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- The most frequent form of fraud? Someone pretending to be someone else — the FBI, the FTC, the IRS, your bank, your grandson, the new love of your life.
- The Federal Trade Commission says the spike in dollars lost can be attributed to ‘a sharp increase in the number of consumers reporting large losses of $100,000 or more.’
The billions of dollars lost to fraud just keep piling up.
Crooks and con artists stole a record $15.9 billion in 2025 in a variety of scams — up from $12.5 billion in 2024, according to the latest data from the Federal Trade Commission.
The most money lost — $7.9 billion or nearly half of the reported losses — involved some form of investment scams in 2025, according to the FTC.
Lois Greisman, associate director of the FTC’s division of marketing practices, dropped those bombshells on Wednesday, March 25, in testimony before the U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee.
In her testimony, Greisman pointed out that reported fraud losses have risen nearly 430% since 2020.
In 2025, the FTC received 3 million fraud reports from consumers, Greisman said, which was a substantial increase from 2.6 million fraud reports received in 2024.
Con artists trick us pretending to be someone else
The most frequent form of fraud? Someone pretending to be someone else — the FBI, the FTC, the IRS, your bank, your grandson, the local sheriff, the new love of your life.
The FTC received more than 1 million reports about imposter scams, with consumers reporting more than $3.5 billion in losses.
How are scammers reaching out?
Many times, it’s with a simple text message, which was the top contact method reported when consumers identified a how they connected with the crooks in fraud reports in 2025.
Social media was said to be the top contact method by reported losses. In fiscal year 2025, consumers reported aggregate losses of more than $2 billion when stating that the scam started on social media.
In an alert in June 2025, the FTC warned that it’s often a flat-out scam if a new friend you meet on social media asks for money.
“When they ask for money, these scammers will often tell you how to send it,” according to the FTC’s earlier alert. “People report that scammers told them to wire money through a company like Western Union or MoneyGram, send the numbers on gift cards, use a payment app, or send cryptocurrency.”
While the testimony didn’t specifically mention bitcoin ATMs at grocery stores, liquor stores and elsewhere, consumers continue to be told by scammers to withdraw cash from a bank account and deposit it in a bitcoin ATM near their homes. The money is then often gone for good into the hands of the crooks.
In March, for example, a 55-year-old Troy woman told police that she received a call at her business from someone claiming to be a sergeant with the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office.
Scammers told her that she missed a jury trial and had two warrants for her arrest, among other false claims.
The woman was then told that she needed to go to the bank to withdraw money to address the warrants. “The victim was instructed to deposit the money at a local bitcoin machine, which she did before realizing it was a scam,” according to a Troy police report.
Consumer watchdogs say they’re seeing more willingness in recent years by consumers to report losing money to fraud. As fraud grows across the country, perhaps, people feel less like they’re the only one in town to actually lose hard earned cash to fake texts, phony advertisements, and fraudsters.
But some people are losing far more money that you’d ever imagine, too.
Some lose more than $100,000 to fraud
Unfortunately, some people are losing huge chunks of their retirement nest eggs to elaborate ongoing forms of fraud.
Greisman pointed out that the spike in dollars lost also can be attributed to “a sharp increase in the number of consumers reporting large losses of $100,000 or more.”
In 2025, the FTC said, consumers reported losing the highest aggregate losses by sending money to scammers via bank payments, followed by cryptocurrency. Credit card payments were the most frequently identified payment in fraud reports.
Reported fraud losses remain just a fraction of actual losses, Greisman said, since not every consumer who lost money to scams reported it to the FTC or to one of the FTC’s numerous data sources.
The FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network includes reports that the FTC receives from nearly 180 data sources, including other government agencies, industry members and consumer groups.
When taking underreporting into account, the FTC has estimated that the overall cost of fraud to consumers for 2024 could be as high as $195.9 billion.
The FTC said it has been working to track down foreign-based fraudsters by collaborating with international counterparts. Many efforts involve targeting U.S. based companies and others that unlawfully facilitate fraudulent schemes.
For example, last year the FTC filed a law enforcement settlement against Paddle, a U.K. payment processor operating in the United States through its U.S. subsidiary. Paddle, according to the FTC, was involved in collecting payments on behalf of alleged tech-support scammers operating in Cyprus.
Contact personal finance columnist Susan Tompor: stompor@freepress.com. Follow her on X @tompor.
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The exchange for the debt economy