The FBI lists a fake voter-registration text among four schemes riding the midterms

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has named four fraud schemes that are exploiting the 2026 midterm election season: a campaign investment pool, a fake political action committee, an online purchase that never ships and a voter-registration message that steals personal information. The Bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center published the warning on Oct. 15, 2026, as a public service announcement.

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The notice is a consumer-fraud warning, not a statement about any election, candidate or campaign. It describes how scammers borrow the vocabulary of political giving and voting to collect money and identity details from people who believe they are taking part in ordinary civic activity. It gives no loss figures and no victim counts.

The four schemes the FBI lists

The FBI’s public service announcement, titled “Scammers Exploit 2026 U.S. Midterm Election to Perpetrate Multiple Fraud Schemes,” sets out the four in order. The first is the campaign investment pool, in which scammers promise a guaranteed return on campaign contribution dollars, say the money will pay out after the candidate wins, and urge victims to recruit others in order to raise their own share. The pitch leans on the idea that a donation can behave like an investment, which is the premise the FBI’s later advice on donations is written to knock down.

The second is the political action committee scheme, which the FBI abbreviates as ScamPACs. Victims believe they are giving to a legitimate PAC or campaign committee, but the scammers have no affiliation with it and keep the money. The third is the online purchase scheme, a non-shipment fraud in which political merchandise is sold and never delivered, so the buyer pays and receives nothing. The announcement lists it as its own scheme alongside the two donation frauds, which sets it apart from them: the victim is a customer, not a donor.

The fourth is the voter-registration scheme. A victim receives a text or email claiming that he or she is not registered to vote, with a link that leads to a fraudulent state registration page built to harvest personal information. The harm in this case is the data itself rather than a payment, and the bait is a plain claim about the recipient’s own registration status, which is why the notice points to an official lookup rather than to the message.

A rule on donations and a checklist for texts

The FBI’s central message about giving is blunt. In the announcement’s own words, “Campaign donations are not an investment and will not increase in value nor be returned.” The same announcement advises caution with unsolicited calls, texts, emails and surveys, and says not to provide personal information to unknown persons or to click unknown links.

For committees, the FBI points to public records. It recommends checking PAC and committee registrations and financial filings on the Federal Election Commission’s website, and notes that high fundraising, consulting or administrative expenses can signal a scam even when a PAC appears to be registered. The commission’s committee search page lets visitors look up federal campaign committees by name or identification number, filter them by type and see each one’s treasurer and registration date.

For merchandise, the FBI suggests researching a seller through reviews and complaints before buying, and confirming that any unsolicited contact information matches the organization it claims to represent. For the registration scheme, the recommended check goes to an official source: the announcement directs recipients of such a message to confirm their status at vote.gov, a federal site that lists checking registration status among its common questions.

An update to a 2024 warning

The 2026 notice revises an earlier one. The FBI issued a similar warning on Oct. 29, 2024, issued for the 2024 general election, which listed the same four categories under slightly different names: a campaign investment pool, scam political action committees, a merchandise online purchase scam and a scam voter registration. That earlier notice also carried no loss figures.

Coverage of the new notice has added one theme. Help Net Security reported on Oct. 16 that the FBI says scammers are using artificial intelligence tools to create convincing voices, images and messages that impersonate candidates, campaigns, government entities and trusted people, which makes the schemes harder to detect. The same report quoted Max Gannon of the security firm Cofense advising that suspicious messages be checked through independently found sources, such as the Federal Election Commission site or vote.gov, rather than through the link or contact details in the message.

Scam political committees are an older and well-documented problem. The Minnesota Attorney General’s office, in its consumer guidance on scam PACs, describes groups that adopt charitable-sounding names, press for quick gifts by robocall and robotext, and use unusual payment methods, and it advises against clicking links in texts. The office adds that donations to such groups are generally not tax-deductible, that some donation forms hide a recurring-gift box, and that donor information may be sold afterward, leading to more solicitations.

The FBI asks anyone targeted to report it to a local FBI field office or to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, including the contact’s name and identifying details, payment information and a description of how the contact began and what was requested.

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

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