Criminals are placing phone calls that appear to come from real federal field offices while posing as agents of the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Secret Service. FBI Newark described the tactic in a warning dated Sept. 29, calling it an insidious new twist on an old fraud scheme. The twist matters because the standard advice, calling the office back to check, can now appear to confirm the lie.
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Fraud that leans on a government badge is nothing new, and the Newark field office says the underlying scheme is decades old. What has changed is the polish. Instead of a vague caller reading a script, victims now meet a person who gives the name of a genuine agent, shows up on caller ID with a number that belongs to a real office, and sometimes appears on video from what looks like a federal workspace. Each layer is designed to defeat one of the ordinary checks a cautious person would try, which is why the bureau chose to publicize the method rather than wait for more complaints to arrive.
How the spoofed field office number works
According to the FBI Newark release, scammers contact a target, introduce themselves with the name of a real federal agent, and spoof the telephone number of a federal law enforcement field office so the call looks authentic on the screen. A victim who grows suspicious and dials the office to ask whether the agent exists may reach a real employee who truthfully says the agent works there. The scammer has borrowed that truth to make the rest of the story believable.
In other cases the victim cannot get anyone on the line at all, and the authentic-looking number does the persuading by itself. Either way, the call that follows ends in pressure to hand over money, and the caller relies on the victim treating the matching phone number as proof of identity. The release is explicit that the number on the screen is not proof of anything.
A staged FBI office on video
The release describes one fraudster who joined an online meeting against a background staged to resemble an FBI office, complete with a desk, an FBI seal and a man in a suit. Local television coverage by Fox 5 New York, published Oct. 6, repeated the point that legitimate federal law enforcement will never demand money over the phone or in a virtual meeting, and noted that scammers host video meetings with fake backgrounds that include a counterfeit seal.
The tech-industry site Cybernews quoted Amy Thoreson, the Public Affairs Specialist for FBI Newark, who said the techniques make it extremely difficult for potential victims to verify whether they are being targeted. Cybernews also reported that scammers are using artificial intelligence tools and newer technology, and that the aim is to collect both money and personal details that can be reused in later phishing. That reporting is secondary to the FBI release itself, so those additional claims are best read as the outlet’s account of the warning rather than as separate FBI findings.
The scale of government impersonation
Cybernews also cited figures from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center: nearly 61,000 law enforcement or government impersonation complaints between January 2025 and July 2026, with reported losses above $1.6 billion. Those totals cover impersonation of law enforcement and government generally, not only the spoofed field office calls described in the Newark release, so they describe the wider problem and not the size of this specific variant.
The Newark release does not give a count of victims or a dollar figure for the new field office spoofing, and it does not say how many agents’ names have been misused. Readers should treat the warning as a description of a method, not a measurement of how widespread it has become.
What the FBI tells recipients to do
The advice in the release is short and consistent. Never send money to anyone claiming to be a federal law enforcement agent. Look up the agency’s official phone number independently instead of relying on the number the caller supplies, call it, and say that a scam may be under way. Most federal law enforcement agencies maintain toll-free 800 numbers, and anyone who cannot reach a local field office can contact the agency’s main office in Washington, D.C. The FBI also lists 1-800-CALL-FBI for reaching a real FBI representative.
The step that is easy to overlook is the one about video. If a fraudster appears in a virtual meeting, the FBI asks the target to take photos or record the call and to submit the material through the bureau’s online tip form. A recording of a staged office, a seal or a scripted background gives investigators something concrete to examine, which a phone number alone rarely does.
The bureau’s broader scams and safety page lists the reporting routes it offers, including an anonymous tip, a link for cyber scams and incidents, and contact details for local and international offices. That page does not single out impersonation scams, so the Newark release remains the specific guidance for this tactic. Anyone who has already sent money to a caller of this kind should report it promptly through the bureau’s channels and keep any call logs, messages or recordings that exist.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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