12/16/2025

Older Americans lost up to $81.5B in the past year to financial fraud, FTC report says

Fox Business

Scammers are draining seniors’ life savings at staggering rates, a new Federal Trade Commission report shows, with older Americans reporting about four times more in fraud losses in 2024 than in 2020.

Main findings from the FTC’s Protecting Older Consumers 2024-2025 report show that reported fraud losses for adults 60 and older exploded, with about $2.4 billion lost to scams in 2024 — up from about $600 million in 2020.

However, the FTC warns that the real losses are far higher due to underreporting, with the agency estimating that the overall cost of fraud to older adults in 2024 was between $10.1 billion and $81.5 billion, depending on methodology.

Large, devastating losses exceeding $100,000 are reportedly driving the surge, with combined losses reported by older adults who lost more than $100,000 increasing more than five-fold from 2020 to 2024. These large-loss cases account for about 68% of all aggregate reported dollars lost by older Americans.