FBI, FTC Warn: Fraudsters Are Impersonating Investigators Right Now

Breaking: Fake FBI/IC3 "recovery agents" are re-targeting past victims

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center issued an updated public service announcement on July 20 warning that criminals are impersonating FBI employees and the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) in an increasingly sophisticated recovery scam. Critically, instead of targeting random victims, these scammers go after people who lost money in previous scams, and promise to recover stolen funds, then use fake FBI identities, AI-generated videos, spoofed government websites, social media accounts, and malicious links to steal even more personal and financial information.

IC3 said the goal of the scheme is "to deceive and revictimize individuals". Officials stressed that the IC3 does not maintain social media accounts, initiate direct contact via phone, email, or messaging apps, or offer fund recovery services, and never requests payment or refers victims to third parties for recovery. This lines up closely with AVASC's own reporting, where prior victims have described being re-contacted by people impersonating IC3/FBI with fee-upfront "recovery" offers, a pattern our team first flagged in mid-June and continues to see.

FTC: scammers impersonating our own employees to drain accounts

Separately, the Federal Trade Commission issued a warning regarding scammers who impersonate its employees and spoof official phone numbers to trick victims into transferring money. The agency says scammers are spoofing the real FTC phone number, using convincing tactics such as referencing real FTC employees and sending pictures of FTC badges to deceive victims. The FTC's blunt reminder: the FTC will never threaten you, say you must transfer money to "protect it," or tell you to withdraw cash or buy gold and give it to someone. This mirrors what AVASC is seeing across government-impersonation reports — callers posing as federal agencies to manufacture urgency and demand immediate payment.

What we're seeing: AI is scaling romance-investment ("pig butchering") cons

AVASC's incident data continues to track a cluster of pig-butchering scams where AI helps run mass romance-investment conversations funneling victims into fake crypto platforms. That aligns with new reporting that cryptocurrency-related fraud caused over $11 billion in losses in 2025, making crypto investment scams one of the largest sources of online financial crime, with reported losses from AI-assisted scams accounting for almost $893 million. Investigators note criminal syndicates now use agentic AI to automate the grooming process, with these AI agents able to maintain thousands of deep, personalized relationships simultaneously — a scale shift that helps explain why AVASC is seeing losses per victim frequently reach five and six figures.