occurring in one state often spread to others
of ConsumerAffairsRecent scam warnings from Texas, Illinois, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, California and New York show criminals impersonating police, government workers and trusted institutions.
Fraudsters are using spoofed phone numbers, genuine public-record details and professional-looking couriers to make their demands appear legitimate.
Americans reported nearly 1.01 million cybercrime complaints and $20.88 billion in losses to the FBI in 2025, a 26% increase in reported losses from the previous year.
A Texas school employee lost her life savings after callers claimed she had missed jury duty. In Illinois, fraudulent invoices containing genuine permit details landed in residents inboxes. In Connecticut, an older adult handed more than $100,000 to a courier allegedly working for government officials.
The cases are among a series of recently reported around the United States, illustrating how criminals combine familiar pressure tactics with increasingly convincing technology.
Although the schemes differ, many follow the same pattern: A caller, email or pop-up creates a crisis, impersonates a trusted authority and demands immediate payment through a difficult-to-reverse method.
In Fort Bend County, Texas, a school employee reportedly lost $50,000 after scammers spoofed the county sheriffs telephone number and told her that warrants had been issued because she failed to appear for federal jury duty. The callers allegedly used the names of real law-enforcement personnel and instructed the woman to transfer money to avoid arrest, according to reporting summarized by Hoodline.
Remember this red flag
Real courts and law-enforcement agencies do not call people to collect money for missed jury service or demand payment to cancel an arrest warrant. Caller-ID information can be manipulated, meaning an incoming call can appear to come from a genuine government number.
A similar jury-duty scheme was reported in Pennsylvania, where authorities warned that a scammer was impersonating a Hatboro police officer and demanding money from residents over supposedly missed court service.
Elsewhere, scammers have turned publicly available information into a tool for targeting specific victims.
McHenry County officials in Illinois said people who had filed zoning or permit applications were receiving fraudulent emails claiming their requests had been approved. The messages included real case information taken from publicly streamed county meetings, making the attached invoices appear credible.
Recipients were told to reply for wire-transfer instructions. County officials said authentic government email addresses end in @mchenrycountyil.gov and that the Planning and Development Department does not request payment by wire transfer. Officials also warned that opening the attachments could expose a computer or network to malware or ransomware.
Courier scam
In Stamford, Connecticut, police reported that an 82-year-old resident lost more than $100,000 in a courier scam. Fraudsters allegedly posed as officials, warned that the victims personal information or money was in danger and arranged for someone to collect cash.
Police charged a 28-year-old New York man with second-degree larceny after accusing him of traveling to Stamford to retrieve a package he believed contained about $15,000. The charge is an allegation, and the case had not been resolved at the time of the report. Police emphasized that legitimate U.S. government agencies do not send couriers to homes to collect cash, gold, gift cards or other valuables, according to the Stamford Advocate.
Gold has become a particularly prominent payment method in some impersonation schemes. New York authorities said older residents in the state had lost more than $100 million over two years to in which victims were persuaded to buy precious metals and surrender them to fake government representatives.
Those schemes often begin with a computer pop-up claiming that a financial account has been compromised. A purported technology-support worker gains remote access to the victims computer before transferring the call to someone posing as a law-enforcement officer. Victims are then told to convert their savings into gold and keep the transaction secret until a courier arrives.
Authorities have also reported substantial losses involving cryptocurrency, gift cards and timeshares. Four older residents in Petaluma, California, reported losing a combined total of more than $315,000 through separate within a 24-hour period, according to local police.
Growing losses
The latest cases come amid historically high reported fraud losses. The FBIs Internet Crime Complaint Center received 1,008,597 complaints in 2025, with losses totaling $20.877 billion. That represented a 26% increase in reported losses from 2024. People aged 60 and older reported losing $7.7 billion, more than any other age group, according to the FBIs 2025 Internet Crime Report.
Investment fraud generated the largest category of losses, followed by business-email compromise and technology-support . The Federal Trade Commission separately reported that consumers lost $3.5 billion to impersonation in 2025.
Law enforcement officials say the scale of modern communications allows criminals to contact thousands of prospective victims at little cost. A scam therefore does not need to fool most recipients to be profitable. Personal information obtained from public records, social media or data breaches can make a mass-produced approach feel individually tailored.
The FBI and local authorities advise people to slow down whenever a message creates urgency or demands secrecy. Rather than using a telephone number or link supplied by the caller, consumers should contact the relevant agency, bank or company through an independently verified number.
Requests for gift cards, cryptocurrency, wire transfers, payment apps, cash pickups or gold are major warning signs. Anyone who has transferred money should contact the bank or payment provider immediately, preserve messages and transaction records, and report the incident to local police, the FTCs ReportFraud portal and the FBIs Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Authorities also urge victims not to let embarrassment prevent them from seeking help. Prompt reporting can sometimes stop a transfer, identify a courier or prevent the same criminal network from targeting someone else.
Photo By CNET
Posted: 2026-09-16 11:17:06
