David Brown | Staff Writer
Several students at Florida International University reported receiving suspicious phone calls from a spoofed number appearing to belong to the Florida International University Police Department.
When the phone rang, four students answered calls from the official number of the university’s police department from an unknown caller claiming to be an FIU police officer, who requested personal and sensitive details, including banking information, passwords, and Social Security numbers.
On May 28, the university sent a mass email to all students about the ongoing scam targeting FIU affiliates. According to Police Chief Alexander Casas, at least four students received calls, with one student being scammed of approximately $2,500.
“The scammer knew to make it look like he was calling from an official FIU Police Department number, which makes it that much more believable,” said Casas. “Right now, this is under ongoing investigation, but this is being taken seriously with our investigative means, to include subpoenas to identify the caller.”
The scam calls come after the 2026 Canvas data breach from an extortion group called ShinyHunters that stole over 3TB of sensitive information, affecting nearly 275 million users.
At this time, the FIU Police Department believes that the calls were the result of random targeting of phone numbers within FIU’s 305-348 number range, followed by selected sequences of four numbers until students picked up.
“FIU PD, no other law enforcement agency, and no other government agency is gonna call you and ask you for your personal identifying information,” said Casas.
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