What happened
Fox News' CyberGuy Report published on 8 November 2026 an account of fraud-recovery scam advertising on Facebook. One advertisement, displayed under the name Adam Molina, carried a graphic branded DARKTRACER that asked whether people had lost assets or funds to scammers and promoted recovering stolen assets and retrieving hacked cryptocurrency wallets, with a Facebook Messenger button. A second Facebook page used the title Director of Fraud Investigations and the name Grace K, with imagery of the White House, the FBI headquarters building, cryptocurrency graphics and references to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and the U.S. Department of Justice, and claimed to help victims navigate IC3 reporting, suggesting people who lost more than $4,000 might qualify for federal review. The FBI, IC3, the Department of Justice and Meta are impersonated or misused; they are not involved in the recovery offers.
How the scam works
The report says Meta confirmed it removed the flagged accounts and ads for violating its impersonation policies. It notes the FBI says IC3 has no official social media presence and never recovers money through Facebook Messenger or Telegram or charges victims to recover funds. Recovery scams target people who have already been cheated: the advertiser offers hope of getting money back, then asks for fees, wallet access, personal details or remote access to a computer, and often takes a further payment without recovering anything.
Using titles such as Director of Fraud Investigations and images of government buildings makes the page look official. The $4,000 threshold and talk of federal review are designed to sound like a real programme. Once a conversation moves to Messenger, the scammer can push for payment or for the victim to install software away from public view.
Anyone who has lost money to a scam should report it to IC3.gov and local police, and should ignore anyone who contacts them afterwards offering recovery for a fee. Do not click recovery ads on social media, and do not share wallet seed phrases, passwords or remote-access codes. If you already paid a recovery firm found through Facebook, contact your bank and report the page to Meta.
Source
Fox News CyberGuy Report, 8 November 2026: https://www.foxnews.com/tech/facebook-recovery-scams-use-fake-fbi-profiles
