Scams & Fraud
One place for fraud signals: 9 government trackers, 8 consumer-complaint sites, and 7 crypto/registry sources — aggregated, sourced, free. Check any company, website, or crypto wallet.
SEC PAUSE list — recent entries
1678 firms the SEC flags as falsely claiming to be registered. Sample:
- may capital group llc
- may capital group
- financial & regulatory oversight board
- the financial & regulatory oversight board
- re investors 126 llc
- varalen capital markets llc
- swfinvestguide financial services inc.
- financial regulation bureau
Government fraud trackers
- FTC Consumer Sentinel Network (key required) — Aggregate consumer-fraud complaints (incl. crypto/imposter/romance "pig-butchering") shared with ~2,800 law-enforcement users. ↗
- FTC Data Spotlight / data.gov (keyless api) — FTC fraud "Data Spotlight" reporting + FTC datasets cataloged on data.gov (CKAN). ↗
- FBI IC3 (Internet Crime Complaint Center) (key required) — Internet-crime complaint intake + annual Internet Crime Report (crypto-investment fraud is the largest loss category). ↗
- CFTC RED List (public) — Registration Deficient (RED) List — unregistered FOREIGN entities the CFTC has found soliciting US residents (a frequent crypto/forex-scam vector). ↗
- SEC PAUSE List (keyless api) — Public Alert: Unregistered Soliciting Entities — names of entities falsely claiming SEC registration/US location, impersonating real firms, or posing as fake regulators (~1,670 names). ↗
- SEC EDGAR Full-Text Search (keyless api) — Full-text search across all EDGAR filings — surfaces whether an entity/token name appears in real SEC filings, litigation releases, or enforcement actions. ↗
- SEC Litigation / Enforcement releases (RSS) (keyless api) — SEC litigation releases + enforcement actions (frequently crypto). RSS/Atom feeds. ↗
- CFTC Enforcement / Press (RSS) (keyless api) — CFTC enforcement actions + fraud advisories — digital-asset / forex fraud defendants by name. ↗
- State Attorneys General / NASAA / CSBS (key required) — State-level enforcement, investor alerts, and money-transmitter licensing — NASAA (securities) + CSBS/NMLS (money services). ↗
Consumer complaints & reviews
“I ordered two months ago and it never came” — crypto and non-crypto.
- BBB Scam Tracker (public) — Crowd-reported scams (online-purchase non-delivery, phishing, crypto, employment) with $ lost, location, and scam type. ↗
- Trustpilot (public) — Consumer reviews + 1-star complaint volume for any business domain — the canonical "ordered, never arrived" signal. ↗
- Ripoff Report (public) — Long-form consumer complaints against companies; non-delivery, fraud, deceptive billing. ↗
- SiteJabber (public) — Business + website reviews with a scam/legit lean, heavy on e-commerce non-delivery. ↗
- ConsumerAffairs (public) — Verified consumer reviews + complaints across retail, finance, services. ↗
- ComplaintsBoard (public) — High-volume consumer complaint board — non-delivery, refunds, scams. ↗
- PissedConsumer (public) — Consumer complaints + company responses; e-commerce and crypto-platform non-delivery. ↗
- CFPB Consumer Complaint Database (keyless api) — KEYLESS government API: real consumer complaints against financial companies (incl. crypto/virtual-currency), with narratives + company response. ↗
Crypto scam registries
- CryptoScamDB (keyless api) — Open-source registry of scam domains + malicious addresses (classic phishing/fake-ICO era). MIT-licensed dataset on GitHub. ↗
- OpenSanctions (keyless api) — Consolidated sanctions, PEPs, and regulator alert lists — including a structured mirror of the SEC PAUSE list (us_sec_pause). ↗
- Chainabuse (key required) — Largest multi-chain community scam-report DB (16 abuse categories) keyed by wallet address / domain / handle. Shared with FBI & regulators. ↗
- ScamAdviser (key required) — Per-DOMAIN trust score (0–100) from ~40 signals (registration, hosting, reviews, blocklists). ↗
- Whale Alert Scam Alert (key required) — Reported scam addresses + on-chain scam-flow tracking (giveaway/impersonation scams). ↗
- Etherscan address labels (key required) — Curated address LABELS — "Phish/Hack", "Fake_Phishing####", exchange hot wallets, etc. The de-facto on-chain reputation tags. ↗
- urlscan.io (keyless api) — Sandbox scans of URLs/domains incl. community "malicious" verdicts and phishing flags. ↗