SANCTIONS LISTS AND WATCHLISTS EXPLAINED · GUIDEUPDATED 2026-09-04
Sanctions Lists and Watchlists Explained
138 of the 1,240 records on the FBI Most Wanted feed are victims, not suspects
The FBI wanted API: 1,240 records on 4 September 2026, ten poster classifications, 138 victims, 687 dates of birth, and how to poll it without re-flagging.
Screen the FBI wanted feed on names alone and you will flag crime victims as fugitives: 138 of its 1,240 records are classified as victims rather than subjects. The FBI publishes its wanted persons as a free, paginated JSON API at api.fbi.gov and as the familiar poster pages on fbi.gov, and it is the cleanest bulk criminal-watchlist source any government publishes, with structured fields, stable paths and no key required. What it is not is a list of fugitives. The same feed carries missing persons, kidnapping and endangered-child alerts, seeking-information notices and, in a meaningful number of records, the victims of the crime rather than the suspect. The famous Ten Most Wanted Fugitives programme is one classification inside it, not the whole of it. Screening it usefully means reading the classification fields and treating a hit as a lead for review rather than a finding.
What this workflow covers
SCOPE- 1,240 records returned by https://api.fbi.gov/wanted/v1/list on 4 September 2026, paginated with page and pageSize parameters, no authentication required
- By poster classification: 712 default, 282 seeking information, 140 missing, 22 terrorist, 17 law-enforcement assistance, 16 fraudster, 15 crimes against children, 12 Ten Most Wanted, 12 kidnapping and 12 endangered child alerts
- Person classification: 1,101 main subjects, 138 victims and one accomplice
- Status: 1,214 open, 23 captured, one deceased, one resolved and one surrendered; captured and deceased records stay in the feed
- Identifier coverage: 687 of 1,240 records with a date of birth, 482 with aliases and 465 with a nationality, so roughly half the feed offers nothing stronger than a name and a physical description
- Fields per record: title, subjects, aliases, dates of birth used, place of birth, nationality, race, sex, height and weight ranges, eyes, hair, build, complexion, scars and marks, languages, occupations, and possible countries and states
- Also per record: NCIC number, field offices, reward text, caution and warning message, publication and modified timestamps, and the poster files
- Reward text on 519 records, running into seven figures for the terrorist and Ten Most Wanted classifications; it is free text, so parse reward_min and reward_max instead
- Every record carries its own modified timestamp; on 4 September 2026 the most recently modified record had been touched the previous evening
- Not in the feed: sanctions designations, sealed indictments, or the National Crime Information Center database itself; the NCIC number is a pointer into a system you cannot query
- False-positive sources: the victim and missing-person records, very common US names with no date of birth, and seeking-information posters that carry a description instead of a name
Key statistics
DATA- Records in the FBI wanted API, 4 September 2026
- 1,240
- api.fbi.gov/wanted/v1/list total field
- Records classified as victims rather than subjects
- 138 of 1,240 (plus 1 accomplice)
- Counted from the FBI wanted API person_classification field
- Records carrying at least one date of birth
- 687 of 1,240
- Counted from the FBI wanted API dates_of_birth_used field
Compliance glossary
TERMS- Poster classification
- The FBI field describing what kind of notice a record is: default, information, missing, terrorist, kidnapping, fraudster, crimes-against-children, law-enforcement-assistance, endangered child alert, or Ten Most Wanted.
- Person classification
- The FBI field describing the person's role in the record: Main, Victim or Accomplice. Filtering on it is what stops a screening pipeline from flagging crime victims as wanted persons.
- Ten Most Wanted Fugitives
- The FBI programme, running since 1950, that highlights a small set of fugitives for maximum public attention. It is one classification within the wanted feed, not a separate list.
- NCIC number
- The identifier linking a public wanted record to the National Crime Information Center, a law-enforcement system that is not publicly queryable. It is useful for reconciliation, not for verification.
- Endangered Child Alert Program (ECAP)
- The FBI programme that publishes appeals to identify unknown adults associated with crimes against children. ECAP records appear in the same feed and often have no name at all.
Authoritative references
SOURCES- 01FBI Wanted — public JSON API
Federal Bureau of Investigation
- 02FBI Most Wanted
Federal Bureau of Investigation
- 03Ten Most Wanted Fugitives
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Frequently asked questions
Q&A- Do we need a key or a licence for the FBI wanted API?
- No. The FBI publishes it as a free public JSON API at api.fbi.gov/wanted/v1/list, paginated and unauthenticated, alongside the human-readable poster pages on fbi.gov. No key, no fee, no registration, which makes it the easiest major criminal watchlist to ingest correctly and the easiest to ingest badly.
- How many people are actually on the FBI wanted list?
- The API reported 1,240 records on 4 September 2026, and that is not 1,240 fugitives. 138 of those records are victims, 140 are missing persons and 282 are seeking-information notices; the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives programme accounts for 12. Read the classification fields before quoting a headcount to anyone.
- How often does the FBI feed change, and how do we pick up the changes?
- Continuously, without a published schedule. Every record carries a modified timestamp and a publication date, so poll the API and act on what changed rather than reloading everything. Records for captured and deceased subjects remain in the feed with a status flag, which is another field to read before raising a hit.
- Can we confirm an FBI hit on date of birth?
- Only sometimes. On 4 September 2026, 687 of 1,240 records carried at least one date of birth, 482 carried aliases and 465 carried a nationality. For the rest you have a name and a physical description, which is why false positives on common names are the normal outcome on this list rather than the exception.
- Our customer matched an FBI wanted record. What does that mean?
- That a name resembles a record in the FBI's public wanted feed, which could be a fugitive, a missing person, a victim, or someone about whom the FBI is seeking information. Check the poster and person classification first; a match against a victim or a missing person is not adverse information about your counterparty. Then confirm identity and document the disposition. It is a criminal-watchlist signal for review, not a sanction, not a conviction and not a basis for automatic refusal.
- Is an FBI wanted listing the same as an OFAC sanction?
- No. A wanted poster is a law-enforcement appeal; a sanctions designation is a legal restriction on dealing with a person. They belong to different domains, carry different consequences and should be reported separately, because a result that merges them tells a reviewer nothing about what to do next. In a ScreenVeritAI Quick Check the FBI wanted list is screened by default as part of the criminal-watchlist domain on the coverage register, a domain of its own rather than a sanctions list, and the result is stored as a point-in-time evidence PDF.
- What is the right way to pull the whole FBI feed?
- Page through https://api.fbi.gov/wanted/v1/list with a pageSize parameter and collect the items array; the response includes a total so you know when to stop. Store the modified timestamp per record and use it to detect change on the next run instead of diffing full documents.
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