Scams targeting older adults: what the 2025 FTC data shows
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In 2025, the scams that cost people 60 and over the most money were investment scams, people pretending to be the government / company, and romance scams. Social media and phone calls were the two biggest routes in, $1.3 billion between them. The biggest losses mostly ended the same way, with a request to move money somewhere unusual: a bank transfer, crypto, cash, or gift cards; so the thing to teach a parent isn’t a list of scams. It’s one rule for the moment anyone asks for money: stop, hang up or close it, and check through a number you look up yourself.
This page is the lay of the land: what the FTC’s newest numbers say, which scams cost the most, how each one arrives, and the traits they share. For the step-by-step plan, see how to protect your parent from scams. If something has already happened, see what to do if you’ve been scammed.
What the 2025 FTC data shows: older adults report more scams, and lose more when one gets through
People 60 and over filed about 470,000 fraud reports with the FTC in 2025. Three out of four involved no money lost. When money is lost, the amounts grow with age.
When I tell people what ScamPrep does, most of them assume older adults are naive, or can’t handle technology, or need someone watching over them. (I’m the founder of ScamPrep, which provides scam practice for older adults who choose it.) The FTC’s own numbers don’t support that picture.
Adjusted for the size of each age group, older adults reported scams they didn’t lose money to at a 34% higher rate than people 18 to 59, and reported losing money at a 14% lower rate.
Unfortunately, my read is not that older adults are better at spotting scams, per se. I think they get more of them, because scammers come back to people who have been reached before and because fewer older adults have call blockers and spam filters set up. I also think retirees have more time to file a report, and more faith that filing one does something. Plenty of people with a full-time job see a scam, know it’s a scam, and never report it. Either way, the picture is the same: your parent is seeing a lot of these, and most of them go nowhere.
The ones that do get through cost more as people get older.
When older adults lose money to a scam, they lose far more than younger adults.
Typical (median) reported loss by age, 2025
The typical reported loss was $500 for someone in their 50s, $640 in their 60s, $1,000 in their 70s, and $2,000 at 80 and over. Older adults are targeted because they hold more: a lifetime of savings, a paid-off house, retirement accounts. Psychologists who study fraud say that’s a function of targeting, not competence.
These are reports people chose to file, not a survey, and most people who lose money never file one. The FTC’s estimate of what older adults really lost in 2025 runs from $13.3 billion to $119.5 billion, depending on how much underreporting you assume. And the FTC took no reports for six weeks in late 2025, so the year is undercounted.
Also, about one in six reports for people 80 and over was filed by someone else, often an adult child, a spouse, or a caregiver, and the typical loss on those reports was $6,500, more than three times the $2,000 median for everyone that age. Families tend to find out late, and the later they find out, the bigger the number. More supervision won’t fix that, but a standing agreement to talk about any money request before it happens will, and that agreement is what the family plan is for.
The scams that cost older adults the most
By dollars reported lost by people 60 and over in 2025:
- Investment scams, $1.06 billion
- Someone pretending to be the government, $448 million
- Someone pretending to be a company, $422 million
- Romance and companionship, $384 million
- Prizes and sweepstakes, $143 million
- Tech support, $126 million
Plus one that doesn’t make the top six by dollars but hits older adults harder than younger ones: family emergency calls.
What costs older adults the most
Total reported losses by scam type, people 60 and over, 2025
Online shopping fraud is the single most reported scam among older adults and isn’t on the chart: 31,000 loss reports and $59 million, small losses many times over. The chart ranks by dollars.
Investment scams
The largest loss of any type: $1.06 billion in 2025, up 42% in a year. Many start on social media, often with someone friendly who mentions how well their crypto is doing, then an invitation to a trading platform that looks real. The balance on the screen grows. The tell is the withdrawal: when you try to take money out, you can’t, or you can only after paying a fee, and the fee is the next loss.
This is the one I’d put first. It works like gambling. Every reported return is a small high, the promise keeps getting bigger, and the crash when it turns out to be fake can be devastating. A real investment never blocks a withdrawal, and nobody legitimate finds you through a direct message.
