Fraud losses reported by Americans over 60 have gone from about $600 million to about $3 billion

Fraud losses reported to the Federal Trade Commission by people aged 60 and older rose from about $600 million in 2020 to about $3 billion in 2025, a roughly fivefold increase in five years. The figure comes from the agency’s annual report to Congress on protecting older adults, released October 19, 2026.

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Those totals count only what victims reported. The same report estimates that the overall cost of fraud to older adults in 2025 could be as high as $119.5 billion, which puts the $3 billion in the reported column in perspective.

From about $600 million to about $3 billion, and what that leaves out

The report, titled Protecting Older Consumers 2025-2026, was authorized by a 2-0 vote of the Commission, according to the agency’s announcement. It draws on complaints filed with the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network, a database that collects fraud reports from consumers and partner organizations.

A report is a lower bound on harm. Someone has to notice the loss, decide it was fraud and tell the FTC. The agency’s own numbers show older adults are less likely than younger adults to report losing money to fraud, yet far more likely to file reports in which no money was lost. That pattern means the $3 billion is built from a thinner slice of the real total than the same figure would be for another age group.

The agency attributes most of the growth to a rise in reports of extraordinarily large individual losses, not to a steady increase in the number of small ones. A handful of very large cases can move a national total sharply, so the trend line says more about the size of the worst losses than about how many people are being targeted.

The arithmetic is stark even before any adjustment. Going from about $600 million to about $3 billion adds roughly $2.4 billion a year in reported losses, and a fivefold rise over five years works out to growth of close to 38% a year, compounded. In the 2025 reports, the FTC says, older adults reported losing money at lower rates than younger adults, which points to the size of individual losses, not the count of victims, as the source of the dollar growth.

Investment scams passed $1 billion

The single fastest-moving category in the report is investment fraud. Losses that people 60 and over reported to investment scams rose 42% in 2025, to more than $1 billion. That is roughly a third of the year’s reported total for the age group from one category alone.

Consumers told the FTC that scammers often reached them first on social media. The pitch frequently arrives not as a cold call but as a message from a profile that looks like a stranger with advice, a friend of a friend or an account that has been hijacked.

Older adults also reported losses at higher rates than younger adults to several kinds of impersonation and pressure schemes: tech support scams, prize, sweepstakes and lottery scams, romance scams, government impersonation and scams in which a caller pretends to be a friend or family member. The median individual loss reported by people 80 and over was $2,000, according to the FTC, and older adults reported much higher median losses than younger adults overall.

Mufarrige and the 2-0 vote behind the report

The report is the FTC’s yearly accounting to Congress, and it pairs the loss figures with a list of what the agency did in response. That list is the part of the document meant to answer the question a lawmaker would ask first: if losses are climbing, what has the government done about it?

Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the announcement that the agency “is committed to protecting older Americans from scams.” The report lists law enforcement actions involving debt relief services, health insurance fraud, government and business impersonation, money-making opportunities and tech support scams.

On the outreach side, the FTC points to its Never Ever campaign, a public-private effort to raise awareness of government and business imposter scams, along with partnerships across government, academia, nonprofits, financial services, retail and technology companies. The agency also refers older adults with significant losses to the Justice Department’s National Elder Fraud Hotline for additional help.

Individual cases can be reported at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, the intake point for the Consumer Sentinel data behind these numbers. The agency publishes its broader complaint statistics through its fraud data explorer, and its consumer site keeps a section for older adults.

The unresolved question is how much of the next increase will be real and how much will be better reporting. If more victims come forward, the reported total can rise even when the underlying losses hold steady, and the FTC’s $119.5 billion upper estimate shows how far the gap could be between what is reported and what is lost.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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