Case files
331 documented cases, each one sourced to a court record, a prosecutor's office, a regulator or an established news organisation. Outcomes are stated as they stood on the review date, a charge is an allegation, not a conviction.
2026
Maplewood deli owner sentenced to 54 months for claiming 1.6 million meals at a strip mall
Abdihakim Ali Ahmed, 41, of Minneapolis, owner of Gurley Deli in Maplewood, Minnesota, was sentenced to 54 months in prison and ordered to pay more than $2.2 million in restitution for his p…
Child nutrition program fraud
Tribal social worker sentenced for becoming payee for a disabled child in her care
Akeatha Diane Akintola, 48, formerly of Bellevue, Washington, a social worker for the Snoqualmie Tribe, pleaded guilty to theft of public funds and was ordered into custody on June 17, 2026 …
Representative payee fraud
A 150-square-foot Boston store trafficked nearly $7 million in SNAP benefits
Antonio Bonheur, 74, owned Jesula Variety Store, a 150-square-foot shop in Boston's Mattapan neighborhood, where he personally worked the register exchanging SNAP benefits for cash. His mont…
SNAP benefits trafficking
An insurance brokerage president sentenced to 20 years for a $135 million ACA subsidy fraud
AP of South Florida (APSF), a subsidiary of national insurance brokerage AssuredPartners, fraudulently enrolled vulnerable people, including homeless individuals and those with substance abu…
ACA marketplace switching and enrollment fraud
New York sues Attyx (formerly SUNco) and two lenders over 'free' solar and roof offers
On March 17, 2026, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Attyx LLC (formerly SUNco), two of its CEOs, and the lenders Solar Mosaic and WebBank, alleging the company sold solar systems…
Home solar sales fraud
Laundering $3.1m of scam proceeds through salvaged cars shipped to West Africa
In August 2026 a Nigerian national living in Houston was sentenced to 95 months in prison for leading a conspiracy that laundered more than $3.1 million in proceeds from business email compr…
Business email compromise · Romance scams · Job and task scams
A Minnesota jury finds broker Chad Banken liable in a contract-for-deed scheme targeting Muslim buyers
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued real estate broker Chadwick Banken and several of his companies in 2024, alleging he sold roughly 160 homes between 2019 and 2024 through contra…
Contract-for-deed scams
A Florida woman convicted of exploiting a widowed neighbor for $350,000
Kimberly Ruth Bitting, 58, of Leesburg, Florida, obtained power of attorney over an elderly neighbor shortly after the victim's husband died in August 2021, then spent roughly 15 to 18 month…
Power of attorney and caregiver financial abuse
"Dada Joe Remix": a decade of romance and inheritance fraud, and an extradition request
A grand jury indictment unsealed in Arizona in May 2025 charged Joseph Kwadwo Badu Boateng, a Ghanaian citizen known as "Dada Joe Remix", with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy …
Romance scams · Advance fee and 419 scams · Prize, lottery and sweepstakes scams
Feeding Our Future founder sentenced to 500 months over a $242 million child nutrition scheme
Aimee Bock, 45, the founder and executive director of the Minnesota nonprofit Feeding Our Future, was sentenced on May 21, 2026 to 500 months, more than 41 years, in federal prison. A federa…
Child nutrition program fraud
Minnesota sues C4D, LLC over same-day contract-for-deed resales to Somali Muslim buyers
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued C4D, LLC, Five Points Properties, LLC, and co-owners Travis Benoit and Steven Legatt in Hennepin County District Court in September 2026, allegi…
Contract-for-deed scams
Bail money at the door: a courier for Dominican Republic call centres
In May 2025 a grand jury in the District of New Jersey indicted Jhonny Cepeda of New York with wire fraud conspiracy. Prosecutors allege he worked as a courier in a "grandparent" or "family-…
Grandparent and family emergency scams · Government impersonation
A $200 million credit repair network halted by a federal court
In August 2026 the FTC sued a network of 17 companies operating under names including Credit Glory, Credit Sage and Credit Cop, plus five named principals, alleging the operation scammed con…
Credit repair scams
Seven charged in the largest Employee Retention Credit fraud case in the US, run through a 'credit repair' front
An indictment unsealed in January 2025 charges Keith Williams and six co-defendants with filing more than 8,000 fraudulent quarterly payroll tax returns between November 2021 and June 2023, …
Employee Retention Credit (ERC) mill scams
Fake pharmacies in three countries, and pills in every US state
The DEA's October 2024 warning records an increase in illegal online pharmacies shipping counterfeit pills made with fentanyl and methamphetamine to people who believed they were buying Oxyc…
Fake online pharmacies
200 pharmacy websites seized, and six people dead
On 4 February 2026 the DEA announced the seizure of more than 200 website domains tied to an India-based criminal organisation it says is responsible for at least six fatal and four non-fata…
Fake online pharmacies
A 79-year-old mule ordered to repay $1.97 million she never kept
Sharon Dolisi, 79, of Phelps County, Missouri, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud after depositing more than $2 million from 28 lottery scam victims into her own bank…
Money mule recruitment · Prize, lottery and sweepstakes scams
Nevada doctor charged in $95 million skin substitute scheme with a hidden 40% kickback
The Justice Department filed charges on August 4, 2026 against Dr. Stephen Dubin, a doctor in Nevada, alleging that he orchestrated a $95 million Medicare fraud scheme involving expensive an…
Skin substitute and wound graft fraud
A Romanian programmer sold a toolkit for fake vacation rental ads, and admitted at least 14,000 victims
Liviu Mihai Dumitru, a 44-year-old Romanian national, created and ran a software platform from January 2016 to September 2023 that fraudsters paid to use. It generated fake ads, built spoofe…
Vacation rental scams
Utah podiatrist and two nurses charged over skin substitutes billed to Medicare
A federal grand jury in St. George, Utah, returned an indictment on May 12, 2026 charging podiatrist Ryan Scott Ellsworth of Highland, nurse practitioner Emily Kelly of Washington, and nurse…
Skin substitute and wound graft fraud
Former Texas adjunct professor sentenced to 78 months for straw student aid applications
Emmanuel Olugbaike Finnih, 43, of Richmond, Texas, a former adjunct professor at Texas Southern University, was sentenced by US District Judge Andrew Hanen to 78 months in federal prison and…
Ghost student financial aid fraud
The company that quoted you may not own a truck
FMCSA distinguishes between a moving company, which owns trucks and takes responsibility for your goods, and a broker, which owns nothing and arranges for someone else to do it. Both must be…
Moving company scams and hostage loads
A federal court rules Veterans Guardian violated federal law charging veterans for claims help
Three veterans: Jennifer Ford, Eric Beard and Brian Otters, sued Veterans Guardian VA Claim Consulting, LLC in 2023, arguing it charged illegal fees for VA disability claims help without VA …
VA claims shark scams
Forever Living ordered to stop earnings claims after 77% of its distributors made nothing
The FTC sued multilevel marketing company Forever Living Products International LLC, its CEO Gregg Maughan and President Aidan O'Hare, alleging they used deceptive earnings claims to recruit…
MLM pyramid schemes
AI-cloned dealership websites, down to the last photograph
On 1 September 2026 the FTC warned that scammers are cloning real car dealers' websites, often using AI, copying logos, vehicle listings and photographs in detail, then advertising uncommon …
Online vehicle purchase scams · Ticket and marketplace scams
A sticker over the parking meter's QR code
On 3 September 2026 the FTC warned consumers that people have reported scammers covering up legitimate QR codes on parking meters with codes of their own. Scanning the substituted code leads…
QR code scams · Phishing and smishing · Toll and delivery texts
Four pet scams, all using AI-generated animals
In June 2026 the FTC described several distinct pet-related scams running at once: fraudsters posing as veterinarians or law enforcement claiming to have your lost pet, counterfeit animal sh…
Puppy and pet scams · Charity and disaster scams · Prize, lottery and sweepstakes scams
Two cousins double-booked nearly 100 Airbnb and Vrbo properties, then blamed plumbing
Shray Goel of Calabasas, California and his cousin Shaunik Raheja of Denver ran a short-term rental business, operating under names including Abbot Pacific LLC and Jet Set Work LLC, that lis…
Vacation rental scams
Las Vegas woman sentenced for a $98 million ERC scheme that charged real clients fees
Candies Goode-McCoy, formerly of Las Vegas, filed more than 1,200 tax returns between June 2022 and September 2023 for her own businesses and those of clients, falsely claiming the Employee …
Employee Retention Credit (ERC) mill scams
79 fraudulent claims, debit cards by mail, and an ATM withdrawal trail
Roosevelt Gulley, 42, of Sacramento, California, was sentenced in June 2026 to four years and six months in federal prison for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Over three months in …
Unemployment insurance fraud
Two Honolulu residents faked wildfire losses in Lahaina and Pacific Palisades, 2,600 miles apart
Daylyn Harris, 35, and Chelsea Johnson, 32, both of Honolulu, conspired to collect FEMA disaster assistance by falsely claiming to have lived in two separate wildfire disaster zones they nev…
FEMA disaster assistance fraud
A $500 million nationwide 'no cost' COVID-19 test billing scheme
Fast Lab Technologies, LLC marketed "no cost" COVID-19 tests online, collecting customers' insurance information and using it to bill government and private health insurers, including Medica…
COVID-19 test billing fraud
HyperFund: 1% a day, $1.89bn, and no mining operation
HyperFund sold "membership" packages promising 0.5% to 1% a day in passive rewards, said to come from large-scale crypto mining. The SEC and the Justice Department allege there were no minin…
Ponzi schemes and high-yield investment programmes · Fake investment platforms
Consent phishing: access that a password change does not revoke
In September 2026 the FBI warned about OAuth consent phishing, a technique that obtains lasting access to an account without ever taking a password. The victim is sent a link that asks them …
Phishing and smishing · Business email compromise · SIM swap · QR code scams
Scammers impersonating the FBI's own fraud-reporting centre
In July 2026 the FBI updated a warning first issued in April 2025 about an ongoing scheme in which criminals impersonate FBI personnel and the Internet Crime Complaint Center itself in order…
Recovery scams · Government impersonation · Deepfake voice and video scams
Stolen, not given: accounts broken into for explicit content
In August 2026 the FBI warned that sexual exploitation actors are illegally accessing victims' social media and personal accounts to steal explicit content and sell it on criminal marketplac…
Sextortion · Phishing and smishing · SIM swap
A $1.2 billion trading-education MLM settles for nearly $90 million in assets
The FTC and the Nevada Attorney General sued IM Mastery Academy, operating most recently as IYOVIA, and previously as iMarketsLive and IM Academy, alleging the company and named operators Ch…
MLM pyramid schemes
23 skimmers, 12 grocery stores, two states
Denis Adelin Ionescu, 24, and Ioan Victor Stanciu, 33, both Romanian nationals unlawfully present in the US, were sentenced on 26 March 2026 to 46 and 24 months in federal prison for install…
Card skimming
New Mexico driver pleads guilty to billing Medicaid for trips she and her children supposedly took, to meetings far away
Dorothea Irving of Farmington, New Mexico, who worked as a driver from 2020 to 2026 for a non-emergency medical transportation company, pleaded guilty on July 20, 2026 to conspiracy to commi…
Medicaid transportation fraud
One victim, $400,000: Jamaican lottery fraud in Arizona
In May 2025 the US Attorney's Office for the District of Arizona announced an indictment charging Deeno Jackson, 27, a citizen of Jamaica, with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud…
Prize, lottery and sweepstakes scams · Advance fee and 419 scams
Three Kingsport, Tennessee defendants sentenced over an eleven-business ERC fraud ring
Ryan Glidewell, Alyssa Glidewell and Edward Zanes, all of Kingsport, Tennessee, created at least eleven phony businesses with no employees or operations to falsely claim the Employee Retenti…
Employee Retention Credit (ERC) mill scams
Two South Florida men sentenced to 204 and 92 months after $35 million Medicare Advantage brace scheme
Michael Kochen, 42, of Aventura, Florida, who owned dozens of durable medical equipment companies, and Sandro Herek, 56, of Coral Springs, Florida, a telemarketing company owner, were convic…
Medicare brace and medical equipment fraud
A court-appointed guardian convicted of stealing from her own incapacitated grandmother
Linda Laird, 62, of Cordova, Maryland, was appointed a co-guardian and co-conservator of her own 81-year-old grandmother by the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in November 2017, a…
Power of attorney and caregiver financial abuse
A romance scam victim who then became the mule
Samuel D. Marcus, 33, of Oreland, Pennsylvania, lost money to a romance scam in late 2022 and early 2023, then, prosecutors say, knowingly kept working with the same Nigeria-based fraud ring…
Money mule recruitment · Romance scams
A Georgia mail carrier stole $1 million in checks and gift cards from her own route
Melissa McAfee, a US Postal Service mail carrier in the Smyrna area of metro Atlanta, stole checks and gift cards from customers on her own delivery route between August 2022 and September 2…
Check washing
Two New Orleans injury lawyers convicted in a 13-year staged crash ring
A federal jury in New Orleans convicted personal injury attorneys Vanessa Motta and Jason F. Giles on March 20, 2026, finding both guilty on every count tied to a staged-collision ring, "Ope…
Staged accident insurance fraud
Selling the list: seven million elderly Americans, sold to lottery scammers
In June 2025 the Justice Department's Consumer Protection Branch charged Troy Murray, also known as "Steve Dixson", with conspiracy to commit wire fraud for selling a lead-list database cont…
Prize, lottery and sweepstakes scams · Advance fee and 419 scams
A pandemic relief programme, invoked six years later
In June 2026 a federal court in California halted an operation trading as National Amendment Assistance, which the FTC alleges falsely represented that its mortgage relief services were conn…
Mortgage relief and foreclosure rescue scams · Government impersonation
Pop-ups, live agents and 300 victims across 37 states
In May 2025 the US Attorney's Office for the District of Rhode Island indicted eight people over a transnational fraud and money laundering scheme aimed at elderly people in the United State…
Fake tech support · Refund and remote access scams · Government impersonation · Bank impersonation and the safe account
A student loan operation stopped mid-flight, in April 2026
On 16 April 2026 the FTC announced it had obtained a temporary restraining order against NERD Solutions and ED REF, alleging they cold-called borrowers, thousands of them on the Do Not Call …
Student loan forgiveness scams
One word means "lawyer" in Mexico and "not a lawyer" in the US
In much of Latin America a notario público is a qualified lawyer. In the United States a notary public is neither, and cannot represent anybody in an immigration case. That single mistransla…
Immigration and visa scams
The Ohio–Ghana romance conspiracies: ten defendants, seven years
Between May and June 2025 the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio unsealed charges against ten people over wire fraud and money laundering conspiracies that ran from Decem…
Romance scams · Business email compromise
A Maryland lab owner's $18.7 million nursing home respiratory test scheme
Patrick Britton-Harr, 42, of Annapolis, Maryland, owned Provista Health, which offered COVID-19 testing to nursing homes nationwide beginning in 2020. Alongside each COVID-19 specimen collec…
COVID-19 test billing fraud
PGI Global: $198m in memberships, and Lamborghinis
The SEC charged Ramil Palafox on 22 April 2025 over PGI Global (also called Praetorian Group International), a purported crypto and foreign exchange trading company that allegedly raised abo…
Ponzi schemes and high-yield investment programmes · Fake investment platforms
Prince Group: the $15 billion forfeiture and the Cambodian compounds
In October 2025 US prosecutors in Brooklyn unsealed an indictment charging Chen Zhi, founder and chairman of the Cambodian conglomerate Prince Holding Group, with running forced-labour scam …
Pig butchering · Fake investment platforms · Romance scams
Kingwood doctor sentenced to 12.5 years for Recare Health Clinic pill mill
Dr. Maryam Qayum, 68, of Montgomery County, Texas, owned, operated and was the sole prescriber at Recare Health Clinic in Kingwood, which she ran as a cash-only pill mill, selling controlled…
Pill mill fraud
A lawsuit alleging an online arbitration platform was secretly built to favor merchant cash advance lenders
New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Rapid Ruling, an online arbitration platform, and its founders Zachary Meyer and Andrew Sachs, in June 2026, alleging the platform was marketed a…
Merchant cash advance fraud
Detroit man pleads guilty to $16 million student aid scheme built on more than 1,200 straw students
Brandon Robinson, 42, of Detroit, pleaded guilty on May 6, 2026 to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft for leading a decade-long scheme to obtain Federal Student Aid for so-called straw…
Ghost student financial aid fraud
Four labs billed $522 million for genetic tests that marketers sold door to door
Reyad Salahaldeen of Buford, Georgia controlled four clinical laboratories, Express Diagnostics in New Jersey, BioConfirm Laboratory USA and BioConfirm Laboratories in Georgia, and Tox Manag…
Genetic testing fraud
Gold couriers: collecting precious metals from the door
In May 2025 a grand jury in the Northern District of Florida charged Atharva "Andy" Sathawane with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering over a scheme tha…
Government impersonation · Fake tech support · Grandparent and family emergency scams
The 276-arrest scam-centre takedown and the San Diego charges
On 29 April 2026 the US Justice Department announced a coordinated international takedown of cryptocurrency scam centres that produced at least 276 arrests across several countries. Alleged …
Pig butchering · Fake investment platforms · Romance scams
Texas man sentenced to 12.5 years after $61.5 million braces and genetic-test telemarketing scheme
Robert "Bobby" Leon Smith III, 50, of Archer City, Texas, pleaded guilty four days into a jury trial in March 2025 to a $61.5 million health care fraud and wire fraud conspiracy. Deceptive t…
Medicare brace and medical equipment fraud
A state labour department's own laptop, used to hijack $3.5 million in claims
Kiara Smith, 28, of Prince George's County, Maryland, worked as a contractor for the Maryland Department of Labor and gave her state-issued laptop to co-conspirators, who used it to alter un…
Unemployment insurance fraud
$140m against a timeshare exit operation that took $90m from older adults
A federal court granted summary judgment in April 2026 against Christopher Carroll, president and CEO of Square One Group, ordering $140 million and permanently banning him from timeshare ex…
Timeshare exit and resale scams
A top MLM recruiter settles over "no less than six figures" claims across two companies
The FTC sued Stormy Wellington, a high-level participant in the multilevel marketing companies Total Life Changes (TLC) and Farmasi, alleging she used false or baseless earnings claims on Yo…
MLM pyramid schemes
A Texas woman claimed a Pasadena rental she never lived in burned in the Eaton Fire
Joyce Turner, 56, of Rosharon, Texas, submitted a fraudulent FEMA disaster benefits application on January 10, 2025, three days after the Eaton Fire broke out in Los Angeles County, falsely …
FEMA disaster assistance fraud
USCIS lists fifteen scams, and says what it will never do
USCIS maintains a standing catalogue of immigration scams, impersonators, fake websites, visa lottery fraud, job offers, "jumping the line" schemes, and pairs it with a short list of things …
Immigration and visa scams · Government impersonation · Job and task scams
Texas forces VA Claims Insider to forgive $6.8 million in fees charged to disabled veterans
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued VA Claims Insider, LLC (VACI) in December 2023, alleging the company marketed itself as offering "free" coaching to veterans seeking VA disability bene…
VA claims shark scams
Arizona extracts $1.95 million from VetLink Solutions over unauthorized VA claims fees
Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced a $1.95 million consent judgment in May 2026 against White Tanks Group LLC, doing business as VetLink Solutions, resolving allegations that the …
VA claims shark scams
$91m on a bond-trading business that did not exist
The SEC charged three Dallas–Fort Worth men on 29 April 2025 over a scheme that allegedly raised at least $91 million from more than 200 investors, promising 3% to 6% a month from an interna…
Ponzi schemes and high-yield investment programmes
Extradited from Malaysia: romance victims used as unwitting money mules
On 22 May 2025 Malaysia extradited Kenyan national John Muriuku Wamuigah to stand trial in the District of Connecticut on a wire fraud charge. Prosecutors alleged he and others executed a sc…
Job and task scams · Romance scams · Business email compromise · Overpayment and fake cheque scams
Two postal employees, a rapper, and $63 million in checks sold on Telegram
Vanessa Hargrove and Crystal Jenkins, both then-current or former US Postal Service employees in Detroit, diverted and stole checks, including US Treasury tax refund checks, from the mail an…
Check washing
A Pennsylvania woman built FEMA paperwork for nearly 200 people, for half of whatever it paid out
Jasmine Williams, 34, of Plymouth Meeting, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, recruited nearly 200 people through social media after Hurricane Ida struck the region in 2021, offering to help t…
FEMA disaster assistance fraud
Telemedicine owner sentenced to seven years for selling brace orders for 3,000 Medicare patients
Reinaldo Wilson, 57, formerly of Richmond Hill, Georgia, owned and operated two telemedicine companies in Bayonne, New Jersey between 2017 and 2019. He and others paid kickbacks to medical p…
Medicare brace and medical equipment fraud
2025
FTC halts a $100 million debt-relief operation accused of impersonating banks to target veterans
On 14 July 2025 the FTC sued seven companies and three individuals behind "Accelerated Debt," alleging the operation took in roughly $100 million from consumers, mostly older adults and some…
Debt settlement scams
A multi-year stolen-identity refund conspiracy out of East Texas
Imafedia Adevokhai, Michael Martin and Osazuwa Peter Okunoghae were sentenced at different times between January 2022 and April 2025 for their roles in a multi-year stolen identity refund fr…
Stolen identity refund fraud
Amazon pays $2.5bn over Prime enrolment and cancellation
On 25 September 2025 the FTC announced a $2.5 billion settlement with Amazon over allegations that it enrolled millions of people in Prime without consent and made cancelling deliberately di…
Subscription traps and free trials
American Tax Service's operators surrender over $8 million after FTC and Nevada sue over impersonation and 'pennies on the dollar' claims
In October 2025 the FTC and the State of Nevada sued American Tax Service LLC, seven affiliated entities and operators Terrance Selb and Tyler Bennett, alleging they impersonated the IRS and…
Tax debt relief scams
$145 million FTC settlement over fake government-branded health insurance ads
The FTC announced in August 2025 that Seattle-based telemarketer Assurance IQ, LLC and Los Angeles-based digital advertiser MediaAlpha, Inc. would pay a combined $145 million to settle charg…
ACA marketplace switching and enrollment fraud
Puppy scams: a $600 median, and 4.8% of victims reporting
The Better Business Bureau's 2025 puppy scam study update recorded 1,632 reports through September 2025 with a median loss of $600, following 2,278 reports in 2024 and 2,899 in 2023. Its mos…
Puppy and pet scams · Ticket and marketplace scams
Six company names, one script, and debts that never existed
A federal court froze the assets of Blackstone Legal and its affiliates in March 2025 after the FTC alleged they collected on debts that never existed, threatening lawsuits, wage garnishment…
Phantom debt collection
Blueacorn's co-founders convicted and sentenced over $63 million in fraudulent PPP loans
Nathan Reis and Stephanie Hockridge, a married couple, co-founded Blueacorn in April 2020 as a Paycheck Protection Program "lender service provider" that processed applications for an FDIC-i…
Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan fraud
