The Federal Trade Commission highlighted its work against impersonation scams, saying it has completed 14 enforcement actions resulting in more than $80 million in consumer redress since the Impersonation Rule took effect in 2024. Registrars have taken down 19 websites that impersonated the agency, the commission said.
The Impersonation Rule gives the FTC stronger tools to combat and deter scammers who impersonate businesses or government agencies. It allows the agency to file federal court cases seeking to get money back to injured consumers and civil penalties against rule violators.
“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. Mufarrige said the FTC takes these scams very seriously and will continue to vigorously enforce the law against bad actors. He said people who pretend to be, or to be affiliated with, an entity to deceive consumers should expect to hear from the agency.
Since early April 2025, the FTC brought eight law enforcement actions that alleged violations of the Impersonation Rule. The actions included MediaAlpha, an online lead generation firm, over deceptive government-affiliation claims in the health insurance market, and Innovative Partners over deceptive government-affiliation claims in marketing healthcare plans.
The FTC described Consumer Impact Recovery as a fake debt collector that used deceptive business-affiliation claims. It described Mercury Marketing as a business imposter that operated a sham substance use disorder-treatment clinic. It described Accelerated Debt Settlement as a bogus debt-relief scheme that targeted older adults with false business- and government-affiliation claims.
The commission described American Tax Service as an IRS imposter that ran a bogus tax debt-relief scheme. It described Nerd Solutions as a 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 Aug. 2026, a federal court temporarily halted the scheme and froze its assets at the FTC’s request.
Over the past year, the FTC sent letters to domain registrars and other third parties that provide services to websites impersonating the agency. The letters identified apparent violations of the Impersonation Rule by the websites’ operators. Registrars took down 19 websites in response, and the FTC worked to report social media pages impersonating the agency and its officials and to get those pages taken down.
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. 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.
The FTC said it continues to monitor the industry for bad actors that violate the law. Companies or individuals that violate the Impersonation Rule may be required to pay refunds to affected consumers and civil penalties of up to $53,088 per violation.
In June, the FTC spearheaded the Never Ever campaign, a public-private consumer education effort to raise awareness about government- and business-imposter scams. The campaign was 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, and 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.
The FTC said it will never demand money, make threats, tell people to transfer money, or promise a prize.