Poland’s Ministry of Finance issued an alert about fraudsters sending emails and making phone calls while impersonating the General Inspector of Financial Information (GIIF). The warning highlights attempts to solicit money and sensitive information by falsely claiming GIIF involvement in anti-money laundering checks and crypto-related processes. The reported schemes include demands for an “Anti-Money Laundering clearance fee”, pressure to invest or pay taxes on purported cryptocurrency holdings, and offers to recover cryptocurrencies allegedly on GIIF’s instruction. Victims are asked to transfer funds as a condition for supposed compliance verification with Directive (EU) 2015/849, with messages sent from suspicious email addresses and domains mimicking official financial institutions. The Ministry reiterated that GIIF operates under Poland’s AML law to monitor suspicious transactions and cooperate with state institutions, and does not provide commercial services, verify finances, charge fees, support crypto withdrawals, issue “trusted crypto trading” licences, request data corrections via web forms or email attachments, or ask for transfers to “technical” or other accounts; any official contact would be directed to a designated AML staff member and use the “mf.gov.pl” domain. The Ministry advised the public not to share confidential information, including bank-secrecy data, and not to transfer funds in response to suspicious emails or SMS messages, and to report suspected incidents via the CERT reporting platform.

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