Fewer victims, four times the loss: Canada's bank investigator scam
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre files the safe-account scam under "Bank Investigator", and its open dataset shows two lines moving in opposite directions. Reports fell from 2,311 in 2021 to 1…
Bank impersonation and the safe account · Government impersonation
Canada's emergency scam moved from the phone to the text message
Between 2021 and 2025 the share of Canadian emergency scam reports arriving by text message rose from 1.2% to 17.7%, while the telephone's share fell from a peak of 71% to 56%. Losses throug…
"Hi Mum" and family impersonation texts · Grandparent and family emergency scams
Canada's emergency scam: a spike, then a collapse
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre files grandparent scams under "Emergency (Jail, Accident, Hospital, Help)", and its open dataset shows a category that rose fast and then fell just as fast. Re…
Grandparent and family emergency scams · "Hi Mum" and family impersonation texts · Deepfake voice and video scams
Canada's recovery-pitch reports: from C$1.7m to C$21.9m in four years
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre publishes its full reporting database, and it files second-wave recovery approaches under their own category. That category shows one of the sharpest increases…
Recovery scams
Ten times fewer reports, ten times the loss each
Canadian vendor fraud reports fell from 4,120 in 2021 to 426 in the first nine months of 2025, a fall of about 90%, while loss per victim rose from roughly C$3,200 to roughly C$8,500, and sp…
Invoice and vendor fraud · Business email compromise
Chegg charged 200,000 people after they cancelled
The FTC announced on 15 September 2025 that the education company Chegg would pay $7.5 million over allegations that it hid its cancellation route and then kept charging people who had used …
Subscription traps and free trials
A cartel ran call centres selling Americans their own timeshares back
The Justice Department indicted a senior member of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion in September 2025 over an advance fee scheme, run from call centres in Mexico since about 2012, that…
Timeshare exit and resale scams · Advance fee and 419 scams
20% of the stores earned nothing, and 95% were shut down
The FTC halted Click Profit in March 2025, alleging it sold managed Amazon storefronts as guaranteed passive income while claiming AI technology and partnerships with Nike and Disney. Its ow…
E-commerce automation and business opportunity schemes · Job and task scams
The US "click to cancel" rule was made, then vacated
The FTC finalised a rule in October 2024 requiring cancellation to be as easy as sign-up. On 8 July 2025 the Eighth Circuit vacated it on procedural grounds, without ruling on the substance,…
Subscription traps and free trials
A family skimming ring across seven states, 15,000 cards compromised
Four members of an extended family, Nicolas Longin Codreanu, Armando Ion Codreanu, Isabela Ignat Codreanu and Robby Vicson Codreanu, all in their early twenties and living together in Placen…
Card skimming
Coin Dispute Network: a crypto 'recovery service' prosecutors say recovered nothing
In August 2024 the Manhattan District Attorney charged Michael Lauchlan, of Las Vegas, over a website called Coin Dispute Network that advertised cryptocurrency tracing and recovery to peopl…
Recovery scams
A SIM swap that moved the price of bitcoin
In May 2025 an Alabama man was sentenced to 14 months in prison for his part in taking over the US Securities and Exchange Commission's account on X. He obtained control by performing a SIM …
SIM swap · Phishing and smishing
A Henderson, Nevada man laundered $11 million in fake PPP loans into 25 properties and a gambling habit
Meelad Dezfooli of Henderson, Nevada submitted three fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loan applications under an alias, "James Dez," and a fictional entity, "Holdings Trust," grossly i…
Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan fraud
A Chicago contractor's 17-year sentence for a West Side reverse mortgage scheme
Mark Diamond, a Chicago contractor, ran a home repair and reverse mortgage fraud scheme that targeted elderly and disabled homeowners, overwhelmingly Black, on Chicago's West Side, convincin…
Reverse mortgage scams
Fake cheque reports fell by two thirds, but the mechanism did not go away
US fake cheque scam reports to the FTC fell from 38,451 in 2022 to 13,616 in 2024, and FBI overpayment complaints fell from 4,144 in 2023 to 2,194 in 2025. Losses did not fall with them: FBI…
Overpayment and fake cheque scams · Job and task scams · Ticket and marketplace scams
Empire Cuisine co-owner sentenced to 28 years for claiming 18 million meals at sites that were parking lots
Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, 36, co-owner of Empire Cuisine & Market, was sentenced on August 6, 2025 to 28 years in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to pay…
Child nutrition program fraud
The FDA's three questions, and why one of them is the buying method
The FDA's counterfeit medicine guidance asks three questions to spot a fake, and the third is not about the pill at all; it is "did you buy the drug from an online pharmacy?" The agency's an…
Fake online pharmacies
37,342 crypto kiosks, and a third of one state's operators unregistered
FinCEN's notice of 4 August 2025 records 10,956 IC3 complaints involving crypto kiosks in 2024 with about $246.7 million lost, complaints up 99% in a year. It also records the machines growi…
Bitcoin ATM and crypto kiosk scams · Government impersonation
A nonprofit's own employee named her family as landlords to divert Indiana rental-assistance funds
Valencia Franklin, 52, of Lynwood, Illinois worked for a Merrillville, Indiana nonprofit entrusted with administering federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program funds for local residents af…
Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) fraud
Four sentences a storm chaser will not say
The FTC's post-disaster contractor guidance lists four things scammers say; that they do not need a licence, that the discount expires today, that you should sign over your insurance cheque,…
Contractor and storm chaser scams
$2.95bn lost to impersonation, and a rule with a $53,088 price tag
The FTC's Impersonation Rule took effect in April 2024 and makes it illegal to falsely pose as a business or a government body, or to misrepresent an endorsement, with civil penalties of up …
Celebrity endorsement and deepfake ads · Government impersonation · Deepfake voice and video scams
"Real Medicare cards are free and mailed to you automatically"
The FTC publishes a Medicare Open Enrollment warning every autumn, and the 30 September 2025 edition contains the single most useful sentence in the whole category: real Medicare cards are f…
Medicare and health insurance scams · Government impersonation · Phishing and smishing
$49,000 returned to 198 people, and what that ratio means
In January 2025 the FTC sent more than $49,000 to 198 consumers harmed by a mortgage relief scheme, about $250 each, against upfront fees this industry charges in the thousands. It is the pl…
Mortgage relief and foreclosure rescue scams
Older adults losing six figures to impersonation scams rose eightfold
The FTC reported in August 2025 that combined losses from older adults who lost more than $100,000 to impersonation scams rose eightfold, from $55 million in 2020 to $445 million in 2024. Th…
Bitcoin ATM and crypto kiosk scams · Government impersonation · Bank impersonation and the safe account · Fake tech support
"Real utilities won't demand payment to avoid same-day disconnection"
The FTC's standing guidance on utility impersonation contains the one fact that resolves the whole scheme: a real utility company does not demand immediate payment to prevent a same-day shut…
Utility shut-off scams · Government impersonation
The FTC ranks "wrong number" texts among the five biggest text scams
In April 2025 the FTC published its analysis of 2024 text-message fraud reports and placed the "wrong number" opener fifth among the top five text scams, the only one of the five with no pre…
Wrong number texts · Pig butchering · Phishing and smishing
The engineer hired to secure a token's liquidity rug-pulls it himself
Eric Zhu, a New York-based blockchain engineer hired to work on the "Game Coin" (GME) token, kept exclusive, undisclosed control of the liquidity provider tokens the project had publicly cla…
NFT and crypto token rug pulls
Arizona couple sentenced to about 15 and 14 years over $1.2 billion in wound-graft claims
Alexandra Gehrke, 39, and her husband Jeffrey King, 46, both of Phoenix, Arizona, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud over a scheme that submitted $1,212,…
Skin substitute and wound graft fraud
$7.6m collected with threats of jail, and calls to the family
The FTC sued Global Circulation, Inc. and its owner in November 2024 over allegations that it collected more than $7.6 million in bogus debt by threatening consumers with jail, calling their…
Phantom debt collection
Stolen identities, VPNs and proxy servers, and $2.3 million in unemployment claims
David Godin, of Miami, Florida, who also used the aliases "James St Patrick," "David Wetty" and "Vic Pro", was sentenced in June 2025 to 78 months in federal prison for wire fraud and aggrav…
Unemployment insurance fraud
A Kansas City preparer filed 43 fraudulent PPP loans for fees of $2,000 to $7,000 a time
Renetta Golden-Larimore, 56, of Kansas City, Missouri, led a scheme that from February 2021 to May 2022 prepared and filed false Paycheck Protection Program loan applications for other peopl…
Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan fraud
$60,000 in back taxes, a signature, and a house sold within a month
Joseph Goodnough, 42, of Rensselaer County, New York, was sentenced in October 2025 after deceiving an elderly Schoharie County homeowner, who had fallen more than $60,000 behind on his prop…
Home title fraud
Ten sham entities, filed with the SEC to look registered
A federal grand jury in Washington DC indicted a Hong Kong businessman in November 2025 over an alleged conspiracy to file false investment adviser forms with the SEC for at least ten sham e…
Pump and dump, and finfluencer manipulation
20 people, a business and a church charged in $60 million Arizona fraud, including a $2 million wire to Rwanda
A state grand jury indicted 20 individuals, Happy House Behavioral Health LLC and Hope of Life International Church in May 2025, as part of Arizona's broader sober living home Medicaid fraud…
Sober living home and patient brokering fraud
One million Americans' Medicare numbers, and a $10.6bn catheter claim
The Justice Department's June 2025 health care fraud takedown charged 324 defendants over more than $14.6 billion in alleged fraud, the largest in its history. Two of its cases matter to con…
Medicare and health insurance scams · Government impersonation
Detroit woman charged with $3 million in student aid for students whose coursework she allegedly did herself
A federal complaint announced in September 2025 charged Michelle Hill, 48, of Detroit, with wire fraud in connection with a Federal Student Aid scheme. Court documents say that between July …
Ghost student financial aid fraud
The tell is the packaging, and it is meant not to be
Homeland Security Investigations' guidance to retailers describes the core problem with card draining: the packaging is opened, the card data taken, and the card re-packaged in a way that ma…
Gift card draining
83,668 WhatsApp accounts blocked, and still no case count
Across three parliamentary answers between December 2024 and December 2025, the Indian government reported blocking Skype IDs, WhatsApp accounts, SIM cards and handsets used for digital arre…
Digital arrest · Government impersonation
$893 million in AI-involved fraud, and where it actually shows up
The FBI received more than 22,000 complaints reporting AI-related information in 2025, with adjusted losses of $893,346,472. Its breakdown is more useful than the headline: over $30 million …
Deepfake voice and video scams · Business email compromise · Romance scams · Job and task scams · Grandparent and family emergency scams
The FBI started counting charity fraud, and found $7.9 million
Charity appeared for the first time as its own crime type in the FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report: 662 complaints and $7,907,609 in reported losses. The category did not exist in 2023 or 202…
Charity and disaster scams
Extortion complaints nearly doubled while losses did not
FBI extortion complaints rose from 48,223 in 2023 to 89,129 in 2025, an 85% increase, while reported losses went from $74.8 million to $122.5 million and then fell back in the most recent ye…
