For three straight quarters of fiscal year 2026, adults younger than 50 have reported losing money to Social Security-related scams more often than adults 50 and older, according to the Social Security Administration’s Office of the Inspector General. The finding comes from the OIG’s Issue 20 Quarterly Scam Update, published August 25, 2026, and it cuts against the assumption built into most scam warnings aimed squarely at seniors. It does not mean older adults are safe from these scams, and the same report shows they still lose more money per incident when they are victimized.
The Numbers Behind “More Often”
From April 1 through June 30, 2026, the third quarter of fiscal year 2026, 451 individuals under age 50 reported losing money to a Social Security-related imposter scam through OIG’s scam reporting form, compared with 385 individuals age 50 and older. That is a count of how many people filed a report saying they made a payment to a scammer, not a measure of total dollars lost across each age group. The gap, 66 more reports from the under-50 group, is the specific figure behind the “more often” framing: younger adults are not necessarily targeted more, but they are showing up more frequently in the age breakdown OIG tracks than the age group most scam warnings are written for.
OIG published the age breakdown in its Issue 20 Quarterly Scam Update, dated August 25, 2026, alongside data on how each age group’s complaints were received and what the scammers claimed.
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Why “More Often” Isn’t the Same as “Losing More”
The OIG’s report tracks a second, separate statistic: the average dollar value of reported payments, broken out by age. On that measure, the pattern flips. The report states that individuals age 70 and older continued in the third quarter to report higher average losses than those under 70, a trend it says has held across recent quarters. Read together, the two figures describe different risks. Younger adults are filing more individual reports of being scammed, but when someone age 70 or older is victimized, the amount lost tends to run higher on average. Neither statistic cancels the other out, and a household with members in both age groups has reasons to stay alert regardless of who answers the phone.
Three Straight Quarters of the Same Pattern
Issue 20 explicitly ties its finding to the prior reporting period. The report states that in the first and second quarters of fiscal year 2026, fewer people 50 and older reported losses than people under 50, and that the third quarter “continued” that same pattern. The prior report, Issue 19, which covers the combined first and second quarters of fiscal year 2026 (October 2025 through March 2026), put those combined numbers at 1,062 individuals under 50 versus 845 age 50 and older. Taken quarter by quarter within fiscal year 2026, that makes the April-through-June period the third consecutive quarter in which under-50 filers outnumbered older filers in the OIG’s own reporting data.
The Shift Started Before This Fiscal Year
OIG’s own reporting shows this is not a brand-new development. Issue 17, covering the third quarter of fiscal year 2025 (April through June 2025), recorded the first quarter in which under-50 filers outnumbered older filers, with 329 individuals under 50 reporting losses compared with 184 age 50 and older; the report noted that the prior quarter had shown the opposite pattern, with older adults reporting more often. Every quarterly update since has continued in the same direction. What Issue 20 adds is the specific claim that the pattern has now held for three consecutive quarters within fiscal year 2026 itself, on top of the longer run stretching back into the prior fiscal year.
How Scammers Are Reaching Social Security Recipients Right Now
The same Issue 20 report breaks down how these scams present themselves. In the third quarter, 81 percent of complaints involved a caller or messenger pretending to be from the Social Security Administration or its Office of the Inspector General, and 81 percent involved a request for the target’s Social Security number or other personal information. The OIG also flagged a specific new tactic during the quarter: on April 28, 2026, it issued a public alert warning that scammers had begun using the names of real SSA employees alongside fabricated badge images and fake social media profiles to appear legitimate before asking for money or personal data.
What the Data Means for How You Screen a Call
Because younger adults are now showing up more often in the OIG’s own numbers, the common assumption that these scams are mainly a risk for seniors does not match the current reporting data, even though older victims still tend to lose more money when they are targeted. The OIG’s own guidance applies regardless of age: ignore unexpected outreach claiming to be from SSA or its inspector general, do not trust caller ID since numbers can be spoofed, avoid clicking links or downloading attachments from unknown senders, and verify any claim independently using publicly listed agency contact information rather than a number or link provided by the caller. Anyone who believes they have been targeted can review current warnings at the OIG’s scam alerts page or file a report directly through its fraud reporting page.
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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