The FBI has updated its alert about fake lawyers defrauding victims of cryptocurrency scams, adding due diligence measures to help victims.
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has previously warned that fraudsters were posing as lawyers from fictitious law firms and using social media and messaging services to defraud victims of cryptocurrency scams.
In this sophisticated scheme, the malicious actors target vulnerable populations, particularly the elderly, and offer to recover funds from a previous scam but instead steal personal information and sometimes money from them.
The fraudsters typically give victims a sense of safety and security by impersonating or falsely affiliating themselves with multiple government entities.
On August 13, 2025, the IC3 published an update on this scheme, providing a list of red flag indicators for potential victims to detect the scheme.
Red Flag Indicators to Spot Fake Lawyer Scams
These indicators included:
- Impersonation or affiliation as ‘official authorized partners’ with multiple US and foreign government or regulatory entities, which is not an existing status for law firms
- References to fictitious government or regulatory entities, such as the International Financial Trading Commission (INTFTC)
- Knowledge of the exact amounts and dates of previous wire transfers and the third-party company where the victim previously sent scammed funds
- Unwillingness or inability to provide credentials or a license, not appearing on camera and not conducting video meetings
Additionally, the FBI listed a range of suspicious behaviors that can trigger the victims to detect malicious intent:
- If the law firm claims that the victim was on a government-affiliated list of scam victims and they can recover their money through "legal channels"
- If it refers the victim to a "crypto recovery law firm"
- If it claims that the victim’s funds are in an account held at a foreign bank and tells victims to register an account at that bank
- If it places the victim into a group chat on WhatsApp, or other messaging applications, for supposed secrecy and safety of the client, with supposed foreign bank processors and attorneys who may say that payment of bank fees is required to verify identity and ownership to withdraw funds
- If it requests the victim to send payment to a third-party entity (i.e., xyz trading company) for the supposed purposes of maintaining secrecy and safety
- If it requests payment in cryptocurrency or prepaid gift cards
How to Prevent Fake Lawyer Scams
Finally, the FBI alert also provided a list of security measures and best practices people can implement to prevent falling for such scamming schemes:
- Use a zero-trust model in these circumstances, which assumes no one should be trusted by default and every request should be verified
- Be cautious of law firms contacting you unexpectedly, especially if you have not reported the crime to any law enforcement or civil protection agencies
- Request video verification, documentation or a photo of their law license. If this cannot be readily provided, assume they are not legitimate
- Request verification of employment for anyone claiming to work for the US government or law enforcement
- Keep records, including recordings of video chats of all interactions
- Require notarized proofs of identity from the supposed lawyers before continuing any further communications and transactions
The FBI requested potential victims of fraudulent law firm scams to report the suspicious activity to their local FBI field office and IC3.
Fraud Syndicates Recruit Unwitting ‘Support Staff’ for Scams
Ilia Kolochenko, CEO at ImmuniWeb and a Fellow at the British Computer Society (BCS), said that while this type of scheme is not new, such an alert from the FBI suggests “that both the amplitude and scale of the fake-law-firms fraud have probably attained their historical record.”
"Alarmingly, a comparatively new trend is to breach legitimate law firms and misuse their infrastructure to send highly credible and trustworthy emails from real domains belonging to law firms. Some fraudsters take this scam to the next level by offering Zoom or phone calls with ‘lawyers’ who speak impeccable English or other languages and calmly explain how to ‘settle the matter’ in the simplest way,” Kolochenko noted.
Those are “not necessarily GenAI deepfakes,” but often people who have been recruited by organized fraud syndicates to provide “customer support,” without necessarily understanding the nature of the work they do.
“Once discovered, many will just silently quit the “job” without reporting the incident to law enforcement agencies, being afraid of criminal charges for aiding and abetting,” Kolochenko explained.
"Worse, the uncontrolled proliferation of fake law firms progressively erodes the trust in legitimate communications by real lawyers and law firms, eventually leading to increased costs of litigation and settlements,” he concluded.
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