Sextortion
Fictitious law firms: the recovery scam that borrows the FBI's name
The FBI has issued three escalating public warnings about a scheme that targets people who have already lost money to cryptocurrency fraud. Operators posing as lawyers at firms that do not e…
Recovery scams · Pig butchering · Fake investment platforms
Prize scam losses nearly doubled in a year while Canada's halved
US reported losses to lottery, sweepstakes and inheritance fraud rose from $102.2 million in 2024 to $194.1 million in 2025, a 90% increase, on 5,623 complaints. Canada moved the other way o…
Prize, lottery and sweepstakes scams · Advance fee and 419 scams
$503m of undelivered purchases, with no way to see the cars inside it
IC3 recorded 56,478 Non-Payment/Non-Delivery complaints and $503,373,587 in losses in 2025, a category that holds concert tickets, puppies, construction materials and cars in the same number…
Online vehicle purchase scams · Ticket and marketplace scams
The FBI records a 300% rise in ramp-and-dump complaints
On 3 July 2025 the FBI issued a public service announcement warning that criminals were recruiting US stock investors into fake "investment clubs" on social media and messaging apps, then us…
Pump and dump, and finfluencer manipulation · Fake investment platforms
Property fraud losses rose 58% in a year
US real estate fraud complaints rose from 9,359 in 2024 to 12,368 in 2025, and losses rose from $173.6 million to $275.1 million, a 58% increase in a single year, after being roughly flat th…
Rental and real estate scams · Business email compromise
75,000 sextortion reports, and where the money actually is
The FBI received more than 75,000 sextortion submissions in 2025 and referred over 5,700 involving minors to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Its age breakdown shows the…
Sextortion
SIM swap complaints halved, and so did the losses
US SIM swap complaints fell from 2,026 in 2022 to 971 in 2025, and reported losses fell from $72.7 million to $17.4 million over the same period, a 76% drop. It is one of the few categories …
SIM swap
US tech support losses more than doubled in two years
FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center data shows tech support fraud losses in the United States rising from $924.5 million in 2023 to $1.46 billion in 2024 and $2.13 billion in 2025, a 131% in…
Fake tech support · Refund and remote access scams
Reported cyber fraud losses in India rose tenfold in two years
A parliamentary answer of 2 December 2025 records cyber fraud losses reported in India rising from ₹2,290 crore in 2022 to ₹22,846 crore in 2024, a tenfold increase in two years, while compl…
Digital arrest · Government impersonation · Fake investment platforms
Job scams: five times the losses in Canada, double the reports in Australia
Canadian job-scam losses rose from C$9.5 million in 2021 to C$48.9 million in 2024, more than five times, while report counts fell. In Australia, Scamwatch job-scam reports rose 102.4% in 20…
Job and task scams · Pig butchering · Overpayment and fake cheque scams
Texas preparer sentenced after filing 610 false returns worth $1.2 million in bogus refunds
Karistha Johnson, a paid tax preparer in Tyler, Texas, prepared and filed 610 false federal tax returns between 2017 and 2019, fabricating deductions and business expenses to generate $1,244…
Fraudulent tax preparers
Georgia man sentenced to 52 months for concealing ownership of an Arizona behavioral health scheme
Kenneth Terrell Harrison, of College Park, Georgia, secretly owned Aurtism LLC, an outpatient behavioral health counseling business in Mesa, Arizona, after concealing his ownership interest …
Sober living home and patient brokering fraud
A Nevada woman's shell 'lenders' collected 5% advance fees on loans that never existed
Anna Kline, also known as Jordana Weber, of Sparks, Nevada, operated multiple shell companies from April 2017 to July 2019 that falsely claimed to offer high-value business loans, often exce…
Advance-fee loan scams
L & L Investments convicted and ordered to pay $34 million after 'franchising' sober home fraud
L & L Investments, LLC operated fraudulent sober living homes, first in Nevada and then expanding into Arizona, and submitted false billing claims to AHCCCS, Arizona's Medicaid program. The …
Sober living home and patient brokering fraud
A Washington jury finds High 5 Games's social casino was illegal gambling
Rick Larsen sued PTT, LLC, doing business as High 5 Games, LLC, and High 5 Entertainment, LLC, in 2018 under Washington's Recovery of Money Lost at Gambling Act, arguing the company's High 5…
Sweepstakes casino scams
Three forged quitclaim deeds, one seller already dead a year
Rosalyn M. Johnson, 40, and Diamond D. Washington, 39, both of Huber Heights, Ohio, ran a company called Love Has Homes LLC that filed forged quitclaim deeds on three Montgomery County prope…
Home title fraud
The most common scam, and the least discussed
Purchase scams are the highest-volume fraud in every national dataset that separates them, and they attract the least attention. UK Finance recorded purchase scams as 71% of all authorised p…
Ticket and marketplace scams · Puppy and pet scams · Overpayment and fake cheque scams · Rental and real estate scams
A six-year fight over tribal immunity ended in a $43.4 million judgment against the operator
Matt Martorello, through his company and lending brands Big Picture Loans and Red Rock Tribal Lending, partnered with the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians to issue loa…
Tribal lending scams
Kansas City man sentenced to 10 years for genetic testing labs that billed Medicare $174 million
Jamie P. McNamara, 50, of Kansas City, Missouri, operated several clinical laboratories in Louisiana and Texas that billed Medicare for cancer and cardiovascular genetic tests ordered throug…
Genetic testing fraud
Payment redirection: the only major Australian scam category still growing
Australia's National Anti-Scam Centre reported combined losses of A$166.8 million to payment redirection scams in 2025, up 9.3% on 2024. Every other category in the country's top five fell o…
Business email compromise · Invoice and vendor fraud
Rebate scams: half the reports, nearly three times the losses
Australia's National Anti-Scam Centre recorded a 49.1% fall in rebate-scam reports to Scamwatch in 2025 while losses to the same category rose 170%, from A$1.7 million to A$4.7 million. The …
Refund and remote access scams · Recovery scams
Florida tax-shop chain sentenced for training staff to fabricate client deductions
Jonathan Carrillo and Franklin Carter Jr. ran Neighborhood Advance Tax, a chain of roughly a dozen Florida tax-prep offices, from 2016 to 2020, then reopened in the same storefronts as Taxma…
Fraudulent tax preparers
Glendale hospice owner sentenced to 9 years over $10.6 million in fraudulent kickback-driven claims
Nita Almuete Paddit Palma, excluded from Medicare over prior kickback convictions, bought Magnolia Gardens Hospice through her daughter and C@A Hospice through her husband in 2015, concealin…
Hospice fraud
Houston home health owner sentenced to 75 months after taping old doctors' signatures onto new visit records
Paul Njoku, 64, owned and ran Opnet Health Care Services Inc., doing business as P & P Health Care Services, a Fort Bend County, Texas home health agency. From 2015 to 2019, Opnet billed Med…
Home health aide fraud
Japan counts the ads that use a famous face, and names the faces
Japan's National Police Agency counts SNS-type investment fraud by how the victim was first reached, and the largest single route is a banner advertisement using a celebrity's name: 3,202 ca…
Celebrity endorsement and deepfake ads · Fake investment platforms · Deepfake voice and video scams
Japan's "fake police" fraud took 69% of all special-fraud losses
Japan's National Police Agency began counting ニセ警察詐欺, police impersonation fraud, as a separate category in January 2025. By the end of November it accounted for 9,642 cases and ¥83.19 billi…
Ore-ore sagi and Japan's special fraud · Digital arrest · Government impersonation
The scam for grandparents now takes a third of its victims from people in their twenties and thirties
Japanese ore-ore fraud nearly tripled in the first half of 2025, 6,278 cases against 2,140 a year earlier, and the growth came almost entirely from young adults. Cases among people in their …
Ore-ore sagi and Japan's special fraud · Grandparent and family emergency scams
Crypto handovers in Japanese fraud rose 1,446% in a year
Japan's special fraud reached 13,213 cases and ¥59.73 billion in the first half of 2025, up 47.5% and 162.1%. Underneath the totals the delivery channel is moving: bank transfers now carry 6…
Ore-ore sagi and Japan's special fraud · Fake investment platforms · Government impersonation
Five operations, one template, eighteen months
Operation AI Comply, announced in September 2024, brought five FTC actions against businesses selling AI-boosted promises. Three were storefront schemes, Ascend Ecom, FBA Machine and Ecommer…
E-commerce automation and business opportunity schemes · Job and task scams · Celebrity endorsement and deepfake ads
A Tacoma attorney used his disabled client's reverse mortgage to hide his own theft
Colby Parks, a Tacoma, Washington attorney, became trustee of a disabled client's living trust in 2010 after she received a $1.66 million settlement from a motorcycle accident. Over roughly …
Reverse mortgage scams
A Nebraska Facebook shop selling counterfeit Chanel and Louis Vuitton
Christine L. Parry, 62, of Columbus, Nebraska, ran an online shop called Bugaboo Boutique on Facebook selling counterfeit Birkenstock, Ray-Ban, Chanel and Louis Vuitton items, among other go…
Counterfeit goods scams
Bensalem woman charged over a home care kickback scheme prosecutors say cost Medicaid nearly $1.1 million
Federal prosecutors allege Hemal Patel, 59, of Bensalem, Pennsylvania, took kickbacks for steering home care patients to home care agencies and, with others, billed Medicaid for home care se…
Home health aide fraud
Posing as federal agents: $2.1 million from people told they were under investigation
In May 2025 the US Attorney's Office for the District of Delaware announced that Rakeshkumar Patel, an Indian national, had pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud conspiracy over an elder…
Government impersonation · Fake tech support · Digital arrest
A St. Louis man's solo staged-accident scheme, no ring required
Adrian Peebles, 32, of St. Louis, Missouri, was sentenced on April 15, 2025 to 18 months in federal prison for staging vehicle accidents alone, at night and in remote areas, between Septembe…
Staged accident insurance fraud
Phishing reports fell while losses rose elevenfold
US phishing and spoofing complaints fell from 298,878 in 2023 to 191,561 in 2025, while reported losses rose from $18.7 million to $215.8 million, roughly eleven times. Australia saw the sam…
Phishing and smishing · QR code scams · Toll and delivery texts · Wrong number texts
Millions of notices telling people they had been specially chosen
A federal jury convicted Phillip Priolo in March 2025 over a scheme that mailed millions of prize notices falsely telling recipients they had been specifically chosen for a large cash prize,…
Mass-mailing and psychic letter fraud · Prize, lottery and sweepstakes scams
Project Red Hook: gift cards as a laundering rail
Homeland Security Investigations runs a dedicated initiative against Chinese organised crime groups exploiting gift cards. Its account is the clearest available: three techniques, tampering …
Gift card draining · Government impersonation · Utility shut-off scams
Louisiana man sentenced to 18 years for laundering $4.4 million in fake ERC checks
Damian R. Raby of Gonzales, Louisiana filed Employee Retention Credit claims for dozens of businesses in the Baton Rouge area that either did not exist during the pandemic or had no legitima…
Employee Retention Credit (ERC) mill scams
Bronx tax preparer known as "the Magician" sentenced over a $145 million refund fraud scheme
Rafael Alvarez, owner of ATAX New York, LLC in the Bronx, pleaded guilty in December 2024 to conspiracy and preparing false tax returns after filing roughly 90,000 federal income tax returns…
Fraudulent tax preparers
A Colorado funeral home that stopped cremating bodies, but kept taking payment
Jon and Carie Hallford operated Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs and Penrose, Colorado. From September 2019 through October 2023, they collected more than $130,000 from grie…
Prepaid funeral scams
Arizona clinic owner sentenced to 14 years for $69 million Native American Medicaid fraud
Rita Ntusa Anagho, a 54-year-old licensed nurse practitioner from San Tan Valley, Arizona, owned and operated Tusa Integrated Clinic, LLC, which fraudulently billed Arizona's Medicaid progra…
