Three weeks before Americans vote in the 2026 midterm election, fraudsters are borrowing candidate names, logos and slogans to collect fake donations and harvest personal data, the FBI warned.

midterm election scams

“The FBI warns the public that scammers could exploit the 2026 US Midterm Election to perpetrate financial fraud schemes,” reads the public service announcement, which adds that these schemes target victims throughout the country and “have previously exploited state and local elections.”

The alert updates a similar warning issued ahead of the 2024 general election.

Scammers use candidates’ identities to “fraudulently solicit campaign contributions, sell merchandise that is never delivered, or steal personally identifiable information (PII) that can be used for other fraud,” the FBI said.

The agency noted that fraudsters turn to AI tools to produce convincing voices, images and written messages that impersonate candidates, campaigns, government entities and people the victim trusts. “The realism makes these schemes harder for victims to detect and increases the likelihood of financial loss or exposure of PII,” the bureau explained.

“Scammers promise victims a guaranteed return on campaign contribution dollars by investing in a candidate campaign pool that supposedly pays out after the candidate wins. Victims are also encouraged to recruit others to invest in the pool to increase their share of the payout,” the FBI wrote.

In one described scheme, scammers go after voters’ personal details. A text or email claims the recipient isn’t registered to vote and links to a fake state voter registration page. The bureau called it “a means to steal PII for identity theft and potentially to further target victims for additional fraud schemes.”

The agency reminded the public that campaign donations “are not an investment and will not increase in value nor be returned.”

“Election season hands threat actors a ready-made lure that takes little creativity, skill, or experience to use. AI has erased the clumsy mistakes that once gave these scams away, so a cloned voice or a polished message from a ‘campaign’ can now look as convincing as the real thing,” said Max Gannon, Cyber Intelligence Team Manager at Cofense.

“The best defense is a habit that every employee can adopt: when a message pressures you to act or provokes a strong reaction, pause and verify it through a source you find yourself, such as the Federal Election Commission (FEC) website or vote.gov, never through the link you were sent or using any information in the original text, email, or call,” added Gannon.

X removes foreign influence networks

Social media platform X has been dealing with a different kind of election threat. In a post from its Global Government Affairs account, the company said it “recently identified and suspended more than 13,000 accounts involved in three suspected foreign influence operations linked to Iran, Russia, and China that targeted US political conversation.”

X reported that the networks relied on inauthentic accounts to post and amplify content about US politics, going after candidates and public figures regardless of party.

Users who see posts that could mislead people about how, when or where to vote can flag them under “Civic Integrity” in the app’s reporting menu. Those reports are sent on as requests for a Community Note, and posts that break the platform’s rules may receive a Civic Integrity label. “Our work continues through Election Day and beyond,” the company stated.

Last month, the UK announced plans for a National Centre for Information Defence, a body that will work to detect, attribute and disrupt information attacks by hostile states. Prime Minister Andy Burnham accused Russia of using bots, fake websites and falsified newspaper articles, and of forging the branding of 28 British organizations, including universities and the BBC.