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On September 17, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, the federal office that collects reports of online fraud, warned that the police impersonation scam and related schemes using the names of government officials had drawn nearly 61,000 complaints between January 2025 and July 2026. Reported losses topped $1.6 billion, and the true figure is almost certainly higher because many victims never file a report.
Kentucky has seen its share of this activity. In March, the FBI’s Louisville field office warned of a rise in calls from people claiming to be local, state, or federal officers. A week later, the Kentucky State Police said that text messages demanding payment for unpaid traffic tickets were circulating under its name. The agency stated plainly that it does not contact people by text about citations, fines, or payments.
How a police impersonation scam works
These schemes succeed because most of us were raised to cooperate with the police. A message that appears to come from a sheriff, a trooper, or an FBI agent triggers that habit before careful thought can catch up. The criminals behind a police impersonation scam build every message around fear and speed. A caller says a warrant has been issued for missed jury duty, or a text says a fine must be paid by midnight, and the target is told to stay on the line and tell no one.
The FBI’s September alert describes the tools in detail. Scammers spoof caller ID and email addresses so that the contact appears to come from a real agency, and they set up web addresses that differ from the real one by a single letter or that end in .com instead of .gov. Some now use video calls built with artificial intelligence, meaning software that can fake a face and a voice, to appear on screen as an officer in uniform. The payment they ask for nearly always comes through prepaid cards, cryptocurrency, wire transfers, cash fed into crypto kiosks, or a courier sent to the front door.
The alert also broke out several of the most common versions. Jury duty and missed court date schemes alone drew 6,833 complaints and about $36 million in losses, while schemes aimed at doctors, nurses, and other licensed health workers drew 3,322 complaints and about $37 million.
Why small businesses and local offices are targets
Most coverage of the police impersonation scam focuses on individual victims, but small businesses and local governments face their own version. A shop owner may get a call claiming that an employee is under investigation, that the business owes a fine for a code violation, or that officers need customer records right away to stop a crime in progress. The caller has a name, a badge number, and an answer for every question, and the owner is told that delay will make things worse.
The same trick has moved into email. In late 2024, the FBI warned private companies that criminals were breaking into real police and government email accounts and using them to send fake emergency data requests, which are urgent demands for a customer’s records that skip the usual court order. Criminals were offering stolen .gov email accounts for sale on forums for exactly that purpose.
That warning matters for every business that keeps customer records and every city, county, or school district that runs its own email. A clerk’s or a deputy’s account taken over through a weak password can be used to send messages that every bank, utility, and vendor in town has good reason to trust. The defense is the same steady work that protects any account. That means a second login step beyond the password, called multifactor authentication, along with a clear rule that sensitive requests are confirmed by a call to a known number before anything is released.
Steady habits that stop most of these schemes
The FBI’s guidance comes down to a few habits that any owner, manager, or front desk worker can practice, and none of them costs a dollar.
- Treat any call, text, or email that demands money to settle a warrant, a fine, or a court matter as a police impersonation scam, because no legitimate agency collects payment that way.
- Hang up and call the agency yourself, using a number from its official website or a printed bill, and never the number the caller provides.
- Read web addresses slowly before clicking, and look for government sites that end in .gov.
- Set a rule at your business that no one releases customer records or company money based on a phone call or email alone, and make sure every employee knows it.
- Report every attempt to the FBI at ic3.gov and to your local police, and keep the messages, phone numbers, and any payment records.
Kentuckians can also report scams through the state’s Team Kentucky Stop Scams program at stopscams.ky.gov, which tracks schemes that borrow the names of state agencies.
Commonwealth Sentinel works with small businesses and local governments across the Commonwealth on email protection and staff training, and we are glad to talk through any office’s setup at 502-234-5554. Most offices, however, can close the largest gaps on their own this month with the steps above.
A real officer will always wait while you make a phone call to check, and that patience is the clearest test of whether the badge on the other end of the line is genuine.