The "Federal Reserve Clearance Certificate" does not exist. Despite that, scammers have been demanding payment for one for at least 15 years. The con resurfaces every time a new generation of victims encounters cross-border wires for the first time.
The script: victim is told an inbound USD wire is on its way (often a large amount, often supposedly from a romantic interest abroad or an "investor"). The victim is told the Federal Reserve requires a "clearance certificate" / "anti-terrorism certificate" / "compliance certificate" before releasing funds, costing 500 to 5,000 USD.
Reality: the Federal Reserve does not issue per-payment certificates. Federal Reserve operates Fedwire as wholesale infrastructure between banks. It does not interact with individual customer payments. There is no fee chargeable to a recipient for releasing an inbound wire.
Variants: "Department of Treasury anti-terrorism fee", "OFAC clearance certificate", "SWIFT verification fee", "IRS tax on inbound wire" (no such tax exists for non-business wires within IRS jurisdiction). All fabricated.
The fee is always payable to a private account, never to a government account. That is the tell.
The "documents" provided to support the demand are increasingly sophisticated forgeries — real-looking letterheads, official-sounding language, sometimes scanned signatures of real Fed officials. Treat as fake regardless of appearance.
If you have already paid: contact your bank immediately for chargeback / recall. Report to IC3.gov (FBI) and your local police. Recovery rate is low but reporting prevents the scammer from running the next victim.
Modern document forgery tools are excellent. Don't evaluate based on appearance — evaluate based on logic: government bodies do not collect per-payment release fees from recipients.
The Federal Reserve publishes that it does not issue such certificates. Their consumer information page warns about this exact scam. Visit federalreserve.gov directly.
Contact your bank within 24 hours for the best chance of recall. After that, criminal investigation and civil recovery become the path — slow and uncertain.
Show them this article and the federalreserve.gov consumer information page. The con relies on isolation; involving family quickly often breaks the spell.