Officials with FBI Miami are warning the public about fraudsters who are posing as federal agents to take money and identification information from victims.<\/p>\n
The fraudsters contact victims claiming they’re suspects or victims of fraud investigations, sometimes posing as bank employees who claim to be working alongside legitimate FBI agents to gather personal and financial information, FBI Miami said in a news release Thursday.<\/p>\n
Victims are contacted by text message, phone or email by the suspects who are sometimes located outside the U.S., officials said.<\/p>\n
Officials said members of the public should exercise caution when communicating with anyone who claims to be federal law enforcement, adding that federal authorities never ask for money or personal information when contacting victims or suspects in crime while online or over the phone.<\/p>\n
The FBI offered several tips for protecting yourself from fraudsters:<\/p>\n
Be suspicious of any unsolicited calls, texts, and emails.<\/p>\n
Follow your gut: if an unknown individual is making statements that don\u2019t sound factual, or if they\u2019re pressuring you to act immediately, end all communications and save them for record.<\/p>\n
If claims raise concern, verify the information independently by contacting the appropriate law enforcement agency, bank, or company with the contact information publicly known and not provided by a scammer.<\/p>\n
Be wary of providing money and\/or personal information to someone with whom you did not initiate contact or have independent and direct affiliation.<\/p>\n
Anyone with information about a possible fraud can contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Officials with FBI Miami are warning the public about fraudsters who are posing as federal agents to take…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-216176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}