But rather than accusing fraudsters of violating criminal law, the company says it is taking a different tactic in a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday (May 13): alleging that the scammers are guilty of infringing on the Capital One trademark.

A trademark infringement case “represents one of the only legal levers currently available to companies seeking to identify and hold accountable the often anonymous networks perpetrating financial schemes against U.S. consumers,” Capital One said in a news release.

The alleged scammers — who were not identified by name in the suit — use a variety of phone, text and digital platforms to carry out “spoofing,” the company added, making them tough to identify and stop via conventional means.

Spoofing refers to bad actors impersonating a trusted brand or logo to set up phony emails, websites, text messages and phone solicitations. While Capital One has taken measures to stop phone-based spoofing, it says this effort can’t prevent fraudsters from spoofing text messages, emails or websites.

“For years we’ve invested in advanced technology, training, and tools to help detect and prevent financial misconduct,” said Chad Miller, the company’s vice president of customer protections.

“But stopping these scammers requires more than strong defenses. It means going on offense to expose and disrupt the networks that enable these schemes and prevent harm to our customers. That’s exactly what this action is intended to do.”

The lawsuit comes days after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it was seeing a surge in two common types of impersonation scams: text messages that demand money for unpaid tolls, and new online friends or love interests suddenly requesting money.

Imposter scams have been the subject of the most fraud reports sent to the agency for the last nine years, the FTC said last week. In 2025, consumers sent the FTC upwards of 1 million reports about imposter scams and said that they lost $3.5 billion to those types of scams. Text messages about overdue tolls helped drive a 40% rise in reports of imposter scams.

“These bogus messages might spoof real toll collection programs (like EZ-Pass, SunPass, FasTrak and TxTag) to seem more credible. And they threaten to charge you late fees or suspend your vehicle’s registration if you don’t pay right away,” the consumer alert said.

Meanwhile, the PYMNTS Intelligence report “Financial Scams and Consumer Trust” found that more than 80% of reported scams involve impersonation. In nearly two-thirds of those cases, the victims send money within 24 hours, with younger, affluent and college-educated consumers facing the highest levels of scam exposure.