Scammers Dupe Victims of Financial Fraud with Online Personas of Victims and FBI IC3 Officials

• Scammers are approaching financial fraud victims to dupe them again
• They are creating fraudulent online profiles impersonating victims and IC3 officials 
• In order to recover their lost funds, they are asked to approach scammers who charge them for the same

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), that allows filing a complaint for cyber fraud with the FBI is being impersonated by cybercriminals. On April 18, the IC3 issued a public service announcement alerting about an ongoing scheme with threat actors posing as FBI IC3 employees to trick people.

The department received over a 100 reports about IC3 impersonation scams between December 2023 and February 2025. Scammers are contacting specific individuals via their social media accounts.

“Complainants report initial contact from the scammers can vary. Some individuals received an email or a phone call, while others were approached via social media or forums,” the IC3 announcement read.

In the day and age where data breaches, financial fraud and identity theft are so common, it comes as no surprise that threat actors are using it as a bait to dupe individuals.

“Almost all complainants indicated the scammers claimed to have recovered the victim's lost funds or offered to assist in recovering funds,” the announcement further added. The targeting of specific individuals hint at threat actors looking for vulnerable victims of data theft, credit card data leak, and similar fraud to win their trust with false assurance.

When a dark web user does not get paid or at times even after ransoming companies, they go on targeting individual victims with their leaked information.

In this scam, they are sent deceptive messages via email, phone, social media, or public forums. As for the technique used to win the target's trust, scammers create fraudulent social media 'victim' profiles and join financial fraud victims’ groups to identify themselves as victims.

They reach out to fraud victims and direct them to other scammers posing as IC3 employees. One of the fraudulent accounts was found on Telegram under the name of Jaime Quin, Chief Director of IC3. 

In the instructions to prevent oneself from fraud the IC3 asked users to keep their details private, and never to disclose them to anyone urging to help them even in the name of law enforcement, especially when they were not contacted in the first place. 

When IC3 needs information, they never directly contact via phone, email, social media, phone or public forums. In such cases, FBI officials or other law enforcement officers would directly contact from local field offices.

IC3 never seeks monetary compensation for any lost fund recovery nor do they refer a victim to an entity asking for money. They are requested to approach IC3 on their official website https://www.ic3.gov/ or call them.