How to Become an FBI Informant: Vetting, Rules, and Pay

You don’t apply to become an FBI informant. The process starts when you bring the Bureau information, and it moves forward only if the FBI decides you have ongoing access worth using, judges you reliable enough to work with, and puts you through the validation required by the Attorney General’s Guidelines before opening you as a Confidential Human Source. Everything about how to become an FBI informant is driven by the Bureau, not the volunteer.

Getting Information to the FBI

The practical first step is contact. You can submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov or call 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) to report a major case or suspicious activity involving chemical, biological, or radiological materials.¹ If you believe you have continuing access to information the FBI would want, contacting your local field office directly is usually the better route.

Detail is what makes a tip useful. Names, dates, locations, and the nature of the criminal activity separate a lead an agent can act on from background noise.

A tip is not the same thing as being an informant. Most people who share information with the FBI never become sources. A tipster gives information once and stops. A Confidential Human Source has a handler, receives instructions, and operates under a formal set of rules. Under the Attorney General’s Guidelines, a CHS is someone the FBI believes is providing useful and credible information, from whom it expects to obtain more, and whose identity warrants confidential handling.² A tip can be the beginning of that relationship, but the decision to formalize it rests with the FBI.

What the FBI Is Actually Looking For

Informants provide the most value in investigations of terrorism, espionage, cybercrime, organized crime, public corruption, and major white-collar fraud. The DOJ Inspector General has noted that sources are often recruited precisely because they operate within criminal enterprises, giving them access agents working from the outside cannot replicate.³

What matters is proximity. Someone with direct, firsthand knowledge of ongoing criminal activity is far more useful than someone reporting rumors. Time-sensitive information, or information that corroborates evidence the Bureau already has, carries more weight than general observations.

Validation: The FBI’s Vetting Before It Opens You as a Source

Before formally registering you as a CHS, the FBI runs a validation process required by the Attorney General’s Guidelines. The handling agent must document your true identity (with a photograph when possible), your criminal history, whether you’re the subject of a pending investigation or facing charges, your motivation for cooperating, and any benefits or terms promised to you by the FBI or any other law enforcement agency. That documentation goes to an FBI supervisor for initial validation within internal time limits developed in consultation with the Criminal Division and National Security Division of the Department of Justice.⁴

Motivation gets particular scrutiny. Civic duty, money, revenge, and hope for leniency on your own legal troubles all come with different reliability risks. None of them automatically disqualifies you, but the Bureau weighs each one.

Situations That Complicate or Block Approval

Some circumstances make approval slower and less certain, and one blocks it outright. If you’re a fugitive with an active warrant in the FBI’s National Crime Information Center, agents generally cannot initiate contact with you as a source at all. If you’re in federal custody, on probation, on parole, or under supervised release, the FBI must get approval from the Criminal Division’s Office of Enforcement Operations before using you, confirm that cooperating wouldn’t violate the terms of your supervision, and get permission from the appropriate probation or parole official or the court. Comparable requirements apply to people in state or local custody or under state supervision, and former Witness Security Program participants face an additional layer of approval.⁴

The Rules You Agree To

If the FBI decides to open you as a source, at least two government officials will sit down with you and review a set of mandatory instructions. You’ll be asked to acknowledge each one:

Everything you provide must be truthful.
Your assistance and any information you share are entirely voluntary.
The government will try to protect your identity but cannot guarantee it won’t be revealed.
You must follow the FBI’s directions and cannot take independent action on the government’s behalf.
You have not been authorized to commit any crimes and have no immunity for unauthorized criminal activity.
You are not an employee of the United States Government and cannot claim to be.
The FBI cannot guarantee rewards, payments, or other compensation.
If you do receive any payments, you’re responsible for any taxes owed on that money.

These are not formalities. They define the legal boundaries of the relationship.⁴ The voluntary-participation rule means you can walk away. The no-immunity rule is the one that trips informants up most often.

Whether You Get Paid

The FBI does pay some informants, but compensation is not guaranteed and varies enormously with the value of the information and the nature of the investigation. Some sources receive nothing. Others get expense reimbursements. In high-value cases involving terrorism or organized crime, payments can be substantial. The Guidelines require the FBI to document any promises of benefits during validation and to tell the source that no payments are guaranteed.²

If you are paid, the FBI must tell you upfront that you’re personally liable for any taxes on the income.⁴ The IRS treats informant payments as taxable income, and failing to report them can create a separate legal problem on top of whatever risks the informant role already carries.