Sober living home and patient brokering fraud
A fabricated $359 million brokerage account behind a $17 million loan-fee scheme
Carlos Manuel da Silva Santos, a Portuguese national and founder/CEO of San Diego-based Ethos Asset Management, Inc., ran an advance-fee loan scheme that collected upfront fees calculated as…
Advance-fee loan scams
A Long Island man's fraudulent lending companies allegedly drained dozens of victims' bank accounts
Samuel Selmar, 46, of Cedarhurst, New York, is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud for allegedly operating fraudulent lending companies with associates between March and December 20…
Advance-fee loan scams
Xerxes Shevar's 3,493 stolen identities
Xerxes Shevar of Brooklyn, New York pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy over a scheme, run from 2010 to 2013 with co-conspirators in the United States, Ghana, Nigeria and Ireland, that o…
Stolen identity refund fraud
$45.9m taken from borrowers by a fake Department of Education
The FTC settled with the operators of Nevada-based Superior Servicing in September 2025 over allegations that they posed as the Department of Education or its loan servicers, promised forgiv…
Student loan forgiveness scams
SweepsCoach's three managers plead guilty to a $14 million gambling operation
James Mecham, Kurt Stocks and Heidi Edwards, the managers behind a series of businesses collectively known as SweepsCoach, pleaded guilty in June 2025 to operating an illegal gambling busine…
Sweepstakes casino scams
A pinhole camera at the ATM, and $177,280 gone
Florin Nicolae Tarta, a 40-year-old Romanian national, was sentenced on 10 September 2025 to six years and nine months in federal prison for installing skimming devices and a pinhole camera …
Card skimming
679,981 Tether: a forfeiture that starts on LinkedIn and a dating app
On 3 June 2025 the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Ohio filed a civil forfeiture complaint against 679,981.22 in Tether cryptocurrency suspected of coming from a romance an…
Romance scams · Pig butchering · Fake investment platforms
Text scam reports collapsed 62% while losses went up
Australian text-message scam reports fell from 77,365 in 2024 to 29,058 in 2025, a 62.4% collapse that the National Anti-Scam Centre attributes to disruption across the ecosystem. Losses thr…
Toll and delivery texts · Phishing and smishing · Wrong number texts
Maine barbershop tax preparer charged with diverting clients' refunds to himself
Thierry Musese, 35, ran a tax preparation side business out of FreshCutz, the barbershop he owned in Auburn, Maine. A federal grand jury indicted him in February 2025 on 31 counts of prepari…
Fraudulent tax preparers
Treasury sanctions nineteen targets across Burma and Cambodia
On 8 September 2025 the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control designated nineteen targets, nine in Burma and ten in Cambodia, over their role in scam compounds targeting Americans. …
Pig butchering · Fake investment platforms
The Justice Department prosecuted the printer
In April 2025 the owner of a Las Vegas printing and mailing business pleaded guilty to conspiracy over her part in producing millions of fraudulent prize notices between 2012 and 2018, in a …
Mass-mailing and psychic letter fraud · Prize, lottery and sweepstakes scams
£576 million and 248,070 cases: the UK's authorised push payment problem
UK Finance recorded £1.28 billion in total payment fraud losses in 2025, of which £576.4 million was authorised push payment fraud, money victims sent themselves after being deceived, across…
Bank impersonation and the safe account · Ticket and marketplace scams · Fake investment platforms · Romance scams
"USA Student Debt Relief", run from Colombia, and the Do Not Call list
In May 2025 the FTC banned the operators of Start Connecting LLC and its Colombian affiliate, trading as USA Student Debt Relief, from the debt relief industry. They allegedly took more than…
Student loan forgiveness scams
Pennsylvania's rent-to-own case against Vision Property Management ends in deeds and restitution
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro sued Vision Property Management LLC and its affiliates in October 2019, alleging the national "rent to own" operator misled more than 650 low-incom…
Contract-for-deed scams
Telemarketing operators sentenced after recruiting Medicare patients for cancer genetic tests
Paul Wexler, 56, of Spring, Texas and Paul Bleignier, 64, of Seminole, Florida ran a telemarketing company that recruited Medicare beneficiaries for cancer genetic testing that was medically…
Genetic testing fraud
A stolen postal master key and $1.86 million in washed checks in rural Indiana
Michael Jerome Wright and Cortney Lashea Young of Princeton, Indiana used a stolen USPS "arrow" master key to open collection boxes across Evansville, stealing mail and checks between 2023 a…
Check washing
A $1.065 billion judgment against Yellowstone Capital, the largest merchant cash advance enforcement action to date
New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Yellowstone Capital LLC and 25 affiliated companies in March 2024, alleging the network, operating since 2009 under dozens of aliases including F…
Merchant cash advance fraud
2024
"Passive investment income" from AI storefronts, and a $21.7m judgment
The FTC banned the owners of Automators AI in February 2024 over promises of passive investment income from AI-powered Amazon and Walmart storefronts. The vast majority of clients did not ma…
E-commerce automation and business opportunity schemes · Job and task scams
A Fort Wayne woman used a fake charity to file 30 fraudulent rental-assistance applications
Dora T. Boyd, 33, of Fort Wayne, Indiana used a purported charitable organization to file at least 30 fraudulent applications to the City of Fort Wayne's federally funded Emergency Rental As…
Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) fraud
A Pennsylvania guardian and her brother laundered stolen ward money through fake 'medical services' companies
Gloria Byars of Aldan, Pennsylvania, worked first as an office manager for a Delaware County guardianship company before running her own, eventually serving as court-appointed guardian for m…
Professional guardianship and conservatorship fraud
A $204 million default judgment against a binary options network that never showed up in court
The CFTC charged Canadian brothers David, Jonathan and Joshua Cartu, Canadian-Israeli brothers Leeav and Nati Peretz, Texas-based associate Ryan Masten, and four related companies in Septemb…
Binary options fraud
New Jersey school operator sentenced over fraudulent nursing diploma pipeline
Vilaire Duroseau owned and operated the Center for Advance Training and Studies in West Orange, New Jersey, which the Justice Department's "Operation Nightingale" investigation identified as…
Nursing diploma mill fraud
A Boise couple sentenced for defrauding an elderly rancher out of her home
James Dougherty, 44, and his wife Jessica Dougherty, 43, of Boise, Idaho, moved onto a retired schoolteacher's 46-acre ranch in 2015 to help with horses and ranch work in exchange for free r…
Power of attorney and caregiver financial abuse
A credit repair pyramid scheme, $12 million clawed back, 443,000 people refunded
The FTC sued Financial Education Services and related entities in May 2022, alleging the company lured consumers with low credit scores by promising to clean up their credit, then recruited …
Credit repair scams
The US told its banks what timeshare fraud looks like from the inside
On 16 July 2024 the Treasury sanctioned three Mexican accountants and four Mexican companies over CJNG timeshare fraud, and FinCEN issued a notice, jointly with OFAC and the FBI, telling US …
Timeshare exit and resale scams · Advance fee and 419 scams
Federal investigators went looking for movers holding people's belongings
FMCSA ran Operation Protect Your Move in 2023 and again in 2024 in response to a significant increase in complaints of movers holding household possessions hostage to extort additional charg…
Moving company scams and hostage loads
Frantz Simeon's Ponzi scheme against the Haitian American community in Brooklyn and Queens
Frantz Simeon used his company, First Black Enterprises, Inc., to target members of the Haitian American community in Brooklyn and Queens between February 2019 and December 2020, promising r…
Affinity fraud
Losses at Bitcoin ATMs rose nearly tenfold in three years
The FTC's September 2024 analysis found reported losses at Bitcoin ATMs rising nearly tenfold from 2020 to over $110 million in 2023, and topping $65 million in the first half of 2024 alone.…
Bitcoin ATM and crypto kiosk scams · Government impersonation · Fake tech support
Three federal agencies issued one warning as a hurricane approached
On 9 October 2024, with hurricanes making landfall, the FTC, the Justice Department and the CFPB issued a joint warning about disaster scams and price gouging. It names four categories, fake…
Contractor and storm chaser scams · Charity and disaster scams · Government impersonation
The US banned AI-generated testimonials, and then sued a company selling them
In August 2024 the FTC finalised a rule banning fake reviews and testimonials, including AI-generated ones, and requiring disclosure of material connections behind celebrity endorsements. A …
Celebrity endorsement and deepfake ads · Fake investment platforms · Job and task scams
$212m on gift cards, and the reason that number is small
US consumers reported losing $212 million on gift or reload cards across 41,120 reports in 2024, the sixth-largest payment method by losses, well behind bank transfers at $2.09 billion. The …
Gift card draining · Government impersonation · Utility shut-off scams · Fake tech support
Health care fraud costs consumers $283 at a time and Medicare billions
In 2024 US consumers filed 78,763 health care fraud reports with the FTC, losing about $80 million with a median of $283 each. The same year's federal takedown alleged $14.6 billion. Both nu…
Medicare and health insurance scams
Home repair fraud reports track the storms, not the calendar
US reports in the FTC's Home Improvement, Repair, and Solar category ran at 10,573 in 2022, 12,313 in 2023 and 11,408 in 2024, flat, not rising, and unlike almost every other category on thi…
Contractor and storm chaser scams
US immigration services fraud reports nearly tripled in two years
Reports to the FTC in its Immigration Services category rose from 478 in 2022 to 1,291 in 2024, a 170% increase, and the sharpest proportional rise in any category we track. The absolute num…
Immigration and visa scams
141,902 telemarketing complaints, and what they cannot tell you
US consumers filed 141,902 unwanted telemarketing complaints with the FTC in 2024, alongside 200,331 about unsolicited email and 164,634 about unsolicited texts. None of those figures measur…
Auto warranty robocalls · Phishing and smishing
US utility scam reports rose 28% in two years
Reports to the FTC in its Utilities category rose from 6,040 in 2022 to 7,729 in 2024. The count is small next to phishing or investment fraud, and it is measuring something narrower than th…
Utility shut-off scams
Ganadores: Spanish-language seminars and English-only contracts
The FTC sued Florida-based Ganadores in June 2023, alleging it marketed real estate and online business coaching to Spanish-speaking consumers through free seminars and Spanish-language ads …
Real estate investing seminar scams
A fake psychic's extortion pushed a Maryland man to embezzle $4 million from his DC employer
Gina Rita Russell, then 35, of New York and Los Angeles, began the scheme with an ordinary psychic reading she gave a New York woman in Manhattan in 2009, warning of looming misfortune that …
Psychic and fortune-teller fraud
Ten years of business email compromise: $55.5 billion in global exposed losses
In September 2024 the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center published a decade of business email compromise figures: $55.5 billion in global exposed losses across complaints filed between Oc…
Business email compromise · Invoice and vendor fraud · Rental and real estate scams
The FBI's catalogue of how generative AI gets used in fraud
In December 2024 the FBI published an itemised account of how criminals use generative AI across text, images, audio and video. The most consequential entries are the mundane ones: AI used t…
Deepfake voice and video scams · Romance scams · Fake investment platforms · Phishing and smishing
'IP Register UG': a Munich court convicts three over fake EUIPO invoices
In September 2024 the Munich court found three defendants guilty of commercial gang fraud for sending letters under the name "IP Register UG" that closely resembled official European Union I…
Trademark solicitation scams
