FBI ties $1.6 billion in losses to police and government impersonation scams over 19 months

One variant comes with both numbers attached, and it divides out. Nearly $36 million across 6,833 complaints is roughly $5,200 per complaint ^[2]. It is also about 2 percent of the $1.6 billion headline figure ^[3]. The FBI did not publish a complaint count for the arrest-threat calls that carry the remainder ^[5], so there is no per-victim average for the bulk of the money.

The call follows a pattern the FBI spells out. "Scammers will use a variety of approaches while impersonating these officials, such as using urgent and aggressive tones, refusing to speak to or leave messages with anyone other than the targeted victim, keeping victims on the phone for the duration of the scam, or urging victims not to tell family, friends, financial institutions, or law enforcement about the call," the agency wrote ^[6]. Each of those behaviours keeps the target away from the people who would tell them to hang up. Payment then goes out by prepaid card, wire transfer, cryptocurrency, or cash handed to a courier ^[7].

The handset display is part of the pretext. Some callers spoof real government phone numbers and names, including IC3's own ^[8]. Some scammers "wear fake police uniforms and use mock sets of official government facilities" to make the threat look convincing ^[12], and the FBI says the use of AI is evident in some cases ^[13]. The agency's instruction is a callback on a number the recipient sources themselves: "Never give your personal information to anyone without verifying the person is who they say they are. Ask for credentials and use official, publicly available information to contact the government or law enforcement agency to verify the caller and their credentials; do not use contact information provided by the person contacting you" ^[15].

"Scammers may tailor their tactics for specific types of victims," the FBI wrote ^[9]. Medical practitioners have been told their license is expiring or was used in a crime, with a threat to revoke it unless the practitioner pays to protect it ^[10]. The impersonated officials in the immigration-themed calls are foreign law enforcement or foreign diplomats based in the US, and the FBI notes those calls are hard to verify because they often involve unknown officials overseas ^[16]. An employer with clinicians or visa holders on staff can name those two pretexts in a script.

The baseline rule is one sentence long and belongs on a customer-facing page: law enforcement and government officials will never call or text demanding payment or personal information, and will never ask for payment through prepaid cards, cryptocurrency, or a courier ^[14]. A smaller set of calls skips the crime story altogether and claims a passport, driver's license, or professional license is expiring, with a fee to renew it ^[5]. Across the 19 months of the window, reported losses average about $84 million a month ^[4].