FBI Warns Midterm Election Scams Target Ordinary Voters: Fake Donations, Scam PACs and Phony Voter-Registration Pages
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, through its Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), has issued a public service announcement (PSA261015-3) warning that scammers could exploit the 2026 U.S. midterm elections to perpetrate multiple financial fraud schemes. The schemes include using candidates' names, likenesses, logos and slogans to solicit fraudulent donations, selling campaign merchandise that is never shipped, stealing personally identifiable information, and using super intelligence tools to create highly realistic voice, image and text content impersonating candidates, campaign teams, government agencies and trusted contacts. The announcement updates a similar FBI warning issued in 2024. In a separate joint announcement this week, the FBI warned of phishing and deepfake attacks aimed at election and campaign officials; this announcement is aimed at ordinary voters.
The announcement lists four main schemes. The first is a campaign investment pool fraud, in which scammers promise to invest a victim's donation in a purported candidate fund pool and return large profits if the candidate wins, while inducing victims to recruit others. The FBI states plainly that campaign contributions are not investments, do not appreciate and are not returned. The second is the scam PAC, in which fraudsters pose as legitimate political action committees or super PACs, collect money and pocket it. The third is a non-delivery scam involving fake online stores selling campaign merchandise. The fourth is a voter-registration scheme, in which text messages or emails falsely claim the recipient is not registered to vote and lure them to fake state voter-registration pages that harvest personal information.
According to the announcement, the FBI advises the public to be wary of unsolicited calls, texts, emails and surveys, not to provide personal information to strangers or click unknown links, to verify PAC, party and candidate committee registrations and financial filings on the Federal Election Commission's website, to check merchant reviews at BBB.org before buying campaign merchandise, and to confirm their voter registration status at vote.gov. Election-related fraud can be reported to a local FBI field office or through IC3 at ic3.gov, the bureau said.
The warning comes less than three weeks before the November 3 midterm elections, as early voting is beginning in states across the country. In its separate joint announcement with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the FBI said attackers targeting election and campaign officials impersonate vendors and colleagues in phishing emails and use smishing and SI deepfake impersonation to steal login credentials and sensitive information.
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Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：位于华盛顿特区的联邦调查局总部胡佛大楼正门（资料图）。图片来源：Wikimedia Commons，Tony Webster 摄，CC BY 2.0 授权 / Photo: The main entrance of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. (file photo). Source: Wikimedia Commons, by Tony Webster, CC BY 2.0.
