Overview
- Recent reporting details look‑alike domains such as ic3-gov.com and ic3gov.org that mirror official FBI branding to lure victims.
- Beginning in mid-September 2025, some visitors were redirected from searches or links and even received deceptive “report received” emails that funneled them to cloned pages.
- The fraudulent sites used phishing and client-side scripts to intercept complaint form submissions and exfiltrate names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and banking data.
- The FBI says IC3 does not have social media and never charges fees, noting scammers have impersonated staff to demand payment for fake fund recovery, with over 100 such reports logged between December 2023 and February 2025.
- Officials advise typing www.ic3.gov into the browser, avoiding sponsored search results, and verifying the .gov URL, as analysts warn AI tools are accelerating convincing site cloning.