FBI Director Kash Patel testifies at a subcommittee hearing of the House Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Institutions on the 2026 agency budget request at Capitol Hill, Washington, DC on May 7, 2025.
Oliver Contreras | AFP | Getty Images
On Thursday, the FBI warned that “malicious actors” were impersonating voice memos generated by AI targeting current and former government officials, and voice memos generated by AI targeting their contacts.
“If you receive a message claiming it's from a senior US official, don't assume it's authentic,” the FBI said in the announcement.
Since last month, the scammers have argued that “send text messages and techniques known as smishing and vising, respectively, and each claims to come from a senior US official before accessing their personal accounts,” the FBI said.
The announcement states, among other things, that scammers can access these accounts by sending malicious links to their targets.
The announcement states that by accessing a US official's personal or government account, stolen information can be used to target other officials or their associates.
“Contact information obtained through social engineering schemes can also be used to impersonate contacts to withdraw information and funds,” the FBI said.
The announcement does not say which US authorities are spoofing.
However, they say that “many” targets in the scheme are “current or former U.S. senior federal or state government officials and their contacts.”
The FBI did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for details on the scope and potential origins of the Vishing fraud.
The FBI has previously warned that criminals are using generated AI to implement new financial fraud schemes at scale.
Such techniques can generate text, images, audio, and video, trick potential victims, send money, sexttors, defeat prey, and more.
According to FBI data, the top three cybercrimes in 2024 were phishing, extortion and breach of personal data.
Elderly people suffered the most losses – looking at nearly $5 billion, data shows.