement promising to help you recover is even worse.
Scammers pretending to be from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) have been reported more than 100 times between December 2023 and February 2025, according to an April 18 public service announcement.
Impersonation scams aren’t new—a widespread scheme in 2022 saw scammers posing as government and law enforcement officials, for example—but this latest one doubles up on people whose money has already been stolen.
How the IC3 scam works
As the FBI’s notice describes, scammers may contact fraud victims by phone, email, social media, or forum posts posing as IC3 employees. They offer to help targets recover their lost money—or claim they’ve already recovered it—and ask for payment or personal information, at which point victims lose money and/or data to yet another bad actor.
While there are a number of variations, in one example, scammers created female profiles on social networks, joined groups for financial fraud victims, and suggested members reach out via Telegram to “Jaime Quin,” the “Chief Director” of IC3, who completed the scam.
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