The cost of consumer fraud targeting older adults could have been as high as $119.5 billion in 2025, the FTC said in an annual report to Congress.
The report also outlines the FTC’s outreach efforts to combat fraud against older adults. The Justice Department released a similar annual report.
The FTC report summarizes 2025 findings from the Consumer Sentinel Network which collects reports of fraud and other consumer problems.
Last year, older adults reported losing more money in the aggregate to fraud that began on social media than to fraud that reached them by any other method of contact.
“Because the vast majority of frauds are not reported to the government, these numbers likely include only a fraction of older adults harmed by fraud,” the FTC said.
The FTC also reported that:
Fraud losses by older adults to investment scams climbed 42% in 2025, to more than $1 billion. Consumers reported that scammers often reached them on social media.
Older adults reported much higher median losses than younger adults. The disparity was particularly large among people 80 years of age and older, whose median reported loss was $2,000.
Older adults reported losing money to fraud at lower rates than younger adults and filed no-loss fraud reports at much higher rates.
Older adults continued to be more likely than younger adults to report losing money on technology support scams; sweepstakes, prize and lottery scams; romance scams; government impersonation and scams impersonating friends or family members.
In its report, the Justice Department said that between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026, it pursued almost 350 criminal and civil enforcement actions that involved fraud or abuse that targeted or disproportionately affected older adults.
About 96% of the cases were criminal in nature; 45% involved international schemes. The cases charged 712 defendants with stealing or allegedly stealing $4,841,305,931 from 711,353 victims.
The DOJ reported that the FBI said that scammers, using various means of manipulation, convince victim to deposit more and more money into financial “investments” using cryptocurrency.
The DOJ said that during the reporting period, the FBI notified 10,143 victims, 77% of whom were unaware that the investment opportunity they were being offered was a scam before being contacted by the FBI.
FBI intervention prevented an estimated $646,321,687 in victim losses, and $117,645,453 in cryptocurrency seizures/freezes, according to the DOJ.
“As so many of the fraud schemes targeting older Americans are transnational in origin and operation, the Department is uniquely situated to identify and prosecute such schemes, while collaborating with foreign law enforcement to disrupt them at their source,” Andy Mao, the Justice Department’s National Elder Justice Coordinator, wrote in the report.
In a related development, the FDIC and the CFPB recently held a webinar focused on protecting older adults from scams and financial exploitation. The webinar highlighted resources from Money Smart for Older Adults that organizations can use in financial education efforts. Topics discussed included budgeting and preparing for unexpected life events, investment scams, and scams involving veterans’ benefits.
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