Every year the Federal Trade Commission tallies the fraud complaints Americans report through its Consumer Sentinel Network, and for the ninth year running, one category has stayed on top: imposter scams, in which a caller, texter, or emailer pretends to be a bank, a government agency, or some other trusted institution. In 2025 alone, the FTC logged more than a million reports about imposter scams, with reported losses reaching $3.5 billion, a level the agency has said has nearly tripled since 2020.
Bank And Government Impersonators Drove The Losses
Nearly one in three fraud reports the FTC received in 2025 involved someone pretending to be a trusted contact, according to the agency’s June 2026 data release. Business impersonators, most often callers posing as bank fraud departments, accounted for nearly $1 billion in reported losses, up from $866 million in 2024. Government impersonators were close behind at about $920 million, up from $789 million the year before. The FTC has said some of the costliest schemes begin with a fake security alert, frequently one made to look like it came from a bank, that convinces a person to move money to ‘protect’ it, with losses often limited only by how much a victim has available to send.
Fake Toll Texts Fueled A 40 Percent Jump
Government-impersonation reports rose 40 percent in the period the FTC examined in its May 2026 consumer alert, and the agency pointed to a specific driver: a wave of text messages claiming a person owes money for unpaid road tolls. The messages spoof real toll-collection programs, including E-ZPass, SunPass, FasTrak, and TxTag, to look legitimate, then threaten a late fee or a suspended vehicle registration if the recipient does not pay immediately through a link in the text. The FTC’s advice for anyone who receives one of these messages is to contact the relevant state toll agency directly, using a phone number or website already known to be genuine, rather than any contact information included in the text itself.
Total Fraud Losses Hit A Record $16 Billion
Imposter scams are the single largest slice of a much bigger fraud problem. Total reported fraud losses across every category the FTC tracks reached about $16 billion in 2025, the highest figure on record and an increase of roughly 25 percent over 2024. That total has climbed for several consecutive years, a trend agency officials attribute partly to scammers refining their scripts and partly to more consumers reporting losses at all, particularly as government campaigns encourage people to come forward. The agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection director, Christopher Mufarrige, framed the growth as a direct threat to markets that depend on consumers trusting the information they are given, arguing that fraud undermines the basic assumptions competitive markets rely on to function efficiently.
A 2024 Rule Gave The FTC New Enforcement Power
Much of the FTC’s recent enforcement activity traces back to its Impersonation Rule, finalized in 2024, which lets the agency sue impersonators directly in federal court and seek both civil penalties and refunds for victims rather than relying solely on other statutes. Since the rule took effect, the FTC says it has brought roughly a dozen enforcement actions and recovered more than $70 million in redress. Cases in 2025 targeted a self-described tax relief firm accused of running an IRS impersonation scheme, a health-insurance marketing operation accused of impersonating government programs, and companies accused of impersonating legitimate businesses to run fake money-making and debt-relief schemes aimed partly at older adults.
Older Adults Are The Focus Of A New Awareness Push
The FTC has tied its imposter-scam data to a broader elder-protection effort called the Never Ever campaign, run jointly with the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services, and other members of the federal Elder Justice Coordinating Council. The campaign, timed to World Elder Abuse Awareness Day, is built around a simple message: government agencies and legitimate businesses will never demand immediate payment, threaten arrest, or ask a person to move money to a ‘safe’ account, and any contact that does one of those things should be treated as a scam regardless of how convincing the caller ID or return address looks.
Reporting Feeds The Data Behind The Rankings
The imposter-scam numbers themselves come from a single feedback loop: consumers who file a report at ReportFraud.ftc.gov or through a partner agency. The FTC has said those reports do more than build an annual ranking; they feed directly into the cases its investigators build against specific scammers, including the enforcement actions brought under the Impersonation Rule. Because the ranking depends entirely on what gets reported, agency officials and consumer advocates alike caution that the true scale of imposter fraud is almost certainly larger than the reported figures suggest, since a large share of scam victims, particularly older adults embarrassed by having been targeted, never file a report at all.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors.
More from Morning Overview