A French national sentenced to 10 years for stealing $1.8 million by posing as other claimants
Gabriel Adrien Lobe Diop, 35, a French national, was sentenced on June 10, 2024, to 10 years in federal prison after posing as the rightful owners of property held by California's State Cont…
Unclaimed property scam
Two former executives of a carbon offset developer charged with manipulating cookstove data to generate millions of extra credits
On 2 October 2024 the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York announced criminal charges against Ken Newcombe, former CEO of carbon credit developer C-Quest Capital, and…
Carbon credit fraud
Palm Beach School of Nursing registrar sentenced to 78 months over fake diplomas
Gail Russ was the registrar of the now-closed Palm Beach School of Nursing in Lake Worth Beach, Florida, one of the schools at the center of the Justice Department's "Operation Nightingale" …
Nursing diploma mill fraud
India's government describes the fake police station on the screen
On 14 May 2024 India's Ministry of Home Affairs published an alert describing a scheme it calls "digital arrest": callers posing as police, CBI, the narcotics department, the RBI or the Enfo…
Digital arrest · Government impersonation
A $56 million consent order over gold and silver coins sold at triple their cost
Red Rock Secured, LLC and two of its salespeople convinced at least 950 people nationwide to pay over $69 million for gold and silver "Canadian Red-Tailed Hawk" coins that were worth only ab…
Precious metals and gold IRA scams
A $49 million default judgment after a precious metals dealer used forged documents to hide missing funds
Regal Assets LLC solicited customers to move retirement savings into self-directed IRAs and buy precious metals, then misappropriated more than $21 million from over 120 of them, using forge…
Precious metals and gold IRA scams
A $20.3 million judgment after the FTC's first jury trial over a merchant cash advance
The FTC sued Richmond Capital Group (later RCG Advances, LLC) and its principals, including Robert Giardina and Jonathan Braun, alleging they misrepresented the terms of merchant cash advanc…
Merchant cash advance fraud
A Florida website operator sentenced after eight years as a fugitive, for a $3.4 million refund scheme
Judy Grace Sellers, of Chipley, Florida, operated a website called commercialredemption.com in 2008 and 2009 promoting the use of IRS Form 1099-OID to commit tax fraud, telling followers the…
Sovereign citizen debt elimination fraud
CFPB and seven states sue a debt-relief network over $100 million in illegal fees
On 10 January 2024 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the attorneys general of seven states sued StratFS, LLC (formerly Strategic Financial Solutions) and roughly thirty affiliated…
Debt settlement scams
Brooklyn nursing review operator forfeits $4.7 million over fraudulent diplomas
Cassandre Jean owned and operated Success Nursing Review in Brooklyn, New York, which the Justice Department's "Operation Nightingale" investigation identified as a recruiting hub funneling …
Nursing diploma mill fraud
A RICO lawsuit over a call-center network accused of switching ACA plans without consent
A federal class-action lawsuit filed in the Southern District of Florida in April 2024 accused TrueCoverage, Enhance Health, Speridian Technologies (owner of the Benefitalign enrollment plat…
ACA marketplace switching and enrollment fraud
Santa Paula physician sentenced for certifying patients as terminal who were not
Dr. Victor Contreras, a Santa Paula, California physician, and co-defendant Juanita Antenor schemed from July 2016 to February 2019 to defraud Medicare through two Pasadena hospice companies…
Hospice fraud
Connecticut wins a $5 million judgment against bankrupt Vision Solar
In October 2024 a Hartford Superior Court judge entered a $5 million stipulated judgment in the Connecticut Attorney General's suit against Vision Solar, which had been accused of high-press…
Home solar sales fraud
A Seattle woman's ring stole $6.8 million from pandemic programs, led by the largest ERAP theft case in the nation
Paradise Williams, 29, of Seattle led a ring that from June 2020 to February 2022 submitted more than 125 fraudulent applications to King County's federally funded Emergency Rental Assistanc…
Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) fraud
$18 million raised, $194,809 to patients
In March 2024 the FTC and ten states sued Cancer Recovery Foundation International, trading as Women's Cancer Fund, and its operator Gregory B. Anderson. The complaint alleged that between 2…
Charity and disaster scams
A forged deed, a fake notary stamp, and an elderly owner's home in LeDroit Park
Jeffrey M. Young-Bey, 67, of Washington, D.C., was found guilty by a federal jury on 12 February 2024 on 12 charges after prosecutors showed he forged the signatures of an elderly homeowner …
Home title fraud
Abraham Yusuff's $110 million stolen-identity refund ring
Abraham Yusuff of Round Rock, Texas led a scheme that ran from 2018 to 2021, using stolen taxpayer identities and stolen tax-preparer credentials to file more than 370 fraudulent returns see…
Stolen identity refund fraud
2023
New York leader of an $8 million Medicaid transport scheme sentenced to 95 months; riders were dead, abroad or had never heard of the company
Julio Alvarado pleaded guilty to one count of health care fraud and on March 29, 2023 was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood in the Southern District of New York to 95 months in …
Medicaid transportation fraud
An Arkansas lab owner's $134 million COVID-19 and urine-test billing scheme
Billy Joe Taylor of Lavaca, Arkansas controlled two diagnostic laboratory companies, Vitas Laboratories and Beach Tox, which submitted more than $134 million in false claims to Medicare for …
COVID-19 test billing fraud
A boiler room accused of fleecing hundreds of retirees out of $30 million in coins
The CFTC sued Los Angeles-based Fisher Capital LLC, an affiliated company and principal Alexander Spellane (also known as Alexander Overlie) in April 2023, alleging they used high-pressure t…
Precious metals and gold IRA scams
The rule that makes a hostage load illegal, and almost nobody knows it
Under a non-binding estimate, an interstate mover cannot require more than 110% of the estimate at the time of delivery. Under a binding estimate, it is 100%. A crew demanding triple the quo…
Moving company scams and hostage loads
The two biggest credit repair brands, a $2.7 billion judgment
The CFPB sued PGX Holdings, Progrexion Marketing and the law firm behind Lexington Law and CreditRepair.com, the two largest brands in the industry, with combined 2022 revenues of $388 milli…
Credit repair scams
Houston physician and stepson sentenced for $1.2 million Jomori pill mill scheme
Dr. Oscar Lightner, 73, of Laredo, Texas, and his stepson Andres Martinez Jr., 29, also of Laredo, operated Jomori Health and Wellness, a purported Houston pain management clinic, as a pill …
Pill mill fraud
Merida Group's owner, CEO and medical director sentenced over $150 million hospice fraud
From 2009 to 2018, the Merida Group, a health care company operating dozens of hospice and other locations across Texas, submitted more than $150 million in false and fraudulent Medicare cla…
Hospice fraud
Former nursing school president pleads guilty, becomes the prosecution's key witness
Johanah Napoleon was the former president and owner of the Palm Beach School of Nursing in Lake Worth Beach, Florida, one of the schools at the center of the Justice Department's "Operation …
Nursing diploma mill fraud
Washington, D.C. rooming house operator sentenced for taking tenants' Social Security and VA benefits
Rosemary Ogbenna, 46, of the District of Columbia, was sentenced on February 28, 2023 to 32 months in prison for a scheme to steal more than $400,000 in Social Security and Veterans Affairs …
Representative payee fraud
Michigan doctor who 'pioneered' a shots-for-pills opioid scheme sentenced to 16.5 years
Dr. Francisco Patino, 68, of Wayne County, Michigan, ran a "shots-for-pills" protocol at pain clinics in which patients received unnecessary back injections, billed to Medicare and Medicaid,…
Pill mill fraud
Twenty years of letters from psychics who were not writing them
Patrice Runner ran a mass-mailing scheme from 1994 to November 2014, sending millions of letters that purported to be personal messages from the psychics Maria Duval and Patrick Guerin, offe…
Mass-mailing and psychic letter fraud · Prize, lottery and sweepstakes scams
Response Marketing and the first celebrity endorser settlements
In May 2023 the FTC and the Utah Division of Consumer Protection announced $16.7 million in settlements with Utah-based Response Marketing Group, its affiliates, five individuals and two rea…
Real estate investing seminar scams
A gang member ran a three-year virtual kidnapping scheme by smuggled cellphone from inside a Mexican prison
Julio Manuel Reyes Zuniga, a reputed member of the Rancho San Pedro street gang, ran a virtual kidnapping extortion scheme from September 2015 to June 2018 using smuggled cellphones from ins…
Virtual kidnapping scams
SEC sues Utah EB-5 operator over $5 million of $18 million raised for a lake resort
The Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that Christofer Shurian and his entity Utah Regional Investment Fund, LLC raised $18 million between 2014 and 2020 in an EB-5 offering to Chine…
EB-5 immigrant investor fraud
Rick Singer's $25 million 'side door' earns him the longest sentence in the case
William "Rick" Singer ran a nationwide college admissions bribery operation from about 2011 to February 2019 through two entities he controlled: Edge College & Career Network LLC, a for-prof…
College admissions bribery scams
FTC and Arizona: Solar Xchange and its owner face a $13.8 million partly suspended penalty over solar telemarketing
In July 2023 the FTC and the Arizona Attorney General sued Vision Solar LLC, Solar Xchange LLC (also doing business as Energy Exchange) and Solar Xchange's owner, Mark Getts. The complaint a…
Home solar sales fraud
2022
"Hi Mum": Australia names the WhatsApp version and counts it
The ACCC issued a formal alert on 23 August 2022 after more than 1,150 Australians lost A$2.6 million to family impersonation messages in seven months, most of them in June and July. It is t…
"Hi Mum" and family impersonation texts · Grandparent and family emergency scams
Access Funding's fake independent advisor and $21 million theft from lead-poisoning victims
Maryland prosecutors say Raffi Boghosian, the chief operating officer of structured settlement factoring company Access Funding, and two lawyers, Charles Smith and Anuj Sud, defeated the ind…
Structured settlement purchase fraud
A Ferndale, Washington warehouse indicted over 467 counterfeit listings
A federal grand jury indicted Kara Suneva Allen, 42, of Ferndale, Washington, in 2022, alleging she ran Keepin Up With Kara LLC, a business selling counterfeit designer goods from a Ferndale…
Counterfeit goods scams
Eight traders with a Discord, and $114m in alleged profits
In December 2022 the SEC and the Justice Department charged eight men who ran the Atlas Trading community on Discord and Twitter, alleging they bought stocks, urged hundreds of thousands of …
Pump and dump, and finfluencer manipulation
Baller Ape Club: a $2.6 million rug pull, and a defendant the US has not caught
Le Anh Tuan, a 26-year-old Vietnamese national, and unnamed co-conspirators sold "Baller Ape Club" NFTs in October 2021, then deleted the project's website and disappeared with investors' mo…
NFT and crypto token rug pulls
A fake driver's licence, a rented alias, and a mail drop for stolen credit
Corey Cato, 41, of Atlanta, was sentenced in September 2022 to more than seven years in federal prison for his role in a nationwide fraud ring that used stolen Social Security numbers, inclu…
Synthetic identity fraud
Eight billion robocalls from one operation, cut off in a week
On 7 July 2022 the FCC ordered every US voice provider to stop carrying auto warranty robocall traffic from a single operation it believed had generated upwards of eight billion calls since …
Auto warranty robocalls
5,187,677,000 calls in three months, and a $300m fine
In December 2022 the FCC proposed a $299,997,000 penalty, the largest in its history, against the auto warranty robocall operation, having found it placed approximately 5.19 billion calls to…
Auto warranty robocalls · Phishing and smishing
Frosties: $1.1 million gone within hours of the mint finishing
Ethan Nguyen and Andre Llacuna, both 20, created "Frosties," an 8,888-piece Ethereum NFT collection that promised buyers a themed video game and ongoing community rewards. Within hours of th…
NFT and crypto token rug pulls
