FBI Director Kash Patel testifies during a House Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing on the 2026 agency’s budget request on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on May 7, 2025.
Oliver Contreras | AFP | Getty Images
The FBI on Thursday warned that “malicious actors” are impersonating senior U.S. officials in AI-generated voice memos that target current and former government officials, as well as their contacts.
“If you receive a message claiming to be from a senior US official, do not assume it is authentic,” the FBI said in an announcement.
Since last month, the scammers have “sent text messages and AI-generated voice messages — techniques known as smishing and vishing, respectively — that claim to come from a senior US official in an effort to establish rapport before gaining access to personal accounts,” the FBI said.
The announcement said that, among other things, the scammers gain access to those accounts by sending their targets malicious links, which they claim will move conversations to a separate messaging platform.
By accessing U.S. officials’ personal or government accounts, the bad actors could then target other officials or their associates by using stolen information, according to the announcement.
“Contact information acquired through social engineering schemes could also be used to impersonate contacts to elicit information or funds,” the FBI said.
The announcement does not say which U.S. officials have been impersonated.
But it does say that “many” of the targets of the scheme are “current or former senior US federal or state government officials and their contacts.”
The FBI did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for further details about the scope and potential origins of the vishing scam.
The FBI has previously warned that criminals are using generative AI to carry out new financial fraud schemes on a larger scale.
Such technology can be used to generate text, images, audio, and video to dupe potential victims into sending money, falling prey to sextortion, and more.
The top three cyber crimes in 2024 were phishing, extortion, and breaches of personal data, according to FBI data.
Older people suffered the most losses — nearly $5 billion, the data shows.