Documented social engineering incidents targeting the consumer / general public sector, sourced and fact-checked.
Fake QR stickers on UK council parking machines sent drivers to cloned payment sites. 123 of 373 councils were hit in a year. How it works, who's behind it.
DocumentedA caller posing as Standard Bank got an 18-year-old to move her R438,900 education fund to a 'safe' account in 20 minutes. What happened and what's disputed.
DocumentedTexts about unpaid tolls copied E-ZPass, SunPass and more to steal card details across the US in 2024 and 2025. How the scam works and how to check a toll text.
DocumentedFake Anti-Scam Centre and police officers convinced a Singapore finance worker she was a suspect, then took S$1.2M through transfers and cash handoffs.
DocumentedA Singapore businessman sent at least S$4.9M after a fake Zoom "government meeting" built from real footage of PM Lawrence Wong and other officials.
DocumentedSCE reported $131,464 collected by scammers across its 2025 customer fraud complaints. Its warnings describe immediate-disconnection and meter-removal threats as examples of utility impersonation, not as the proven mechanism behind every reported loss.
DocumentedA Costa Rica-based telemarketing ringleader used VOIP-spoofed Washington D.C. caller ID and fake government-official personas to convince hundreds of mostly elderly U.S. victims they had won sweepstakes prizes, bilking them of over $4 million before advance-fee "taxes and fees" demands. The lead defendant was convicted at trial in 2024 and sentenced to over 15 years in 2025.
DocumentedDubai Police raided nine pig butchering centres and arrested 275, and San Diego charged six alleged scam-compound managers and recruiters. What is known.
DocumentedP&G-hired competitive-intelligence contractors obtained confidential Unilever hair-care information from discarded garbage before P&G self-disclosed the operation, fired three employees, and settled with Unilever in September 2001.
DocumentedA judge called it an AI-driven fraud, but police couldn't confirm voice cloning. How the Saskatchewan grandparent scam worked and how a lawyer's call cracked it.
DocumentedOrlando police pulled about 200 fake QR stickers off downtown parking meters in June 2025. How to spot them: white sticker, peels off. No losses confirmed.
DocumentedIn the PG&E scam, a caller claiming to be from the utility threatens to cut the power today. Then a barcode or QR code arrives by text or email, with orders to pay it at a store checkout. By the middle of 2026, PG&E customers had reported more than $211,000 in losses, and the company suspects the barcode trick is part of why.
DocumentedA Chicago hairstylist lost $20,000 to a Phantom Hacker scam. A caller claiming to be Bank of America said a hacker was draining her account, so she wired her own money to the scammers. His number matched the one on the back of her card. ABC7 Chicago reported the case in January 2025 under the FBI's "Phantom Hacker" label. The $20,000 is her own figure, and none of it has come back.
DocumentedA Pakistan national in Sydney allegedly ran a vishing scheme impersonating telecommunications support, using maintenance or upgrade pretexts to obtain SMS one-time PINs and fraudulently buy and reroute high-end phones for offshore resale. The investigation identified more than 100 Australian victims, and investigators allegedly found more than AUD $1 million in cash at his home during the November 2024 operation.
DocumentedA Bengaluru retiree lost Rs 6.88 lakh after a deepfake Facebook ad of India's finance minister pitched a fake SBI-linked scheme. How the scam worked.
DocumentedAn Atlantic City woman called grieving widows posing as a life insurer, demanding gift cards to clear policy "arrears". 17+ victims, $100,000+. How it worked.
Research/advisoryOpenAI says a Russian-speaking actor used throwaway ChatGPT accounts to build Windows malware, spread as a fake Crosshair-X gaming tool. How it worked.
DocumentedFraudsters swapped a former MP's number in his company's phone but kept his photo, then ordered Rs 7.68 crore in transfers on WhatsApp. How it worked.
DocumentedColombian police say 'Los Cyber' posed as bank fraud staff, got victims to share their phone screens and took COP 1.685 billion from 94 people. 16 charged.
DocumentedA retired bank manager in Johor Baru lost RM936,000 after callers posing as an insurer, police and a prosecutor had her move her savings. How Macau scams work.
