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Companies

Scams that use a company's name

Most scam messages do not invent a company. They borrow one you already trust, because a name you recognise buys the two seconds it takes to stop thinking. These pages cover the brands criminals impersonate most often: what the fake messages say, how to tell them from the real thing, and what to do if you already replied.

Last reviewed: August 8, 2026  ·  Drafted with AI assistance. Every figure on this page was checked against the source cited for it. Not yet reviewed by a human editor.

ScamPreventionGuide is an independent consumer-protection resource. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any of the companies named on this page. Company names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are used here only to identify the companies that scammers impersonate.

01

Which companies do scammers impersonate most?

Best Buy's Geek Squad, Amazon and PayPal, in that order. That ranking is not a guess: it comes from the US Federal Trade Commission's own analysis of consumer reports, published in May 2024. Best Buy and Geek Squad alone accounted for roughly 52,000 reports in 2023.

The pattern behind the ranking matters more than the ranking itself. These are companies that most people have an account with, that send real automated emails about charges, and whose real messages are dull enough that a fake one does not stand out.

02

Company pages

34 brands so far, listed alphabetically. If the company you are worried about is not here yet, the checks below work for any of them.

03

What if the company you are worried about is not listed?

Use the same three checks. Any one of them failing is enough to stop:

  • Who chose the phone number? If you are calling a number the message supplied, you are calling whoever sent it. Use the number on your card, your bill or the company's own site.
  • Is there a clock? Real companies do not give you 24 hours to prevent a charge. Urgency is the tool, not a detail.
  • What form of payment? Gift cards, crypto and wire transfers are the three that cannot be reversed. That is exactly why they are asked for.

Whatever the brand, report it at reportfraud.ftc.gov. It is the same portal behind the impersonation figures above, so a report genuinely changes what the next ranking shows.