When the FBI Authorizes You to Break the Law

Some investigations require an informant to participate in criminal activity to keep cover or gather evidence. The FBI cannot green-light this casually. The Guidelines set up a two-tier system: more serious activity (Tier 1) requires advance written authorization from both an FBI Special Agent in Charge and the appropriate Chief Federal Prosecutor, and less serious activity (Tier 2) requires advance written authorization from a Special Agent in Charge. Authorizations last no more than 90 days, except in national security cases at Tier 1, which can extend up to one year. Oral authorization is possible in emergencies but must be documented within 72 hours, and once an authorization expires or is revoked, the Bureau must run the full approval process again.²

This is where informants get into the most trouble. Exceed the scope of what’s authorized, or commit crimes that were never approved, and you can be prosecuted. The DOJ Inspector General has noted that federal prosecution of informants often results from unauthorized conduct or exceeding approved activity, with informants claiming the government authorized their crimes as a defense.³ That defense rarely works as well as informants hope.

Talk to a Lawyer Before You Agree to Anything

Every statement you make to the FBI is a potential exhibit in a future proceeding. If you provide false information, you can face federal charges for making false statements. If you commit crimes outside what’s been authorized, the FBI will not shield you. And because you are explicitly not a government employee, you don’t have the protections that status would carry.²

The FBI cannot promise you immunity. Only a federal prosecutor or a court can grant it, and the Guidelines say the FBI will only consider passing along your request for leniency to the appropriate prosecutor.⁴ Consider and act upon are different things.

A criminal defense attorney can negotiate the terms of a cooperation agreement, seek a formal proffer arrangement that limits how your statements can be used against you, and make sure you understand what protections you do and don’t have before you start talking. People who cooperate without counsel often don’t know their options, and by the time they realize they need a lawyer, they’ve already said things they can’t take back.

Identity Protection, Testifying, and Witness Security

The standard instruction given to every informant is candid: the government will strive to protect your identity but cannot guarantee it won’t be revealed. All DOJ personnel are required to keep your identity confidential, and that obligation continues even after they leave government employment.² Disclosure is permitted only in limited circumstances, including operational need-to-know, agreed testimony, and a compelling court order.

Many CHS relationships never lead to a courtroom, but if a case goes to trial and your testimony is needed, your identity may no longer be protectable. The FBI is required to notify the appropriate coordinator as soon as it has reason to believe a current or former source has been called to testify in a federal grand jury or judicial proceeding.² Understand that risk before you agree to cooperate.

For informants facing serious physical danger, the federal Witness Security Program is a possibility. Under 18 U.S.C. 3521, the Attorney General may provide relocation and protection for a witness or potential witness in a federal or state proceeding involving organized crime or other serious offenses, if a crime of violence directed at the witness is likely, and protection can extend to immediate family and close associates.⁵ Anyone who furnishes information qualifying for an Attorney General reward may also participate in the program at the Attorney General’s discretion.⁶ WITSEC is reserved for cases where the threat is credible and severe, and entering it means fundamentally changing your life.

How the Relationship Ends

The FBI can close you as a source at any time and for any reason. When it does, the Guidelines require the Bureau to document why, notify you that the relationship is over, and immediately revoke any authorization for otherwise illegal activity. In some cases the FBI may delay notification if it could jeopardize an ongoing investigation or cause someone to flee prosecution.⁴

Because participation is voluntary, you can also end the relationship yourself. Walking away doesn’t erase what’s already happened. Your statements remain in FBI files. Authorized activity has been documented. And if cooperating has put you at risk from the people you informed on, that risk doesn’t disappear because you’ve stopped. Which is why legal counsel matters from the beginning, not after you’re too deep to easily disengage.

1
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Contact Us
2
Department of Justice. The Attorney General’s Guidelines Regarding the Use of FBI Confidential Human Sources
3
Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General. Use of Confidential Informants – Special Report
4
Department of Justice. The Attorney General’s Guidelines Regarding the Use of FBI Confidential Human Sources
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3521 – Witness Relocation and Protection
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 U.S. Code 3076 – Eligibility for Witness Security Program