The EPA Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a fraud alert regarding a recent trend involving phishing scams that utilize fraudulent EPA Notice of Violation letters. In this scheme, scammers send counterfeit letters to businesses, falsely claiming they have violated environmental regulations like the Clean Air Act and demanding immediate payment of substantial fines.

These fraudulent communications may be distributed via email or traditional mail, posing as official EPA correspondence. Notably, the email addresses used by scammers, such as [email protected], do not belong to the EPA, as legitimate government entities use the “.gov” domain (e.g., epa.gov).

To safeguard against this type of fraud, the EPA encourages recipients of any suspicious Notice of Violation letters to carefully examine the details, particularly the contact information, and to reach out directly to the EPA's enforcement office for verification.

This alert serves as a crucial reminder to remain vigilant against scams that exploit official U.S. agencies – such as this recent alert from CISA regarding phone scammers impersonating CISA employees, as shared in the Security & Resilience Update for June 13, 2024. For more information and to access the EPA fraud alert, visit epaoig.gov.