Scammers posing as police and courts have taken $1.6 billion, the FBI says

Nearly 61,000 people reported being swindled by callers, texters, and emailers posing as police officers, judges, and federal agents between January 2025 and July 2026, and their combined losses passed $1.6 billion, the FBI said in a public service announcement issued September 17, 2026. The bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, known as IC3, described the losses as part of an “ongoing, widespread” pattern of law-enforcement and government impersonation that has accelerated since the FBI first raised the alarm in 2022.

The scams follow a consistent script regardless of the specific accusation. Contact usually starts with an unsolicited phone call, though scammers also reach targets by text message and email, spoofing real phone numbers and copying the names, badge numbers, and credentials of genuine officials. Callers keep victims on the line for the length of the encounter, refuse to leave voicemails, use an urgent and aggressive tone, and instruct targets not to mention the call to family members, banks, or actual police. Payment is demanded through prepaid gift cards, cash couriers, wire transfers, cryptocurrency, or cash fed directly into cryptocurrency kiosks — channels that are difficult to trace and nearly impossible to reverse once the money moves.

A false accusation of a crime opens most calls

The largest single category, laid out in the FBI’s September 17 alert, accuses the victim of committing or being connected to a crime — often money laundering tied to a trafficking ring — and threatens arrest, prosecution, or imprisonment unless the person pays to clear the charge or assist in an investigation against the “real” suspects. IC3 says this pretext makes up the majority of the impersonation complaints filed over the eighteen-month window, though the agency folded the dollar figure for that slice into the overall $1.6 billion rather than breaking it out separately. Scammers frequently spoof the badge numbers and credentials of the very agencies they claim to represent, a tactic detailed further in a separate 2025 warning about impersonation of IC3 itself.

The September 2026 notice is formally an update to a March 2022 alert on the same fraud pattern, and the four-year gap between the two documents shows how much larger the scheme has grown, from a warning with no comparable loss total attached to one anchored by $1.6 billion in reported harm in under two years.

Jury duty warrants and expiring licenses invent urgency

A second pretext accuses the victim of skipping jury duty or missing a court date, then threatens a fine or an arrest warrant unless a payment is made immediately. Between January 2025 and July 2026, IC3 logged 6,833 complaints tied to this version, with losses totaling nearly $36 million. A related but smaller variant tells victims that a passport, driver’s license, or professional license is about to expire and payment is needed to renew it; that pretext generated 496 complaints and more than $348,000 in losses over the same period.

Medical practitioners get a pointed version of the license threat. Scammers accuse doctors, nurses, or other licensed clinicians of having an expiring medical license, or of having a license number used in someone else’s crime, then threaten to revoke it unless the practitioner pays to renew or protect their standing. The FBI recorded 3,322 complaints in this category, with losses exceeding $37 million — more than the jury-duty and expiring-license categories combined, despite hitting a far narrower slice of the population.

Foreign-official impersonation targets immigrants and international students

A fourth pattern singles out Americans from specific ethnic communities, foreign nationals, and international students living in the United States. Scammers pose as foreign law-enforcement officers or as US-based diplomatic officials from a victim’s home country, then threaten extradition or cancellation of a home-country passport. Some wear fake police uniforms or stage mock government offices on video calls to make the threat look real, and the bureau notes these claims are especially hard for victims to verify because they involve officials overseas. IC3 received 1,809 complaints in this category between January 2025 and July 2026, with losses topping $140 million, the second-largest dollar total after the general crime-accusation pretext.

AI deepfakes and untraceable payment channels close the loop

Scammers have started layering artificial intelligence onto the same scripts. The FBI says impersonators now use AI tools to appear as convincing law-enforcement or government officials on live video calls, adding a visual layer of legitimacy a phone call alone cannot provide. A related July 2026 alert on scammers impersonating IC3 with AI-generated video describes the same technology being used to re-target people who had already lost money once, compounding the damage on repeat victims.

Whatever the pretext, the money moves through channels chosen for how hard they are to claw back. Prepaid cards can be drained within minutes of purchase, couriers physically remove cash before a victim can reconsider, and cryptocurrency transfers are difficult to reverse once confirmed on the blockchain, a challenge the FBI has addressed separately in guidance on what information to preserve when a payment involves cryptocurrency. The bureau’s core message has not changed since 2022: genuine law enforcement and government agencies never call or text to demand immediate payment, and never ask for prepaid cards, cryptocurrency, or courier delivery. Anyone targeted is directed to cut off contact with the scammer, alert the relevant financial institution, notify local police, and file a report with IC3 along with any phone numbers, financial details, and messages tied to the contact.

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

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