Older Adults Report $3 Billion in Fraud Losses in 2025, FTC Says

People 60 and over told the Federal Trade Commission they lost about $3 billion to fraud in 2025, five times the roughly $600 million they reported in 2020, according to the agency’s annual report to Congress, released Monday, Oct. 19. Investment scams were again the costliest type by far, with losses up 42% to more than $1 billion, and victims often said the scammers first reached them on social media, CNET reported.

The FTC said the increase was driven largely by growing reports of extraordinarily large individual losses. Combined losses over $100,000 rose nearly sevenfold, from $306 million in 2020 to $2.1 billion in 2025, according to the 58-page report, Protecting Older Consumers 2025-2026. Those six-figure reports made up just 6% of older adults’ loss reports but 70% of the money.

Social media, tech support scams and crypto

Older adults reported $750 million in losses to fraud that started on social media, more than any other contact method and about 12 times the 2020 figure, PPC Land reported from the report’s data. Phone calls were second at $578 million, though phone fraud carried a much higher median loss: $3,000, against $599 for social media. For people 80 and over, phone calls produced both the most loss reports and the highest losses.

Compared with younger adults, older adults were more likely to report losing money to tech support scams, prize and lottery scams, romance scams, government impersonation and scams impersonating friends or family. The six-figure losses often involved scammers posing as the FTC, banks, Publishers Clearing House or Microsoft, the report said. Bank transfers carried $1.03 billion of older adults’ reported losses and cryptocurrency $603 million.

The report also lists the agency’s enforcement actions from fiscal 2026. One was a September settlement with payment processor Nuvei, which the FTC said helped overseas operators run a tech support scam built on fake virus alerts impersonating Microsoft and McAfee. Nuvei must turn over $4.85 million for refunds.

Older adults with a loss reported a median of about $900, and the median for people 80 and over was $2,000. Most fraud is never reported, so the FTC estimates the real cost to older adults in 2025 could be as high as $119.5 billion. The numbers come from the Consumer Sentinel Network, and the FTC took no consumer reports from Oct. 1 to Nov. 13, 2025, during a lapse in funding.

“The FTC is committed to protecting older Americans from scams, including by taking every action necessary to shut down fraud operations,” Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the press release.