Someone pretending to be the government
$448 million in 2025. The callers claim to be the FTC, the FBI, Social Security, Medicare, or the IRS, and the biggest losses came from the first three. The script is usually a problem with your money or your identity, and the “help” is to move your money somewhere safe: a transfer, a Bitcoin ATM, cash handed to a courier. FTC impersonators alone took about $161 million across all ages, and where people gave their age, 92% of that was reported by people 60 and over.
The version going around now, per an FTC alert from October 22, 2026: a caller reads a badge number and says a phone in your name is being used for crimes, so your number is about to be deactivated. A “police officer” takes over the call. Anyone who hesitates is told to look up the police department and call back, with the exact search to run, and the number that search turns up belongs to the scammers. No agency shuts off phone numbers, and none asks you to keep a call secret. Hang up. To check, type the agency’s .gov address yourself. For the Medicare version, see Medicare scam calls.
Someone pretending to be a company
$422 million, and the most loss reports of any type on the chart. Banks take the most. The other big names are Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, McAfee, and Geek Squad. The bank version opens with a fake security problem on your account and ends with the same “move it to keep it safe” instruction as the government calls. The FTC notes the two are blurring into each other; a single scam often uses both a fake bank and a fake agency.
The security-brand version comes as a pop-up or an email about a renewal you didn’t order, with a phone number to call. Two guides cover those in detail: Geek Squad renewal emails and McAfee pop-ups and emails.
Romance and companionship
$384 million in 2025, and older adults were 48% more likely than younger adults to report losing money to one. These run for months. Someone met on social media or in a game app builds a real-feeling relationship, and only then comes the emergency: a medical bill, a customs fee, a business deal that needs a bridge loan. Gift cards were the most common way people paid.
After investment scams, this is the one I think about most, because the two losses stack. By the time it ends, someone has lost a lot of money and a person they cared about, and the emotional distress can be debilitating. If a parent has a new friend they’ve never met in person who has started mentioning money, that is the moment to ask, gently, before anything is sent.
Prizes and sweepstakes
$143 million. You’ve won, and there’s a fee, a tax, or a shipping charge to collect. Older adults were more than twice as likely as younger adults to report losing money to one of these, and Publishers Clearing House impersonators appear among the six-figure losses in the FTC’s report. A real prize never costs money to collect.
Tech support
$126 million, down 21% from 2024, but no scam has a wider age gap. Adjusted for population, the rate at which older adults reported losing money to tech support scams was over four times the rate for younger adults. It starts with a frozen screen or a warning that your computer is infected, and a number to call. The person who answers asks for remote access, then for payment. A website can’t check your computer. Close the browser and open the security app yourself. The McAfee guide walks through the pop-ups to keep an eye on.
Family emergency calls
Not in the top six by dollars, but older adults were 15% more likely to report losing money to someone impersonating a family member or friend, and the calls now come with cloned voices. A grandchild in jail, in a hospital, in another country, needing money quietly and fast. What makes these calls particularly bad is the acute emotional distress they stack on top of the financial loss. Hang up and call the grandchild, or their parent, on the number you already have. AI voice scams and the code word covers how to set that up.
How scams reach older adults: calls, social media, texts, email, and in person
Social media takes the most money in total. Phone calls take the most per person.
Total reported losses, by how the scam arrived
Typical (median) loss per report
For people 80 and over, the chart looks different: phone calls lead on both total losses and number of losses, with social media a distant second. If your parent is in their 80s, the phone is where most of the risk is.
- Phone calls. Government imposters, company imposters, prize calls, and family emergency calls. The typical loss on a call was $3,000, the highest of any channel, and government imposters took 41% of older adults’ phone losses. Guides: Medicare scam calls, AI voice scams.
- Social media and online. Investment scams and romance scams, plus fake shops. The largest total, $750 million, about twelve times what it was in 2020. Most of the dollars were investment (56%) and romance (23%).
- Texts. Fake security alerts from Amazon, Apple, and banks, plus fake toll-road and DMV notices. Text losses grew 61% in a year, and the typical loss was $2,500. The rule for every one of them: don’t tap the link; open the app or type the address yourself.
