Fraudulent spam emails claiming to be from the Federal Reserve

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) is aware of a recent surge of fraudulent emails claiming to be from the Federal Reserve. In many cases, these emails appear to use a "federalreserve.gov" email address to create the appearance of legitimacy. These emails often reference the rejection of a wire transfer initiated by the recipient and request the individual to click on a link to obtain additional information. Phrases such as "The Domestic Wire transaction, recently sent from your bank account, was not processed by the Federal Reserve Wire Network" and "The Outgoing Wire fund transfer, recently sent from your bank account, was cancelled by an intermediary or beneficiary bank" are typical of this scam. The OIG strongly advises recipients of these suspicious emails to not click on any links or attachments provided in the emails, as they may contain malicious code that could infect your computer or it may be an attempt by an illegitimate entity to obtain personal and/or financial information.

Some email addresses fraudulently used include

alert@federalreserve.gov
fedwire@federalreserve.gov
info@federalreserve.gov
information@federalreserve.gov

You may report these and other scams fraudulently using the name of the Federal Reserve by contacting the OIG Hotline.