Scammed out of your money once? You could be scammed again

Within the span of two weeks, two federal agencies — the FBI and the FTC — sounded the alarm about the same scheme: scamming the very people who have already been scammed.

First, on July 20, 2026, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) updated its warning about criminals impersonating FBI employees and the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) — the FBI's own portal where the public reports online crime — to defraud victims a second time.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) followed on August 3, 2026 with an alert on refund and recovery scams — in its own blunt words, "the worst of the absolute worst: scams that target people who have already lost money to a scam." According to the FBI's 2025 IC3 annual report, recovery scams alone accounted for more than $1.4 billion in reported losses last year — over $540 million of it reported by victims aged 60 and older.

Who's being targeted — and why

If you haven't followed the original scams this crew feeds on: the victims are typically people who lost money to fake cryptocurrency investments, to an online "sweetheart" who borrowed money and vanished, or to a phone call from a fake tax agent threatening arrest. In this community, some families have also lost money when a hụi circle collapsed. That group — already hurt once, eager to get their money back — is exactly who the second scam goes after.

The second scam runs on one simple fact: your information does not disappear when the first scam ends. Your name, address, phone number, the kind of scam, the amount you lost — it all becomes merchandise, what the FTC calls a "sucker list," bought and sold among fraud rings.

The scam: posing as the people who can get your money back

The scammers then reach out by phone, email, or social media, claiming to be from a government agency — some even claim to work for the FTC itself — or from a law firm or consumer-protection group, promising to recover your money, the merchandise that never arrived, or a prize you never received. However they hook you, the final step never changes: a "filing fee," a "processing fee," or a request for your bank account information so they can "deposit your recovered money." And the cycle repeats: pay the fee, and you lose more money. Hand over your information, and you risk identity theft too.

The FTC is unequivocal: no government agency or legitimate organization will charge you — or ask for your financial information — just to help you get your own money back.

The cunning twist: impersonating the very place you'd go to report them

What makes the FBI's latest warning stand out is a new variant: the scammers no longer impersonate just anyone — they impersonate the exact place you would turn to report them: the FBI and IC3 themselves.

According to the FBI, one ring builds social media accounts posing as women, blends into support groups for scam victims, plays the fellow victim, then steers real victims to Telegram to talk with someone calling himself the "Chief Director" of IC3. Another ring, also per the FBI, uses artificial intelligence to create deepfake videos of a senior FBI leader, spreads them on social media, and urges viewers to file complaints on a website that looks almost identical to ic3.gov.

The fake ic3.gov asks for only a few basics — name, phone number, email, scam type, amount lost — then issues an official-sounding "reference number" and promises that someone will be in touch. The person who calls back is the scammer.

How to tell real from fake

So how do you know whether you're talking to the real FBI or IC3 — or to an impostor? A few things to remember.

First, the rule of rules: per the FTC, no government agency or legitimate organization will ever ask you to pay upfront to get your money back. Anyone who does is a scammer — full stop.

If someone claiming to be IC3 messages you on Telegram or Facebook Messenger — like the first scenario above — you can safely call it fake on the spot. Why? According to the FBI, IC3 has no presence on any social media platform and never initiates contact with anyone by phone, text, or chat.

As for those very convincing videos — the second scenario — remember: a familiar face on a screen can now be the product of artificial intelligence. The safest move is still to look up the agency's number on its official website and place the call yourself — never use a number or link a stranger gave you.

How to report it the right way

Recognizing the scam is one thing — knowing how to report it to the right place, the right way, is another. Because as you've seen, even the complaint website can be faked.

To be certain you're dealing with the real government agency, the surest way is to type www.ic3.gov into your browser's address bar yourself — and never click a link someone sent you, no matter how real it looks.

Scammers like to clone the domain by adding or dropping a letter, or swapping the ".gov" ending for something else. The cybersecurity news site BleepingComputer found spoofed sites at icc3.live (an extra "c") and ic3a.com (an extra "a" and the wrong ending) — easy to mistake for the real ic3.gov at a glance.

If you search on Google, look carefully before clicking the links at the top of the results: the first few often carry a small "Sponsored" label — those are ads, and anyone can buy that spot, scammers included. Skip them, and click only results whose address ends exactly in ".gov" — not ".com," ".net," or any look-alike.

Any other type of scam can also be reported to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov.

Aged 60 or older and need help filing? Call the DOJ Elder Justice Hotline: 833-372-⁠8311.

Local police non-emergency lines:
Westminster (714) 548-⁠3212
Garden Grove (714) 741-⁠5704
Fountain Valley (714) 593-⁠4485

The simplest thing still works best

And perhaps the most useful advice is the plainest: before wiring a single dollar to anyone promising to "get your money back," call the kids and have them check it out.

And if you're the son, daughter, or grandchild reading this — every so often, ask your parents and grandparents whether anyone has called offering to "help" lately. That may protect them better than any warning ever will.