A fabricated 'last $20 for gas' story that raised $400,000 on GoFundMe
In late 2017, Mark D'Amico, Katelyn McClure and Johnny Bobbitt Jr. invented a story that Bobbitt, a homeless man, gave McClure his last $20 so she could buy gas after running out on Intersta…
Crowdfunding and fake fundraiser scams
50 fraudulent accounts, $9.5 million, and a 25-year sentence
Elvis Eghosa Ogiekpolor, 46, of Norcross, Georgia, was sentenced in October 2022 to 25 years in federal prison for opening and directing others to open at least 50 fraudulent business bank a…
Money mule recruitment · Romance scams · Business email compromise
Jay Peak owner sentenced to 60 months over a Vermont biotech plant that was never built
Ariel Quiros, then of Puerto Rico and formerly of Key Biscayne, Florida, pleaded guilty in August 2020 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, money laundering and concealing material facts from…
EB-5 immigrant investor fraud
The $10,000-a-test ringer who sat exams for 24 students over eight years
Mark Riddell conspired with William "Rick" Singer from 2011 to February 2019 to cheat on college entrance exams, either taking the SAT or ACT in a student's place using a fake photo ID, or p…
College admissions bribery scams
Seven years of a fabricated Hodgkin's lymphoma diagnosis, $105,513 from 349 donors
Amanda Christine Riley, formerly of San Jose, California, falsely claimed from 2012 to 2019 to have Hodgkin's lymphoma, shaving her head, forging medical records and physicians' letters, and…
Crowdfunding and fake fundraiser scams
An active-duty airman and a co-developer rug pull $400,000 in Solana NFTs
Devin Alan Rhoden, an active-duty US Air Force member stationed at MacDill Air Force Base, and Berman Jerry Nowlin Jr. minted three Solana NFT collections: UndeadApes, Undead Lady Apes and U…
NFT and crypto token rug pulls
The shut-off threat arrives when the weather makes it credible
The FTC's utility scam alerts cluster around cold snaps and high-bill seasons: February 2021, September 2022, and a heating-cost warning tied to winter. That timing is the scheme's design: t…
Utility shut-off scams · Charity and disaster scams
Two UK men get 52 and 42 months for a boiler room that sold stock and fake carbon credits to elderly victims, over $16 million lost
Christopher Wright and Steven Hooper, citizens of the United Kingdom, were sentenced on June 30, 2022 in the Southern District of New York to 52 and 42 months in prison for an over $16 milli…
Carbon credit fraud
A real estate coaching scheme and a $111 million judgment
The FTC and the Utah Division of Consumer Protection sued Zurixx, LLC and its three owners in September 2019, alleging a real estate coaching scheme that used free seminars, TV personalities…
Real estate investing seminar scams
2021
Shell companies built years of fake credit history for identities that didn't exist
A Suffolk County, New York, investigation unravelled a 13-person, three-corporation ring that created more than 20 synthetic identities using the Social Security numbers of children, recent …
Synthetic identity fraud
Ayudando Guardians' founders embezzled $11 million from nearly 1,000 disabled and veteran clients over a decade
Susan Harris and Sharon Moore co-founded Ayudando Alpha, Inc., doing business as Ayudando Guardians, Inc., in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in November 2006. The nonprofit served as representativ…
Professional guardianship and conservatorship fraud
A Tennessee woman sentenced for 128 false unclaimed-property claims the state caught before paying
Marilyn Cook, 58, of Alcoa, Tennessee, who also used the names Marilyn Powell and Marilyn Sunset, was sentenced on August 26, 2021, to two years and five months in prison for filing false cl…
Unclaimed property scam
A 'credit repair' front that built fake credit files instead
Michael Griffin ran a purported credit repair business out of Raleigh and Knightdale, North Carolina, that in reality created fictitious credit profiles for clients using stolen and syntheti…
Synthetic identity fraud
A South Carolina attorney who banked, litigated for, and collected on a veteran pension-buyout scheme for seven years
The CFPB, the South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs and the Arkansas Attorney General sued attorney Candy Kern-Fuller, Howard Sutter III and Upstate Law Group LLC in February 2020, a…
Pension advance scams
A Latvian national fakes the Patent and Trademark Office and is sentenced for mail fraud
Viktors Suhorukovs, a citizen of Latvia, pleaded guilty to four counts of mail fraud and was sentenced in September 2021 in the District of South Carolina to more than four years in federal …
Trademark solicitation scams
2020
The Pension Company's $7.96 million theft from injured children's annuity funds
Joseph Edward Gargan, CEO of The Pension Company in Arlington, Virginia, was hired by the federal government and by a New York hospital to purchase annuities for 13 children harmed by medica…
Structured settlement purchase fraud
Gino de Paz, Grace de Paz and Shabana Khublal permanently banned after running the same credit card rate-reduction pitch a decade after the FTC first warned about it
The FTC and Florida's Attorney General sued Gino de Paz, Grace de Paz, Shabana Khublal, and their companies GDP Network LLC, G & G Success LLC (doing business as YF Solution) and G & N Squar…
Credit card interest rate reduction scams
Ninety per cent to the fundraiser, less than two to the cause
In September 2020 the FTC and four states permanently banned Mark Gelvan and three associates from all charity fundraising. Their telefunding operation raised money for sham charities claimi…
Charity and disaster scams
Washington State guardian sentenced after taking from 21 clients over seven years
Wayne Jerome Houston, 61, of Port Ludlow, Washington, who owned and operated Cross Point Services LLC, a guardianship business for disabled and vulnerable adults, was sentenced on October 14…
Representative payee fraud
$800,000 raised across four campaigns for a backpack that never shipped
Douglas Monahan, operating as iBackPack of Texas, LLC, raised more than $800,000 from consumers through four crowdfunding campaigns on Indiegogo and Kickstarter between 2015 and 2016 for a h…
Crowdfunding and fake fundraiser scams
A Pennsylvania funeral director who pocketed 80 families' prepayments for over a decade
Stephen Kezmarsky, former owner of a funeral home in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, accepted pre-need funeral policy payments from elderly clients between 2005 and 2017, but never submitted their …
Prepaid funeral scams
Lori Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli pay $500,000 to fake a USC crew recruit, twice
Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, agreed with William "Rick" Singer in 2016 and again in 2017 to have their two daughters designated as USC crew-team…
College admissions bribery scams
Fifty enforcement actions, and nearly half of complaints about debts not owed
Operation Corrupt Collector, announced in September 2020, brought more than 50 enforcement actions across the FTC, three federal partners and 16 states. Its supporting figure is the useful o…
Phantom debt collection
A South Carolina pension-buyout broker permanently banned from consumer finance
The CFPB and the South Carolina Department of Consumer Affairs sued Katharine Snyder and her companies, Performance Arbitrage Company Inc. and Life Funding Options Inc., in October 2019, all…
Pension advance scams
2019
Massachusetts van company owner jailed for billing MassHealth for rides never given, some to hospitalized or dead patients
Michael Davini, 59, of Rindge, New Hampshire, owner of Rite Way LLC, pleaded guilty in October 2019 to larceny, Medicaid false claims and kickbacks charges. On November 4, 2019 a Worcester S…
Medicaid transportation fraud
A binary options CEO sentenced to 22 years for a $145 million scheme
Lee Elbaz, CEO of the Israel-based Yukom Communications, was convicted at trial in August 2019 of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud for orchestrating a scheme that sold binary o…
Binary options fraud
Nevada's largest elder exploitation case: a professional guardian sentenced to 16 to 40 years
April Parks owned A Private Professional Guardian LLC in Boulder City, Nevada, and was one of the region's most active private professional guardians, typically serving as court-appointed gu…
Professional guardianship and conservatorship fraud
Five men sentenced for selling carbon credits at £5.26 to £6.50 each when the real price was 25p to 30p, to people aged 50 and over
Sami Raja, 32, of Grays, Essex, was sentenced to eight years at Southwark Crown Court in January 2019 for his part in a £2.4 million carbon credit fraud. With four others he mis-sold carbon …
Carbon credit fraud
Rick Koerber's 'Free Capitalist' real estate Ponzi scheme, sold to his own LDS community
Claud R. "Rick" Koerber, known for his "Free Capitalist" real estate investment seminars, ran a Ponzi scheme through Founders Capital and the Franklin Squires companies from 2004 to 2008, ra…
Affinity fraud
A 70-year-old Las Vegas grant scammer, sentenced alongside a separate Medicare fraud
Lorraine Riddiough, 70, of Las Vegas, also known as Lorraine Ann Mader, pleaded guilty to running a telemarketing scheme from October 2009 to spring 2013 that falsely told small-business own…
Government grant scams
A Spokane woman's $5.66 million, four-state staged accident ring
Sandra Victoria Talento, 58, of Spokane, Washington and Henderson, Nevada, was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison on November 7, 2019, for her role staging more than 30 automobile acci…
Staged accident insurance fraud
An 80,000-borrower Pennsylvania settlement voided a $133 million tribal loan scheme
Think Finance operated online lending brands including Plain Green Loans through partnerships with tribal entities, charging interest rates as high as 448% while shielding the arrangement be…
Tribal lending scams
A self-proclaimed psychic took $1.6 million from a grieving Houston medical student over seven years
Sherry Tina Uwanawich, who also went by the name Jacqueline Miller, met her victim in Houston, Texas, in 2007, while the woman, a medical student who had been suffering from depression after…
Psychic and fortune-teller fraud
A father and daughter traffic $885,000 through a Newark deli
Maria Teresa Venegas, listed owner of Jenny's Deli in Newark, New Jersey, and her father Manuel Venegas, an employee there, exchanged more than $885,000 in SNAP benefits for cash between 201…
SNAP benefits trafficking
A veteran pension-buyout network settled for $2.7 million, its broker banned for a $1 fine
In August 2019 the CFPB and the Arkansas Attorney General sued Andrew Gamber, his companies Voyager Financial Group LLC, BAIC Inc. and SoBell Corp., alleging they misled veterans and other c…
Pension advance scams
2018
A $1.3 billion judgment, a 16-year sentence, and 1.2 million refund checks
Scott Tucker ran AMG Services and related companies as an online payday lending business charging up to 700% interest, while claiming the businesses were owned by Native American tribes and …
Tribal lending scams
A New York man advertised two Finger Lakes vacation homes he could not rent, and promised an escrow that did not exist
Henry T. Dean III, 58, of Beaver Dams, New York, advertised vacation homes in the Finger Lakes region on FingerLakesGuesthouses.com, Homeaway.com and VacationRentalsByOwner.com between Septe…
Vacation rental scams
Eric Conn's $550 million Social Security disability fraud scheme
From October 2004 to April 2016, Kentucky disability attorney Eric Christopher Conn worked with former Social Security administrative law judge David B. Daugherty and several doctors, includ…
Social Security disability fraud mill
26,967 complaints for cars that were never in anyone's possession
The FBI's IC3 recorded approximately 26,967 complaints and $54,032,396 in adjusted losses from fraudulent online vehicle sales between May 2014 and December 2017. The mechanism it describes …
Online vehicle purchase scams · Ticket and marketplace scams
Pacific Hospital owner sentenced over $600 million workers' comp kickback scheme
For at least 15 years, from 1997 to 2013, Michael Drobot used his ownership of Pacific Hospital of Long Beach, California, to run a kickback scheme built around the state's workers' compensa…
Workers' comp kickback fraud
Premium Business Pages: 'past-due' invoices for services nobody ordered
In June 2018 the FTC sued nine Canadian and U.S. defendants operating as Premium Business Pages, Ameteck Group, The Local Business Pages and Data Net Technologies. It alleged they phoned sma…
Business directory listing scams
A Houston woman collected cash drops for a caller in Mexico who told 39 families their children had been kidnapped
