FBI Investigating Possible Exposure of Millions of American IDs

The FBI is investigating a potential breach of an ID verification company that may have exposed scans of millions of Americans’ driver’s licenses, a bureau spokesperson told Bloomberg News on Thursday.

Access to the data of more than 160 million “North American” driver’s licenses is being sold on a new service called Nexus, according to an advertisement on the Russian-language cybercrime forum known as Exploit. The advertisement also references “160M+ USA DL/ID Scans + data.”

“We are offering access to our proprietary and exclusive database of breached identity documents,” according to the ad. “We have persistent access to a major identity verification company and its customers, which includes multiple forunte-500 companies.” (The advertisement contained the misspelling.)

In addition to the driver’s licenses, the criminal group is also offering access to information from more than 10 million other documents, including residency cards, medical cards and international identity documents.

The source of the stolen data isn’t clear.

If confirmed, the breach would represent one of the biggest leaks of U.S. government identity documents ever, said Zach Edwards, an American cyber threat researcher, whose identification was among the cache of documents for sale.

“The threat actors behind this seem to be both sophisticated and financially motivated, which is a bad sign for any efforts to prevent the data from spreading further,” said Edwards, who works for the cybersecurity firm Infoblox.

The breach was previously reported by independent journalist Brian Krebs, who wrote that he confirmed the authenticity of the documents with nine individuals whose licenses were being sold. The service disappeared soon after the FBI investigation was confirmed.

The attack looks like “a real-time ongoing breach with new credentials being submitted to the vendor and stolen by the threat actors,” Edwards said, which creates “legitimate national security risks for high-profile individuals.”

“The FBI can confirm that it is looking into the incident. Due to the ongoing nature of the investigation, we decline to comment further,” an FBI spokesperson said in a statement.

Top photo: The Department of Justice (DOJ) seal on the J. Edgar Hoover Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) building in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, April 7, 2026. Bloomberg.