FBI Renews Warning: Fake 'Recovery Agents' Are Re-Targeting Scam Victims

Active: fake 'fund recovery' scams are hitting people who already lost money

The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center issued an updated public service announcement warning that criminal scammers continue impersonating FBI personnel and IC3 to deceive and revictimize individuals who have already reported fraud or plan to. The bureau says the scheme now combines fake law-enforcement identities with AI-generated video content and spoofed complaint-portal websites to make the con look official.

According to the update, scammers create fraudulent social media profiles impersonating FBI or IC3 staff, sometimes infiltrating online groups for fraud victims, and contact people directly claiming they can recover stolen funds. The IC3 was explicit that it never operates this way: any social media profile or page claiming to represent IC3 or offering to recover lost money is fraudulous, and IC3 does not contact victims by phone, email, social media, or chat.

This tracks closely with what AVASC's database has been logging: prior scam victims contacted by fake recovery firms and people impersonating the FBI/IC3 promising fund recovery for an upfront fee. If you've already reported a loss and now get a follow-up 'good news' message about recovering it, treat that contact itself as the red flag.

Also active: social-media 'learn to trade' pitches funneling people into losses

The FTC put out a fresh consumer alert this week highlighting a lawsuit against International Markets Live (IML/IM Mastery Academy/IYOVIA), which the agency says advertised unqualified "educators" and used false earning claims to recruit people into a large investment-training scheme. The company is now shut down and its leaders must turn over more than $90 million in assets.

The FTC's broader message: no one can guarantee big, risk-free trading profits, and anyone who does is a scammer; the agency recommends searching a company's name alongside terms like "scam" or "complaint" before paying for any trading education or opportunity.

AVASC's incident data shows a related and more dangerous variant this period: organized rings using AI to run large numbers of simultaneous romance and investment conversations that funnel targets into fake crypto platforms, with per-victim losses often reaching five and six figures. The through-line in both the FTC case and AVASC's data is the same — a flashy social-media pitch about "guaranteed" trading success is the opening move, not proof of legitimacy.

Still running: unpaid-toll text messages and government-impersonation calls

The nationwide wave of fake unpaid-toll text messages that state DOTs and courts have been warning about all summer remains active; researchers have linked the campaigns to organized smishing operations that register large numbers of look-alike domains impersonating toll agencies to harvest card and personal data. AVASC's own reports show this pattern continuing through early July, consistent with the broader federal picture.

Alongside this, imposter scams — callers posing as the IRS, Social Security, FTC, or police demanding immediate payment by gift card, wire, or cryptocurrency — remain the largest category of scam reports to the FTC, and the FTC itself continues to warn that it will never tell you to withdraw cash, buy gold, or transfer money to "protect" it.