ATTORNEY GENERAL RAOUL WARNS PUBLIC OF SPOOFED ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE EMAILS –

Springfield, IL. (ECWd) –

***CONSUMER ALERT***
ATTORNEY GENERAL RAOUL WARNS PUBLIC OF SPOOFED ATTORNEY GENERAL’S OFFICE EMAILS

Chicago  — Attorney General Kwame Raoul is urging people to be on the lookout for scam emails claiming to come from his office. The Attorney General’s office has received reports of individuals receiving spoofed emails that seem to come from a discontinued domain name, and Raoul is cautioning that clicking on links in such emails could result in dangerous software being downloaded onto recipients’ devices.

People recently have contacted the Attorney General’s office to report receiving an email that appears to come from the Attorney General’s office or from someone working with the Attorney General’s office. The emails fraudulently appear to be sent from the domain “atg.state.il.us” or from a source who falsely claims to have worked with the Attorney General’s office. Raoul is warning people that these emails are spoofed, and scammers are seeking to entice people to click on a malicious link in the email.

“The Attorney General’s office will not send emails from an atg.state.il.us domain, and it is imperative that anyone who receives an email from that domain not click on links within or attachments to the email,” Raoul said. “I urge people to be on the lookout for these spoofed emails, and immediately contact my office’s Identity Theft Hotline to report receiving such an email.”

Raoul said scammers are sending the emails, some of which inform recipients that they are the subject of an investigation before directing them to act by clicking a link within the email. Some spoofed emails may also appear to contain communications others have had with the Attorney General’s office or make other claims to coerce the recipient to click a link or attachment. The Attorney General’s office is not using the atg.state.il.us domain name and is not sending these emails, and clicking on any links will install malware that could steal sensitive data.

Raoul encourages people who receive a spoofed email purporting to originate from the Attorney General’s office to contact the Attorney General’s toll-free Identity Theft Hotline at 866-999-5630 to provide information about the email before deleting the message.