- Emails and pop-ups. Fake renewal invoices and fake security warnings. Guides: Geek Squad, McAfee.
- In person. The last step of a government or bank imposter call, when a courier comes to the door to collect cash or gold. Nobody real sends a courier for your money; the FTC’s August 2025 spotlight describes cash and gold handed to couriers.
The moves every scam shares, and the one rule that stops them
Losses over $100,000 were 6% of older adults’ loss reports in 2025, and 70% of the money.
A small share of very large losses drives the total, and those were often investment scams, romance scams, and people impersonating the FTC, a bank, Publishers Clearing House, or Microsoft. Different stories, same moves:
- A problem with your money, your account, or your identity, or a windfall that’s about to slip away.
- A deadline. Today, this hour, before the “fraud team” closes.
- Secrecy. Don’t tell the bank teller, don’t tell your kids, this is an active investigation.
- Staying on the line. They keep talking while you drive to the bank or the Bitcoin ATM.
- An unusual way to pay. Bank transfers and crypto took $1.6 billion of the $3 billion older adults reported losing in 2025. Cash, wire transfers, and gift cards took another $480 million. The FTC’s August 2025 spotlight on the “keep your money safe” calls describes the pattern in detail.
Which is why the rule isn’t “learn every scam.” It’s one rule for the moment someone asks for money or access: stop, hang up or close it, and check through a number you look up yourself. The urgency is always fake. Nothing real falls apart because you took ten minutes to call the bank on the number on the back of your card. If a situation feels truly dire and the person on the line is telling you what to do next, that feeling was built on purpose, so you’d act before you checked.
The full plan, including which accounts to lock down and in what order, is in how to protect your parent from scams.
If it already happened
End the contact first: hang up, close the window, stop replying. Then call the bank, card company, or payment app on a number you find yourself and tell them what was sent and when. What to do if you’ve been scammed has the full steps in order, including what each payment method can and can’t get back. If you’re helping a parent who is in the middle of one, what to do if your parent is being scammed.
Talking about this with your parent
Start with the part of the data that respects them. People their age report scams they didn’t lose money to at a higher rate than younger adults, and three in four of their reports are scams that cost them nothing. Then ask what they’ve been getting lately instead of warning them about what’s out there. Most people have a story, and the story tells you which channel to focus on.
The line I’d focus on is this: “I’m not trying to take over or look over your shoulder. I’m worried about this for all of us, me included. Can we agree that any request for money gets a pause and a call to each other first?” The goal is a parent who’s ahead of the people calling them, not one who’s being managed.
Practicing together does more than a list or pamphlet does, and the family guide has a short exercise you both choose to do. For practice that keeps going, ScamPrep sends people who opt in a few simulated scam emails, texts, and calls a month, on no set schedule, and coaches them afterward without a hint of scolding, so the pause is already there when a real one arrives. How it works.
Report it
- The FTC: ReportFraud.ftc.gov. Reports like these are where the numbers on this page come from.
- The FBI: ic3.gov, when money was sent or any part of it happened online.
- The National Elder Fraud Hotline: 833-372-8311, a Department of Justice line for people 60 and over and the families helping them, open weekdays during Eastern business hours. The person who answers helps you work out where to report and what comes next.
The full reporting list is in what to do if you’ve been scammed.
Sources: Federal Trade Commission, Protecting Older Consumers 2025–2026: A Report of the Federal Trade Commission, October 19, 2026; Federal Trade Commission, False alarm, real scam: how scammers are stealing older adults’ life savings, August 2025; Federal Trade Commission, The FTC is not calling to deactivate your phone number, October 22, 2026; Federal Trade Commission, What to know about cryptocurrency and scams, February 2025; American Psychological Association, Monitor on Psychology, Why we keep falling for fraud, October 2026; U.S. Department of Justice, Office for Victims of Crime, National Elder Fraud Hotline.
This guide is education, not legal or financial advice. How we write our guides. Spot a mistake or have a suggestion? Email corrections@getscamprep.com and we’ll take a look.