The FBI warned today that cybercriminals are impersonating its Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) website in what the law enforcement agency described as "possible malicious activity."
Although it didn't share any examples and didn't point to specific attacks, the FBI said that such spoofed websites could be used by attackers in financial scams or to steal the visitors' personal information.
"Threat actors create spoofed websites often by slightly altering characteristics of legitimate website domains, with the purpose of gathering personally identifiable information entered by a user into the site, including name, home address, phone number, email address, and banking information," the FBI said.
"For example, spoofed website domains may feature alternate spellings of words or use an alternative top-level domain to impersonate a legitimate website."
While the FBI didn't link to any domains spoofing the Crime Complaint Center website, BleepingComputer has found several examples hosted at icc3[.]live, practicinglawyer[.]net, and ic3a[.]com.
Ironically, the first also shows a warning notice that's currently displayed on the legitimate IC3 site, warning of scammers impersonating FBI IC3 employees to 'help' recover lost funds.
IC3 website spoofed by scammers (BleepingComputer)
This alert was part of a public service announcement issued by the FBI in April, which was prompted by over 100 reports received between December 2023 and February 2025 of fraudsters using this tactic.
To defend yourself from similar scam attempts, the FBI recommends always entering www.ic3.gov in your web browser's address bar instead of using a search engine and avoiding clicking on sponsored search results, as they're often paid by scammers trying to redirect traffic to their own phishing pages from legitimate sites.
Additionally, never share your personal information with individuals met online or over the phone, and never send them money, cryptocurrency, gift cards, or other financial assets.
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