The U.S. is in the grip of a phishing attack sweeping “state-to-state,” with Las Vegas and Phoenix the latest cities to receive warnings from the bureau as a toll scam attributed to Chinese hackers shows no signs of slowing. But just as America becomes more aware of that particular threat, here comes another one that’s much more malicious.
The bureau is now warning that criminals are “impersonating law enforcement or government officials in attempts to extort money or steal personally identifiable information.” This threat may come at you by email, with “the appearance of legitimacy by using pictures of the FBI Director and/or the FBI seal and letterhead.” But it’s more likely to be a phone call. “On the phone, scammers often spoof caller ID information, so fraudulent calls appear to be coming from an agency’s legitimate phone number.”
The bureau’s advice is clear. “Hang up immediately and report the call to law enforcement.” It should be an obvious red flag, but in the moment with a well-versed scammer on the phone, it can be all too easy to fall victim. “Law enforcement does not call or email individuals threatening arrest or demanding money.”
There’s some variety of flavors to this scam, and the FBI gives examples:
- “Demanding payment or threatening arrest. You will also not be asked to wire a ‘settlement’ to avoid arrest.
- Asking you to use large sums of your own money to help catch a criminal.
- Requesting you send money via wire transfer to foreign accounts, cryptocurrency, or gift/prepaid cards
- Calling you about ‘frozen’ Social Security numbers or to coordinate inheritances.”
Echoes here of the “phantom hacker” calls that the bureau warned about earlier this year. This is when a spoofed bank call tricks users into transferring money to a new account to safeguard it from an ongoing attack. Again, a bank will never call to ask you to move money, just as technical support will never unexpectedly call to inform you that there’s a fault with your phone or computer, proactively offering to help.
The latest law enforcement impersonation warning comes by way of the FBI’s Philadelphia Field Office, but just as with the toll scam it’s a much wider threat. Last week, the San Francisco Police Department warned its Chinese community that “individuals [have been]
impersonating local health care providers, federal employees, and foreign police officers, claiming to be from cities located in China.”
These scams have even included “video calls [with] suspects dressed in Chinese police officers’ uniforms with a background resembling a police station in China. The victims were instructed to download communications applications like Signal or Skype for texts, voice calls and video calls to discuss the alleged fraud further.”
We have also seen criminals impersonating ICE officers this year, playing to the political focus on immigration, making deportation threats absent the fast payment of fines. Scammers like northing more than an event to cloak their attack. As such, you can expect a wave of tariff-related scams to proliferate over the coming weeks.
Just remember, regardless of what number appears on your iphone or Android screen, no law enforcement officer, bank official, tech support agent or anyone else in an official capacity is going to call you out of the blue to demand information, ask you to install software, or demand money. Hang up and call back or go online using a normal, publicly available source. Don’t take any risks.
