The FBI put a number on the fake-policeman call: 1.6 billion dollars

Nearly 61,000 people reported it. They lost more than $1.6 billion between them, which works out at about $26,000 each.

That is the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center counting up complaints about scammers posing as police officers and government officials between January 2025 and July 2026, published as alert I-091726-PSA on 17 September. The standard version is a phone call saying charges have been filed against you and you will be arrested unless you pay. A variant covering 6,833 complaints and roughly $36 million says you missed jury duty or a court date. Another 3,322 complaints came from medical professionals told their licence had expired or been misused, costing more than $37 million.

The version that takes the most money per victim is the one that has gone visual. Only 1,809 complaints described it, but it accounts for close to $140 million, nearly a tenth of the total. These are video calls. The man on the screen wears a genuine-looking uniform and sits in what the FBI describes as movie-style sets built to mimic real government facilities. It targets ethnic communities and international students in particular. Caller ID gets spoofed to show real agency numbers, and real employee names get used.

The rule the FBI gives is short enough to repeat to a parent: law enforcement and government authorities will never call or text to demand payment of any kind, or to ask for personal information. If one of these calls ever got as far as asking you to install something on the PC so they could "verify" it, Tendvane's safety check lists what is installed and what starts up with Windows, which is a reasonable way to see what got left behind.