FTC Highlights Efforts to Combat Imposter Scams and Protect Consumers

The Federal Trade Commission released the following highlights from the agency’s ongoing efforts to combat impersonation scams and protect consumers, including removal of 19 FTC-imposter websites and enforcement actions resulting in more than $80 million in consumer redress since the FTC’s Impersonation Rule went into effect in 2024.

“Imposter scams have been the top reported fraud category over the past several years with consumers reporting billions in losses,” said Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The FTC takes these scams very seriously and will continue to vigorously enforce the law against bad actors. If you pretend to be, or to be affiliated with, an entity to deceive consumers, you should expect to hear from the us.” 

The Impersonation Rule gives the FTC stronger tools to combat and deter scammers who impersonate businesses or government agencies. It allows the FTC to file federal court cases seeking to get money back to injured consumers and civil penalties against rule violators. Since the rule took effect, the FTC has completed 14 enforcement actions, resulting in over $80 million in redress for consumers to date. 

Enforcement Actions

Since early April 2025, the FTC brought eight law enforcement actions that alleged violations of the Impersonation Rule, including:

• MediaAlpha—deceptive government-affiliation claims by an online lead generation firm in the health insurance market
• Innovative Partners—deceptive government-affiliation claims in marketing healthcare plans
• Consumer Impact Recovery—fake debt collector that used deceptive business-affiliation claims
• Mercury Marketing—business imposter that operated sham substance use disorder-treatment clinic 
• Accelerated Debt Settlement—bogus debt-relief scheme that targeted older adults with false business- and government-affiliation claims
• American Tax Service—IRS imposter that ran a bogus tax debt-relief scheme
• Nerd Solutions—phony student loan debt-relief scheme that used false business- and government-affiliation claims

The FTC most recently took action against Credit Glory, an alleged sham credit repair scheme that impersonated debt collection entities and creditors and took $200 million from U.S. consumers, including military servicemembers. In August 2026, a federal court temporarily halted the scheme and froze its assets at the FTC’s request.

FTC Online Impersonators

In addition, over the past year the FTC has continued to work to take down websites impersonating the FTC. The FTC has sent letters to domain registrars and other third parties that provide services to such websites, identifying the apparent violations of the Impersonation Rule by the websites’ operators. The agency has also worked to report and get social media pages impersonating the FTC and FTC officials taken down. 

In response to the letters, registrars took down 19 websites, including: fttc.us; FTB-gov.us; helpteam.mystrikingly.com; FTC-Support.org; ftcfederal.org; federaltradecommunications.com; ftc-v-credit-glory-llc.pages.dev; FTC-Complaints.org; FTC-help.com; info-federaltrade.com; federaltradecommission.gold; Eftc.online; Frrs.click; federaltradecommission.co; federaltradecommissionapp.com; federaltradecommissionconsulting.com; reportfraudftcgov.netlify.app; ftcinfousa.org; and federaltradecommission.net. 

Rulemaking

In September, the FTC announced that it was seeking public comment on whether to update the Impersonation Rule or develop a new rule to address platforms’ role in promoting impersonation scams. Specifically, the agency is seeking public input on the extent to which ad-optimization tools and services offered by social media, search engines and other digital marketplace platforms further efforts by scammers to impersonate legitimate businesses and government agencies using online ads. 

In the meantime, the FTC continues to monitor the industry for bad actors that violate the law. Companies or individuals that violate the in-effect Impersonation Rule may be required to pay refunds to affected consumers and civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation.

Outreach Efforts

In June, the FTC spearheaded the Never Ever campaign, a public-private consumer education effort to raise awareness about government- and business-imposter scams. Conducted through the Elder Justice Coordinating Council and in partnership with its members, including the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services, the campaign was designed to encourage government agencies and businesses to spread the word on how to spot and avoid imposter scams. More than 140 participants spread the campaign messaging through social media, blog posts, mailers, email campaigns and postings in stores.