The Federal Trade Commission says fraud against older Americans may have cost as much as $119.5 billion in 2025. Victims aged 60 and over told the agency they lost roughly $3 billion, which means the reported figure may capture only a small slice of the harm.
The numbers come from the FTC’s annual report to Congress on protecting older consumers, released October 19, 2026. The report, titled “Protecting Older Consumers 2025-2026,” was authorized by a 2-0 vote of the Commission.
Why are the two numbers so far apart?
The two figures measure different things. The $119.5 billion is an estimate of the overall cost of fraud to older adults in 2025, which the FTC says “could be as high as” that amount. The roughly $3 billion is what people ages 60 and over actually reported to the agency in 2025, through the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network.
Reported losses by older adults have grown quickly. The FTC says they increased about fivefold from 2020 to 2025, from about $600 million to approximately $3 billion. The agency attributes much of the climb to a rise in reports of “extraordinarily large individual losses.”
Which scams are hitting older adults hardest?
Investment scams stand out. According to the FTC, losses to investment scams rose 42 percent in 2025 and passed $1 billion, and consumers reported that scammers often reached them through social media.
The report also lists the scams that older adults are more likely than younger adults to lose money to: tech support scams, prize, sweepstakes and lottery scams, romance scams, government impersonation, and scammers pretending to be a friend or family member. Older adults lose money to fraud at lower rates than younger adults, the FTC says, but they file no-loss reports at a much higher rate.
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When older adults do lose money, the amounts are larger. The FTC says their median individual losses run much higher than those of younger adults, and the gap is widest among people 80 and over, whose median reported loss was $2,000.
What should someone do after a scam?
The question for a reader is how much of this gets reported, and what to do if it happens to them. The FTC asks people to report fraud, scams and bad business practices at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, which feeds the same Consumer Sentinel data behind the report. A report filed after a scam, even one with no money lost, adds to the count the agency uses to decide where to focus.
For older adults who have lost a significant amount, the FTC says it refers them to the Justice Department’s National Elder Fraud Hotline. The agency’s release does not list a phone number, so a caller would need to find the hotline through the Justice Department.
What is the FTC doing about it?
The report covers the agency’s enforcement work involving debt relief services, health insurance fraud, government and business impersonation, money-making opportunities and tech support scams. The release does not name individual cases.
The FTC also points to the Never Ever campaign, a public-private education effort on government and business imposter scams. Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the release, “The FTC is committed to protecting older Americans from scams.”
The agency’s refunds page lists the money it has returned to consumers from its cases. The release itself states no refund total.
How big is the gap, in plain terms?
Put side by side, the reported $3 billion is about 2.5 percent of the $119.5 billion upper estimate. The FTC’s release does not explain how the larger number was built, only that the cost “could be as high as” $119.5 billion. What it does show is the direction: reported losses have risen about fivefold in five years, and the agency’s own estimate of the full cost is many times higher than what victims have told it.
That is the reason the FTC keeps asking for reports, including from people who caught a scam before paying. The no-loss reports help show which scams are circulating, and the loss reports show what they cost.
Want a plan ready for the first hour after a scam?
The FTC says the climb in older-adult losses is driven largely by extraordinarily large individual losses, the kind that leave a single victim with little time to react. Hours matter after a payment goes out, and a person who is shaken and does not know the next step loses time.
The Senior Fraud Defense & First-Hour Recovery Kit puts the first-hour recovery plan on paper, along with the free credit-freeze steps and a fraud evidence and report log, so a report to the FTC has the dates and amounts ready. Part 2 of the kit is built around that first hour.
Get the scam-call action card and credit-freeze checklist →
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