DocumentedA civil complaint alleges that a retired New Jersey man lost $390,000 in two days after a fake Norton/PayPal refund call escalated into a bogus PNC "mistaken deposit" story that induced him to wire savings to a gold dealer and collect the coins in person.
Research/advisoryImperva hid prompt injections behind whitespace in contact names, vCards and WhatsApp pins, making an OpenClaw agent run a script. A lab demo, now patched.
DocumentedDOJ's first-of-its-kind nationwide takedown charged 61 individuals and entities, including five Ahmedabad, India call-center conglomerates, for an alleged 2012-2016 IRS/USCIS impersonation vishing scheme that threatened over 15,000 U.S. victims with arrest or deportation to obtain payments via prepaid cards and wires.
Research/advisoryThe FTC warned in 2023 about fake QR codes on parking meters and in texts. What it said, the Texas meter stickers behind it, and how to check a code safely.
DocumentedA victim searching for the AnyDesk remote-access tool hit a typosquatted site with a fake Cloudflare Turnstile that, instead of the usual ClickFix paste-and-run trick, abused the Windows search-ms protocol to pull a disguised LNK/PDF from an attacker SMB share, ultimately installing an MSI that fingerprinted the host and dropped the MetaStealer infostealer.
DocumentedA convincing fake ChatGPT download site, openew[.]app -- reached in part via an AI-generated fake outage page rendered on a real chatgpt.com/s/ URL -- used malvertising and SEO poisoning to push Windows visitors to a credential-stealing loader and Mac visitors to Odyssey Stealer (an AMOS/Atomic Stealer fork) that also swapped in trojanized Ledger and Trezor wallet apps.
Research/advisoryThe FBI's December 2024 warning on AI-enabled fraud: AI text, fake IDs, cloned voices and deepfake video, and what the FBI says to do about each.
Research/advisoryIn 2025 the FBI, FTC and USPIS warned of unordered packages with QR codes that lead to phishing sites or malware. How the brushing 2.0 scam works.
DocumentedIn June 2025 the DOJ filed to forfeit $225.3M in USDT tied to pig butchering scams, after Tether and OKX flagged accounts. What the numbers mean.
DocumentedProsecutors say a grandparent scam run from call centers in the Dominican Republic hit hundreds of elderly Americans and took millions of dollars. One caller played a grandchild under arrest. Then a fake lawyer, police officer, or court clerk took over, and couriers in the US picked up the cash. Sixteen people were charged in 2024. Nothing's been proven in court, and there's no itemized loss total anywhere.
DocumentedA deepfaked Martin Lewis Facebook ad led to a fake adviser, a Revolut account, £5,000 of savings and £70,000 in loans. How it ran and what exposed it.
DocumentedThe Caesars breach began in August 2023, when someone called its outsourced IT help desk, said they were an employee, and got a password reset. Soon after, the Caesars Rewards database was stolen. Caesars reportedly paid about $15 million, but its SEC filing never puts a number on it. A documented incident, attributed to Scattered Spider.
DocumentedUS prosecutors charged 28 people over an alleged $65M scheme where callers faked refunds to trick seniors into sending cash. How the refund trick works.
DocumentedDOJ/FTC alleged that Citizens Disability and subsidiary CD Media made 109 million-plus illegal telemarketing calls, including 25.7 million-plus to Do-Not-Call Registry numbers, using robocalls voiced by "Amber" or "Audrey" that falsely told consumers they were following up on the consumer's own SSDI eligibility inquiry.
DocumentedA long-running, India-based network of call centres impersonated the Canada Revenue Agency and RCMP in mass vishing calls that threatened tens of thousands of Canadians with arrest or deportation over fake tax debts, stealing tens of millions of dollars before RCMP's Project OCTAVIA and Indian police raids on roughly 39-40 call centres, plus Canadian money-mule prosecutions, disrupted the operation.
DocumentedAn Austin man lost $1,408,850 to a fake DAIQ crypto platform found on LINE. A staged $40,000 handoff led police to a 34-year-old courier. How it worked.
DocumentedProsecutors allege a Ghana-based network used fake female personas, AI video and inheritance stories to take $8M+ from 80+ elderly Americans.
DocumentedProsecutors allege Ghanaian twins used fake female personas and AI video to take $15M+ from 130+ older Americans. What is alleged and what isn't known.
Social Engineering Examples