"FBI Warns of Ongoing COVID-19 Vaccine Related Fraud Schemes"

A warning was recently issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) about scammers' continued efforts to steal personal information and money through the exploitation of the public's interest surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine. According to the joint statement, the FBI, HHS-OIG, and CMS have received complaints of various COVID-19 vaccine-related schemes to harvest Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and money. The FBI has highlighted potential indicators of such schemes. Possible indicators include requests for out-of-pocket payment in exchange for placement on the COVID-19 vaccine waiting list, offers to get the vaccination early upon payment of a deposit, claims of FDA approval for a vaccine that cannot be verified, advertisements for vaccines on social media platforms, unsolicited emails from someone claiming to be from a COVID-19 vaccine center requesting personal information to determine eligibility to obtain the vaccine, and more. The US Department of Justice recently took down two domain names used to impersonate official websites of Moderna and Regeneron biotechnology companies, which are involved in the development of COVID-19 vaccines. This article continues to discuss the potential indicators of COVID-19 vaccine fraudulent activity, how this activity can be reported, the financial losses faced by Americans due to these scams, the takedown of domains used for COVID-19 vaccine phishing attacks, and nation-state hackers' targeting of vaccine research.  

Bleeping Computer reports "FBI Warns of Ongoing COVID-19 Vaccine Related Fraud Schemes"