WARNING: Fake FBI “Inheritance Release” Scam – Kash Patel Gmail Edition (Feb 2026)
Another night, another masterpiece from the Nigerian Gmail forgery department. This time they’re pretending to be Kash Patel, actual FBI Director, writing you personally from a random Gmail address to “help” release your long-lost 8-million-dollar inheritance that’s supposedly stuck at the National Bank of Belgium.
The letter ticks every classic 419 box:
– Unsolicited good news about millions you never knew existed
– Fake urgency (“Mrs Linda Box from New York already tried to steal it!”)
– Official-sounding address (real FBI HQ) mixed with complete nonsense
– The real NBB Governor Pierre Wunsch suddenly uses pierrewunsch568@gmail.com (because central bank governors obviously handle multimillion-dollar transfers via free email)
– Polite request for your full name, address, phone, DOB, gender, country (hello identity theft starter pack)
– Stern warning to stop talking to any previous “contact” (classic isolation tactic)
– Promise that everything is “100% genuine and hitch free” (the three words that scream scam louder than anything else)
Let me be brutally clear:
The FBI does not send random Gmail letters about your inheritance.
The FBI does not tell you to contact foreign central banks via private email.
The FBI does not ask for your date of birth and gender to “release funds”.
This is a textbook advance-fee fraud. If you reply, they’ll start with a “small” fee ($250–$1,000) for “bank clearance / tax certificate / anti-money-laundering form / notary stamp / insurance / delivery of documents”. Pay once and the demands never stop until your account is empty.
People still fall for this every single day. Hope, greed, and the magic words “FBI” + “$8,000,000” make people suspend disbelief just long enough to send money.
What to do:
– Do not reply.
– Do not send any personal data or money.
– Do not click links if any appear in follow-up messages.
– Forward the full email (with headers) to the real FBI IC3 (ic3.gov) and report it.
– Delete and block.
If you already replied or sent money in a similar scam: contact your bank immediately and file a police report.
Spread this. The more people see how ridiculously obvious these letters are, the fewer victims there will be.
Stay sharp.
And keep your money where it belongs – not in some scammer’s Bitcoin wallet.
The original email from ‚Kash Patel‘:
