BALTIMORE — A mysterious call from someone claiming to be an FBI agent might seem like a scam, but there's a real chance it's not. The FBI is now proactively reaching out to potential fraud victims as part of a new initiative to stop scams in progress before more money is lost.
For Michael, who lost $50,000, this could have been a lifeline.
"How much money did they take?" asked WMAR-2 News Mallory Sofastaii. "$50,000. It's a lot of money," Michael replied, who requested to stay anonymous.
Michael met his scammer on Instagram, where they posed as an influencer from another country before moving their conversations to WhatsApp.
"About a month of talking every single day, several times a day, multiple times a day," said Michael.
The scammer convinced him to invest cryptocurrency on a fake website.
"I decided, why not $500 if it doesn't work? And lo and behold, I made money," said Michael. "And so, I put more money in there, and apparently it wasn't enough."
Karen experienced a similar situation after meeting a scammer on a Korean messaging app. They chatted for several weeks then the scammer brought up an investment opportunity.
"She just kind of casually mentioned crypto and how well she was doing and whatnot, and asked if I wanted to try it," said Karen who also asked to remain anonymous.
Karen initially invested $2,000 and watched her money seemingly multiply.
"It seemed so easy to make that much money in that short period of time, and my greed just went into full bloom," said Karen.
The scammers promised even higher returns if she continued investing—and she did.
"I pretty much invested a lot, I would say, maybe over $3 million," Karen said.
But before she sent all that money, the FBI attempted to intervene.
"I got an email from the FBI saying, we're seeing a lot of activity with your account, and we think you’re being scammed. And when I first saw the email, I thought it was a scam," Karen recalled.
It wasn't. This contact was part of "Operation Level Up," launched in January 2024, the FBI's strategy to save victims from sending more money.
"So what we're doing is we're using sophisticated cyber techniques to identify victims who are being victimized live or who are currently in the scam and trying to contact them to have them stop sending more money to the scammers," said Special Agent David Paniwozik with the FBI Baltimore field office.
Agents first send an email and then follow up with phone calls.
"I've gone as far as calling people's place of business, not in a bad way, but just I really need to talk to you," said Special Agent Jason Merz, with the FBI Baltimore field office, who has contacted around 60 victims through Operation Level Up.
These interventions have successfully prevented devastating financial losses.
"From January 2024 to February 2025 we've contacted over 5,000 different victims. Of these victims we've contacted, approximately 76 percent did not realize that they were part of a scam. And it's estimated that we've saved approximately $318 million of additional funds that people had planned to send to the scammers," said Paniwozik.
"Have you talked to any victims where they've said, Oh, I was just about to send hundreds of thousands of dollars?" Sofastaii asked. "Absolutely. Yeah, I was about to take out that second mortgage on my house, or I was going to contact my dad like he was going to give me some money. We're going to go in big time with this thing," Merz recounted.
The FBI is pursuing this approach because many scammers operate from overseas locations—sometimes in compounds where people are forced to conduct scams—and they prefer cryptocurrency because transactions are instant and irreversible.
"I'm sure they're probably like, Well, hey, you're the FBI. Can I get my money back?" asked Sofastaii. "Yeah, wave the magic wand and get the money back. Unfortunately, that's not the case. So I said I made 60 phone calls, only one person has been able to actually get money back into their account," said Merz.
In Baltimore alone, the FBI has identified about 100 victims during the same period, with estimated savings of about $6.5 million.
If you receive a call from someone claiming to be from the FBI or law enforcement, verify their identity by calling your local FBI field office or local law enforcement directly. Legitimate FBI emails will come from accounts ending in .gov. And no law enforcement agency will ever ask you for money or instruct you to send them funds.
According to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), victims reported $3.9 billion in estimated losses from cryptocurrency investment fraud in 2023. This figure is likely much higher as many victims don't report or underreport losses. Approximately 3,200 cryptocurrency investment fraud complaints are filed with IC3 monthly.
Neither Michael nor Karen has recovered any of their lost money. They've also been targeted by recovery scammers promising to get their money back—which the FBI warns is likely another scam designed to drain whatever funds victims have left.
Paniwozik offers advice for avoiding these scams: "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Low risk, high reward is a big, big red flag. Just talk to other people and do the research. Whatever domain they may give you, look it up on the internet to see when it was registered. If it was registered in the past couple months, it's probably not a legitimate platform."
He adds, "If the crypto investment platform website has grammatical errors, no 'about us' section, no legal information or contact details, and has dead links, that's a sign it may not be legitimate."
The FBI encourages reporting scams as soon as possible to increase the chances of intervention. Reports also help authorities identify crime patterns and trends to better combat these schemes.
Click here to report scams to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
This story was reported by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.