The FBI recently issued a warning about scammers posing as FBI agents working for the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center contacting scam victims offering to help them recover funds lost to scams when their real purpose is to further victimize the victims of previous scams.  The phony FBI agents contact their victims in a variety of ways including emails, phone calls, social media or through legitimate support groups for financial scam victims that the scammers infiltrate posing as scam victims themselves.

In some instances the phony FBI agents tell their victims that either they have already recovered funds lost by the victims to financial scams or can help recover those funds.  In all cases the phony FBI agents require a payment before funds can be returned to the victim and, of course, they never return anything to the victims.  In the case of the scammers joining scam victim support groups they recommend to their targeted victim that they contact the Chief Director of the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint center through Telegram.  When the victims contact the phony director, who in recent versions of the scam is called Jaime Quin, they are told that the funds have been recovered, but that the victim needs to provide a payment or provide personal financial information that is used for purposes of identity theft.

TIPS

This scam is easy to avoid.  Even if the phone call appears to come from the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, it is a simple matter for a scammer to “spoof” the telephone number of the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center and manipulate your Caller ID to make the call appear legitimate.  The truth is that the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center will never contact victims directly through phone calls, emails, social media, mobile apps or support groups and they never charge any fees for returning funds to scam victims nor do they ask for personal financial information.  Only scammers do that.

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