Of every kind of fraud the government tracks, one costs Americans more than any other, and it works by pretending to be someone you already trust. Consumers reported losing $3.5 billion to imposter scams last year. Buried in that staggering number is a single defensive rule that stops most of the costliest versions cold: no real bank or government agency will ever tell you to move your money to keep it safe.
The scale of the losses
New data from the Federal Trade Commission show that people reported losing $3.5 billion to imposter scams in 2025, making it the most-reported fraud category for the fifth year running and accounting for nearly one in three fraud reports overall, according to the agency’s announcement. Within that total, government impersonators alone accounted for about $920 million, up from the prior year, while imposters posing as banks drove close to a billion dollars in reported losses of their own.
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How an imposter scam is built
The mechanics are consistent even as the cast of characters changes. A scammer contacts you claiming to be from your bank’s fraud department, a government agency, or a well-known company, and manufactures an emergency: your account has been hacked, your identity is compromised, there is a warrant, a payment is overdue. The urgency is the weapon. Under that pressure, the victim is steered toward an action that feels protective but is actually the theft itself, and the most damaging version is the instruction to move money.
The one line that gives it away
The costliest imposter scams often begin with a fake bank or security alert that pressures the target to move money “to protect it,” transferring savings to a so-called safe account, buying gold, or sending cash through a courier. This is the tell. A genuine bank will freeze a compromised account or issue a new card; it will never ask you to wire your balance somewhere else to keep it safe. Neither will a real government agency demand payment by gift card, cryptocurrency, or a cash pickup. If a caller tells you to move money to protect it, the call itself is the fraud.
Why older adults are targeted so often
Imposter scammers deliberately seek out older adults, and not because of any failing on the victim’s part. Retirees are more likely to have savings and home equity, more likely to answer a phone call, and often more trusting of anyone claiming to represent a bank or a government agency. The scripts exploit courtesy and a sense of duty, invoking Social Security, Medicare, or the IRS by name to manufacture authority. That is why losses among older victims, when they happen, tend to be larger, and why the single defensive rule about never moving money on someone else’s say-so is worth repeating to older relatives specifically.
Where these approaches come from
The contact can arrive by any channel, and the mix has shifted toward texts and social media alongside the classic phone call. A message might warn of a suspicious charge, a locked account, or a package problem, each engineered to make you click or call a number the scammer controls. Investment and romance angles increasingly blend into imposter tactics as well, with a “trusted” contact eventually steering the target toward moving money. The common thread is manufactured urgency plus a request to send or move funds, and recognizing that pattern matters more than memorizing any single version, because the surface story changes constantly while the underlying move does not.
If you have already sent money, acting fast still matters. Contact your bank or wire provider immediately to try to stop or reverse a transfer, and if you paid with a gift card, call the card company right away, because some funds can occasionally be recovered before they are drained. Report the loss to the Federal Trade Commission, which uses the reports to track these schemes, and to local law enforcement. Keeping records of the contact, the amount, and any account numbers involved helps investigators and supports a fraud claim, and reporting quickly gives the best chance of limiting the damage.
What to do when the call comes
The safe move is to stop and verify independently. Hang up, then call your bank or the agency back using the number printed on your card or their official website, not a number the caller gives you. Real institutions will wait; a scammer will insist you cannot. Older adults are frequent targets, so it helps to agree on this rule with family in advance, and to report attempts to the FTC, whose published data on these scams is drawn from exactly those reports. The $3.5 billion figure is a measure of how convincing these scripts are, which is why the defense has to be a rule you follow every time rather than a judgment you make in the moment.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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