The following is based on a special alert from the FDIC:

WARNING! Fraudulent e-mails purportedly from the FDIC are circulating. Do not respond to any requests for personal account information.
Read the FDIC's special alert.

Here is the e-mail's text:

To whom it may concern; In cooperation with the Department Of Homeland Security, Federal, State and Local Governments your account has been denied insurance from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation due to suspected violations of the Patriot Act.

While we have only a limited amount of evidence gathered on your account at this time it is enough to suspect that currency violations may have occurred in your account and due to this activity we have withdrawn Federal Deposit Insurance on your account until we verify that your account has not been used in a violation of the Patriot Act. As a result Department Of Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge has advised the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to suspend all deposit insurance on your account until such time as we can verify your identity and your account information.

Please verify through our IDVerify below. This information will be checked against a federal government database for identity verification. This only takes up to a minute and when we have verified your identity you will be notified of said verification and all suspensions of insurance on your account will be lifted.

www.fdic.gov/idverify/cgi-bin/index.htm

Failure to use IDVerify below will cause all insurance for your account to be terminated and all records of your account history will be sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Washington D.C. for analysis and verification. Failure to provide proper identity may also result in a visit from Local, State or Federal Government or Homeland Security Officials.

Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.

Donald E. Powell,
Chairman Emeritus, FDIC

John D. Hawke, Jr.,
Comptroller of the Currency

Michael E. Bartell,
Chief Information Officer.

Note that while the link above appears to have been disabled, it may still be active. For more information about the FDIC alert, contact ABA's Doug Johnson at djohnson (at) aba.com or 1-800-BANKERS.