Yanette Rodriguez Acosta, also known as Yanette Patino, 35, of Houston, worked with a co-conspirator in Mexico, identified as Ismael Ramirez, who called 39 families across Texas, California …
Virtual kidnapping scams
Beverly Hills radiologist convicted and sentenced to 10 years in Operation Backlash workers' comp scheme
Ronald Grusd, a Beverly Hills radiologist, owned California Imaging Network Medical Group and Willows Consulting Company, which paid kickbacks to clinics across San Diego and Imperial counti…
Workers' comp kickback fraud
2017
Psychologist sentenced to 25 years for signing disability forms he never reviewed
Alfred Bradley Adkins, a clinical psychologist from Shelbiana, Kentucky, performed perfunctory evaluations of disability claimants referred to him by attorney Eric Conn and signed medical ev…
Social Security disability fraud mill
The Miami lawyer who forged 114 judges' signatures on structured settlement orders
Jose Manuel Camacho, a Miami lawyer with a high-volume structured settlement practice, was charged in February 2016 with forging the signatures of at least seven Broward County judges on 114…
Structured settlement purchase fraud
Faking terminal cancer for $264,163 in donations, including two GoFundMe pages
Jennifer Flynn Cataldo, a 37-year-old former special education teacher in Alabama, falsely portrayed herself as having terminal cancer from 2014 to May 2017, collecting $264,163 in checks, c…
Crowdfunding and fake fundraiser scams
Former Social Security judge sentenced for taking $609,000 in bribes to approve disability claims
David Black Daugherty, a Social Security administrative law judge assigned to the agency's Huntington, West Virginia hearing office, spent from 2004 until his 2011 retirement seeking out pen…
Social Security disability fraud mill
Fiango Home Healthcare's co-owners sentenced to 75 and 80 years over a $13 million, nine-year scheme
Marie Neba and her husband Ebong Tilong co-owned Fiango Home Healthcare Inc. in the Houston area. From February 2006 through June 2015, the pair submitted more than $13 million in false clai…
Home health aide fraud
RGB Inc., operating as Godwin Music, sentenced over video sweepstakes machines
RGB Inc., a North Carolina corporation doing business as Godwin Music and Raleigh Amusements, was sentenced in March 2017 to four years of probation and ordered to forfeit $2,334,500 plus a …
Sweepstakes casino scams
Chicago hotel and convention center offering raised $158 million from EB-5 investors
Anshoo Sethi, an Illinois developer, and two companies he controlled raised approximately $158 million from close to 300 foreign investors in an EB-5 offering for a hotel and convention cent…
EB-5 immigrant investor fraud
Illinois transport company co-owner gets five years for overbilling Medicaid $4.7 million, including rides for patients who had died
Gregory D. Toran, 68, of Hazel Crest, Illinois, co-owner of a Chicago non-emergency medical transport company, was sentenced in federal court in Springfield, Illinois in January 2017 to five…
Medicaid transportation fraud
78 months, $5.9 million restitution: the Las Vegas operator who ran grant fraud under a dozen names
Gregory Villegas, 37, of Las Vegas, pleaded guilty in March 2017 to conspiracy to commit wire fraud over a scheme that defrauded at least 390 small-business owners of more than $5.26 million…
Government grant scams
2016
'Trademark Compliance Center': a $385 monitoring service that never monitored anything
In December 2016 the U.S. Department of Justice announced the case of two Glendale, California men, Artashes Darbinyan and Orbel Hakobyan, who pleaded guilty to mail fraud and money launderi…
Trademark solicitation scams
Texas chiropractor sentenced to 14 years for FECA workers' comp kickback scheme
Garry Wayne Craighead, a Texas chiropractor, formed Union Treatment Centers (UTC) in 2007 and, from 2011 through 2014, opened clinics under various names across Dallas-Fort Worth, San Antoni…
Workers' comp kickback fraud
A Bessemer grocer forfeits $5.2 million over food stamp fraud and laundering
Hasan F. Ahmed, owner of Associated Discount Foods in Bessemer, Alabama, swapped food stamps for cash below face value and let customers buy ineligible items at inflated prices, acquiring an…
SNAP benefits trafficking
Banc de Binary, the industry's first major US settlement, for $11 million
The SEC sued Cyprus-based Banc de Binary Ltd. and its founder Oren Shabat Laurent in 2013, alleging the company illegally sold unregistered binary options to US customers while falsely claim…
Binary options fraud
Kevin Guice ordered to pay $23 million after running a 13-shell-company robocall operation from an Orlando boiler room
The FTC and Florida's Attorney General sued Kevin W. Guice and a web of 13 shell companies in June 2016, alleging his Orlando operation used illegal robocalls from "Bank Card Services" and "…
Credit card interest rate reduction scams
A Virginia 'psychic' told clients their money was cursed, then kept it instead of burying it
Sandra Marks, operating as "Psychic Catherine" from a rented house on US Route 29 near Charlottesville, Virginia, told clients she sensed a curse or "dark cloud" on their money, and offered …
Psychic and fortune-teller fraud
2015
Capital Sweepstakes Systems and the president who fixed the games
Capital Sweepstakes Systems Inc., a Loomis, California corporation, and its president Kevin Freels pleaded guilty in July 2015 to conducting an illegal gambling business built around interne…
Sweepstakes casino scams
Ephren Taylor's 'Building Wealth Tour' Ponzi scheme through Black churches nationwide
Ephren Taylor II, CEO of City Capital Corporation, and co-defendant Wendy Connor ran a nationwide Ponzi scheme from at least 2008 through its 2010 collapse, touring churches on a "Building W…
Affinity fraud
Misikko.com, a counterfeit hair-appliance retailer that allegedly faked a breast cancer donation
Federal prosecutors charged Stephen Voudouris Sr. of Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, Yung Chung of West Chester, Pennsylvania, and Jaimmy Chun of Philadelphia with conspiracy, trafficking in c…
Counterfeit goods scams
OnlineYellowPagesToday.com and the medical yellow directories
In March 2015 the FTC announced two actions. A Montreal operator behind OnlineYellowPagesToday.com settled, agreeing to a ban from the directory industry. Separately, a court froze the opera…
Business directory listing scams
A Tijuana-based ring random-dialed up to 5,000 calls a day and collected $190,000 from 124 Latino families
Ruth Graciela Raygoza, of Chula Vista, California, Maria Del Carmen Pulido Contreras, of East Los Angeles, and brothers Adrian Jovan Rocha and Jonathan Rocha, both American citizens living i…
Virtual kidnapping scams
2014
$25m in illegal advance fees, and $6,000 to lose a house
A joint sweep by the CFPB, the FTC and 15 states in July 2014 brought 41 actions against foreclosure relief operations that had collected more than $25 million in illegal advance fees. The f…
Mortgage relief and foreclosure rescue scams
Mission Settlement Agency's owner sentenced to 9 years for a $6.6 million scheme
Michael Levitis and his company, Mission Settlement Agency, pleaded guilty in April 2014 to mail and wire fraud after taking $6.6 million in fees from more than 1,200 financially struggling …
Debt settlement scams
A Fort Lauderdale psychic family swindled clients, including a bestselling novelist, out of $17.8 million
Rose Marks, 62, of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, ran a family fortune-telling business operating storefronts in Fort Lauderdale and New York City under names including "Joyce Michael." She and e…
Psychic and fortune-teller fraud
Your Yellow Book: bogus yellow-pages invoices from Oklahoma City
In July 2014 the FTC sued Your Yellow Book Inc. and three members of the Law family of Oklahoma City, alleging they billed small businesses, nonprofits, doctors' offices, retirement homes an…
Business directory listing scams
2013
Massachusetts insurance adviser gets over eight years for taking $7 million meant for life settlements
Joseph Gennaco, a 68-year-old insurance adviser from Winthrop, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty in February to 27 counts of mail and wire fraud for defrauding 40 people out of $7 million. The A…
Life settlement fraud
First prison sentences for a carbon credit boiler room: eight and four and a half years, $9 million lost, a bank froze the money
On 18 April 2013 at Kingston Crown Court, Ian David Macdonald was sentenced to eight years and David John Downes to four and a half years for a carbon credit boiler room that defrauded UK "i…
Carbon credit fraud
National Prearranged Services: a $450 million prepaid funeral Ponzi scheme
National Prearranged Services Inc., based in Clayton, Missouri, sold prepaid funeral contracts in several states, telling customers their money would be held safely in trust. Instead, over m…
Prepaid funeral scams
The self-proclaimed leader of a sovereign citizen group sentenced for a $300 million fictitious bond
James Timothy Turner, self-proclaimed "president" of the sovereign citizen group Republic for the united States of America, travelled the country in 2008 and 2009 holding seminars that taugh…
Sovereign citizen debt elimination fraud
2012
A California promoter sentenced after clients claimed $763 million in fraudulent refunds
Ronald L. Brekke, 55, of Orange County, California, promoted a 1099-OID tax fraud scheme claiming the US Treasury would pay refunds equal to a person's personal debt. Over less than two year…
Sovereign citizen debt elimination fraud
A $2.5 million Florida reverse mortgage ring built on inflated appraisals
From May 2009 through November 2010, Louis Gendason and three co-defendants at a Florida mortgage company and a Pennsylvania title company solicited homeowners aged 62 and older into reverse…
Reverse mortgage scams
TaxMasters and its CEO hit with a $195 million Texas jury verdict
On March 30, 2012 a Travis County, Texas jury returned a $195 million verdict against Houston "tax resolution" company TaxMasters and its founder-CEO Patrick Cox in a Deceptive Trade Practic…
Tax debt relief scams
2011
Houston firm sold 'bonded' life settlements to 800 mostly elderly investors; two men get 45 and 60 years
A&O Resource Management Ltd. of Houston, Texas sold whole and fractional interests in "bonded life settlements" to some 800 investors, most of them elderly, raising about $100 million. In Ju…
Life settlement fraud
Three members of a Texas family get 18, 14 and five and a half years in a $99.7 million oil and gas fraud, including a Picasso forfeited
Three family members who were principals of Aspen Exploration, Inc., the managing partner of oil and gas well programs sold to investors throughout the U.S. and elsewhere, were sentenced by …
Oil and gas investment fraud
Kentucky oil and gas company drew $15.8 million from investors and returned $1.19 million; five sentenced
Between 2003 and 2008, officials and employees of Target Oil and Gas of Albany, Kentucky lured about $15.8 million from investors in Kentucky, Arizona, California, New Jersey and other state…
Oil and gas investment fraud
2010
AFL Financial Services ran the same robocall under 10 company names from Toronto and Orlando for three years before a $13.1 million settlement
The FTC alleged that Baird B. Fisher, Jacqueline M. Fisher and six other defendants ran a credit card interest rate reduction scheme from at least 2007, using more than 10 company names incl…
Credit card interest rate reduction scams
American Tax Relief: the FTC's first tax-relief case ended with a $103 million judgment and over $15 million surrendered
In September 2010 a federal judge in Chicago froze the assets of American Tax Relief LLC and its principal Alexander Seung Hahn at the FTC's request, after the FTC alleged the company had co…
Tax debt relief scams
Dallas promoter gets 10 years for raising $13.5 million for oil and gas projects, claiming a well produced 450 barrels a day when it made under 15
Tommy Eugene Barber, 33, of Dallas, who pleaded guilty in December 2009 to two counts of securities fraud, was sentenced on October 13, 2010 to 120 months in prison and ordered to pay $13,24…
Oil and gas investment fraud
The FTC's "Grant$ For You Now": $1.99 for a government grant list that never was
The FTC sued In Deep Services, Inc. and its principals Ryan Champion and Joseph C. Fleming IV, who did business as "Grant$ For You Now," alleging their websites deceived consumers with promi…
Government grant scams
A father-son 'finder' business charged with stealing $1.6 million from its own clients
Thomas Rodine, 56, of Carmichael, California, and his son Dustin Rodine, 28, of Citrus Heights, operated Rodco & Associates, a real asset and heir-location business that located people with …
Unclaimed property scam