The Nashville branch added: “The FBI will never call you demanding money to get out of criminal charges. It’s a scam. Hang up and visit the FBI’s ic3.gov to file a report.”
On June 2, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) put out a public advisory, saying “citizens should report suspicious calls to the ATF at 1-888-ATF-TIPS or the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.” If someone were to become a victim, they should “contact local law enforcement immediately” after reports about scam calls where people impersonated their agents became known.
It further stated that ATF attacks impersonating its agents instruct victims to “purchase Apple gift cards in amounts of $500 or $1,000 to ‘clear a red flag’ from their accounts. Victims are then asked to provide gift card numbers to the callers.”
The ATF wrote that they will never “call or email private citizens to demand payment or threaten arrest. You will not be asked to wire a ‘settlement’ to avoid arrest; ask you to use large sums of your own money to help catch a criminal; request you send money via wire transfer to foreign accounts, cryptocurrency, or gift/prepaid cards; [or] call you about ‘frozen’ Social Security numbers or to coordinate inheritances.”
