The FBI warned that attackers are spoofing the website of the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) to commit financial fraud or steal visitors’ personal data.
“Malicious actors are creating fake websites, often slightly altering the domains of legitimate sites, in order to harvest personal information that users enter on the site (including name, home address, phone number, email address, and banking information),” the FBI reports. “For example, the domains of these bogus sites may use alternative spellings of words or a different top-level domain to pass themselves off as a legitimate site.”
Although the FBI did not provide links to domains impersonating IC3, journalists at Bleeping Computer discovered several such examples: icc3[.]live, practicinglawyer[.]net, and ic3a[.]com. Moreover, the first site even displays the exact same warning about scammers as the real Internet Crime Complaint Center website, cautioning that criminals are posing as IC3 staff and offering victims “help” in recovering stolen funds.
This warning appeared back in April 2025, after the FBI received more than 100 complaints about scammers using this tactic.
To protect against such attacks, the FBI recommends always typing www.ic3.gov directly into the browser’s address bar rather than using search engines. Law enforcement also warns against clicking on search ads, as they are often paid for by scammers trying to redirect traffic from legitimate sites to their phishing sites.
In addition, the FBI reminded the public that you should never share confidential information with people you have only recently met online or over the phone, and you should not send them money, gift cards, cryptocurrency, or other financial assets.
It is emphasized that IC3 staff never contact fraud victims directly by phone, email, social media, mobile apps, or public forums. Moreover, they will never demand payment to recover stolen funds or refer victims to companies that charge a fee to get their money back.