People 60 and older told the Federal Trade Commission they lost more than $3 billion to fraud in 2025, a figure the agency says is roughly five times the amount reported in 2020. The figure comes from the FTC’s annual report to Congress on scams aimed at older adults, released October 19.
The reported number is only the visible part of the problem. The FTC’s own estimate of what fraud actually cost older Americans last year, counting the losses nobody reported, runs into the tens of billions of dollars, and a small number of very large losses account for most of the money.
What the FTC’s 2025 numbers show
The agency’s October 19 announcement puts reported losses by people 60 and older at about $3 billion in 2025, up from about $600 million in 2020. Investment scams alone took more than $1 billion from older adults, a 42 percent jump from the year before.
The full report gives more detail. It says older adults’ reported losses topped $3 billion in 2025, up from about $2.4 billion in 2024. The FTC received 469,597 fraud reports from people 60 and older who gave their age, about a third of all reports with age information, and roughly 123,000 of them involved a money loss.
Because most fraud is never reported, the FTC also estimates the total cost. Depending on the method, it puts the 2025 cost of fraud against older adults somewhere between $13.3 billion and $119.5 billion, a range the report itself describes as highly uncertain.
For the families behind these reports: The first-hour recovery plan and a fraud evidence and report log are built for the moment after a bank transfer or account takeover like the ones in the FTC’s 2025 data, when the order of calls and the record of what happened both matter, and both are in The Senior Fraud Defense & First-Hour Recovery Kit.
A few huge losses drive the total
The typical reported loss is far smaller than the headline figure suggests. The report puts the median loss for people 60 and older at about $900. For people 80 and older, the median reached $2,000, up 21 percent from 2024.
The money is concentrated at the top. Reports of $100,000 or more made up just 6 percent of older adults’ loss reports in 2025, but they accounted for 70 percent of all the money older adults reported losing.
How the money leaves: bank transfers and crypto
The report shows a shift in how scammers get paid. Bank transfers produced the highest total reported losses among older adults, and those losses have grown more than tenfold since 2020. Cryptocurrency came second, with losses up more than twenty-sevenfold over the same period.
Credit cards were the payment method older adults reported most often, yet they did not lead the dollar totals. The largest sums moved through bank transfers and cryptocurrency, the channels where a payment is hardest to pull back once it has been sent.
The scams older adults lose to most
The FTC lists several scam types where older adults are more likely than younger people to report losing money: tech support scams, prize, sweepstakes and lottery scams, romance scams, government impersonation and impersonation of family or friends.
Two stand out in the report. Older adults were 324 percent more likely than younger adults to report losing money to a tech support scam. They were 48 percent more likely to report a loss to a romance scam.
Government impersonation remains a steady threat. Earlier this year the FBI’s Boston office warned of callers spoofing its own phone number, then pressing victims to move the conversation to an encrypted messaging app and keep it secret. The FBI says it never asks people to do that.
Where reports go and why they count
The figures in the report exist only because people filed complaints. The FTC takes fraud reports at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and those reports feed the database that law enforcement agencies use to spot patterns and build cases. Reporting does not guarantee money back, but it is often the first record a bank, police department or attorney general will ask about.
The FTC’s report also notes that older adults are more likely than younger adults to file reports even when they lost nothing, a sign that many recognize a scam attempt and report it. The losses in the report are concentrated among the people who were not able to stop in time, and among the families who often find out afterward.
When a scam has already reached the bank account
The FTC’s 2025 figures show the biggest losses moving by bank transfer and cryptocurrency, channels that are hard to reverse once the money is gone. For an older adult who has just wired money to an impersonator or a fake investment, the gap the report does not fill is what to do in the first hour and how to document it for the bank and the FTC.
The Senior Fraud Defense & First-Hour Recovery Kit sets out the first-hour recovery plan and the free credit-freeze steps alongside a fraud evidence and report log for recording each call, transfer and report.
See the first-hour recovery plan in The Senior Fraud Defense & First-Hour Recovery Kit.
This article was created with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy against the Federal Trade Commission’s October 19, 2026 report to Congress and press release.
Cole Whitaker focuses on the fundamentals of money management, helping readers make smarter decisions around income, spending, saving, and long-term financial stability. His writing emphasizes clarity, discipline, and practical systems that work in real life. At The Daily Overview, Cole breaks down personal finance topics into straightforward guidance readers can apply immediately.
