The FTC sent letters to domain registrars and other website providers that resulted in those companies taking down 19 websites that impersonated the agency over the past year. The agency has also reported and had removed social media pages that impersonated the FTC or its officials, according to the release.
The FTC also said in the release that since its Impersonation Rule went into effect in 2024, the agency has conducted 14 enforcement actions that secured $80 million in consumer redress.
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The Impersonation Rule gives the FTC stronger tools to combat scammers who impersonate businesses or government agencies and allows the agency to file federal court cases that seek redress for injured consumers and civil penalties against the scammers, according to the release.
Scammers targeted by FTC law enforcement actions under the rule include ones impersonating a government agency, a debt collector, a substance use disorder-treatment clinic, a debt-relief firm, a tax debt-relief firm, a student loan debt-relief firm and a credit repair firm, per the release.
“Imposter scams have been the top reported fraud category over the past several years with consumers reporting billions in losses,” Christopher Mufarrige, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the release. “The FTC takes these scams very seriously and will continue to vigorously enforce the law against bad actors.”
The FTC said in May that imposter scams have been the subject of the most fraud reports sent to the agency for nine years in a row.
In 2025, consumers sent the FTC more than 1 million reports about imposter scams and reported that they lost $3.5 billion to those sorts of scams, the agency said.
One common imposter scam, text messages that demand money for unpaid tolls, contributed to a 40% increase in reports of government imposter scams. Another common imposter scam, romance scams in which an online love interest suddenly asks for money, cost consumers $1.48 million in 2025, a figure that was 22% higher than the previous year.
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