How to Report a Scam to the FTC, FBI IC3, and Your State Attorney General

After a scam, the question most victims ask is: who do I even tell? The answer is more than one agency, because each one does a different job. None of them will hand you back the money. What they do is create an official record of the crime, share data with law enforcement, sometimes assist with identity recovery, and protect the next person who almost falls for the same trick.

The Federal Trade Commission is the front door for most fraud reporting in the United States. ReportFraud.ftc.gov is the official site. The form takes about 15 to 20 minutes. When you submit it, the report goes into the Consumer Sentinel Network, a database used by over 2,800 law enforcement agencies across the country. The FTC does not investigate individual cases, but it does build patterns. When 400 reports come in about the same scam, prosecutors take it on. Your report contributes to that pattern.

The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, known as IC3, is the right place for any scam that involved the internet, email, or a digital wallet. The site is ic3.gov. IC3 reports are reviewed by FBI analysts and can trigger actual investigations, especially for crypto fraud, romance scams, business email compromise, and wire fraud over 10,000 dollars. The IC3 form asks for more technical detail (wallet addresses, IP addresses, transaction IDs), so have your notes ready.

Your state attorney general is the third report. And it is the most overlooked. Every state has a consumer protection division that handles fraud complaints from state residents. State AGs can issue subpoenas, sue scammers operating in the state, and sometimes shut down scam operations that the federal government does not have bandwidth for. Find your state AG at naag.org, then look for the consumer protection complaint form.

If the loss was over 1,000 dollars or involves identity theft, also file a report with your local police department. Many later steps (closing fraudulent accounts, disputing unauthorized charges, removing fraud from your credit report) require a police report number. The local report does not replace the federal ones. It adds to them.

Reporting unlocks help. Filing an FTC identity theft report at IdentityTheft.gov gives you a personalized recovery plan, letters you can send to creditors, and the legal right to certain protections under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The reports cost nothing.

(Sources: Federal Trade Commission — ReportFraud.ftc.gov and IdentityTheft.gov; FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center — ic3.gov; National Association of Attorneys General — naag.org)