Scammers are impersonating the Department of Government Efficiency in an effort to steal personal information and possibly take advantage of people who believe they’ll receive direct compensation from the Elon Musk-created group’s supposed efforts to cut down on waste, fraud and abuse.
An email reviewed by Scoop News Group, and subsequently analyzed by experts at the cybersecurity firm Proofpoint, revealed a new scheme that involved scammers pretending to be a DOGE agent looking to steal personal information.
After Scoop News Group flagged the email to Proofpoint, analysts at the company were able to interact with the apparent fraudster, whose lure link brought them to a WhatsApp chat, Larson said. The person identified themselves as “your assigned personal agent from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been authorized by the federal government to issue tax refunds to eligible citizens from funds recovered from improper government expenditures.”
The effort comes amid ongoing attempts to take advantage of confusion over DOGE…. Adding to confusion is that in the early weeks of DOGE’s efforts, actual government communication from OPM came off as suspicious, leading some federal workers to report the email as spam. DOGE’s website also included a series of security vulnerabilities when launched and was, at one point, susceptible to being edited by the public.
Lambert here: DOGE as a cover for scammers. How meta.
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