Nearly 61,000 complaints described fake police and government calls, with losses above $1.6 billion

The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center logged nearly 61,000 complaints of law enforcement or government impersonation between January 2025 and July 2026, with reported losses of more than $1.6 billion. The count comes from a public service announcement dated September 17, 2026, and it covers complaints filed in the United States only.

Behind the totals is a scam with a simple shape: an unsolicited call from someone claiming to be a police officer, court official, federal agent or diplomat, followed by a threat and a demand for money. The bureau’s warning describes how the callers work, which payment methods give them away, and what a person on the receiving end should do before any money moves. The notice is filed in the bureau’s public service announcement series as PSA260917 and updates an earlier alert, PSA220307, which the bureau published on March 7, 2022, so the agency is treating the problem as a long-running one that has grown rather than a new wrinkle.

What the FBI’s complaint data shows

In its September 2026 announcement, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center said it had “received nearly 61,000 complaints of law enforcement or government impersonation scams” in the period, with “losses totaling more than $1.6 billion.” The loss figure is a sum across all of those complaints. It is not the haul from one scheme or one group of offenders.

The same announcement breaks out several of the pretexts callers use. Accusations of a crime, backed by threats of arrest or prosecution, account for most complaints. Claims of a missed jury duty or court date produced 6,833 complaints and losses of nearly $36 million. Threats aimed at medical license holders produced 3,322 complaints and losses above $37 million, and impersonation of foreign officials or diplomats, who threaten extradition or passport cancellation, produced 1,809 complaints and losses above $140 million.

Smaller categories exist too. Warnings about expiring passports, driver’s licenses or professional licenses generated 496 complaints and losses above $348,000. The spread matters because it shows the scam is not tied to one story. The caller adapts the accusation to the target, whether that is a retiree, a physician or a traveler, and keeps the pressure constant. The announcement frames the common thread as fear of consequences, since each story ends with an arrest, a fine or a lost license unless money or personal information changes hands quickly.

How the callers spoof agencies and pressure victims

According to the FBI, most contact arrives by phone, though texts and emails are also used. The announcement says the scammers “spoof real numbers, addresses, names, and credentials, and may now use AI on video calls.” A caller ID that appears to match a real agency is therefore not evidence of anything, and a face on a screen is no longer proof of a badge either.

The FBI also describes the pressure tactics. Callers push urgency, keep the person on the line, and instruct the target not to contact family members, a bank or the police. The isolation is deliberate: it removes the people most likely to say that the story sounds wrong. The announcement notes that scammers have even impersonated the Internet Crime Complaint Center itself.

That last detail has a history. In an April 2025 warning, the FBI reported more than 100 complaints between December 2023 and February 2025 about people posing as the center’s own employees. Those callers typically claimed they could recover money a victim had lost to an earlier scam, which set up a second round of fraud against someone already harmed once.

The payment demand that gives the scam away

The clearest tell is how the money is requested. The FBI lists “payment demands via prepaid cards, couriers, wires, cryptocurrency, or cash loaded into crypto kiosks” as the channels used in these schemes, and states that real agencies “will never contact members of the public by telephone or text message to demand” payment or sensitive information. A real court clerk or federal agent does not ask for a gift card number, and no legitimate fine is settled through a bitcoin machine in a convenience store.

The warning is a refresh of an older one. A March 2022 alert described the same pattern of spoofed agency numbers, urgent arrest threats and demands for prepaid cards, wire transfers, cash or cryptocurrency ATMs. The 2026 version adds the scale of recent complaints and the possibility of AI-generated video, but the advice has stayed consistent for more than four years.

For anyone who gets such a call, the FBI’s guidance is to verify independently. That means ending the call and contacting the agency through official, publicly listed contact details, never the number or website the caller supplies, and checking web addresses carefully because scammers use near-identical domains or endings other than .gov.

People who have already paid are told to stop all contact, notify their financial institutions, report to local law enforcement and file a complaint at the IC3 website. The bureau asks for scammer contact details, payment information including cryptocurrency addresses, and copies of communications. Its separate guidance for cryptocurrency scam victims explains that wallet addresses, amounts, dates and transaction hashes are the most useful details to include, and that a report should still be filed if some of them are missing.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

More from Morning Overview