FTC Elder Fraud Report: Older Adults' Reported Losses Hit $3B

The Federal Trade Commission sent Congress its ninth annual report on protecting older consumers on October 19, 2026. Adults 60 and over reported losing about $3 billion to fraud in 2025, up from roughly $600 million in 2020. The report changes no law.

Information last verified on October 20, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers a United States federal agency publication reporting fraud data from across the country. It is data and agency activity, not a change in anyone's legal rights, and it does not alter any state consumer protection statute. It does not address criminal elder abuse statutes or state adult protective services law.

What Happened

On October 19, 2026, the Secretary of the FTC transmitted Protecting Older Consumers 2025-2026: A Report of the Federal Trade Commission to the Judiciary Committees of the House and the Senate. The Commission voted 2 to 0 to authorize it.

The 58-page report is the ninth in the annual series required by Section 101(c)(2) of the Elder Abuse Prevention and Prosecution Act of 2017. Its statutory core is Appendix A, a list of every administrative and federal district court action the FTC filed between October 1, 2025, and September 30, 2026, that affected older adults.

The headline numbers come from a different part of the document: the Senior Fraud Advisory Office's analysis of consumer reports held in the Consumer Sentinel Network for calendar year 2025. Sentinel took in more than 6.2 million reports that year, more than 3 million of them about fraud, and consumers of all ages reported losing about $16 billion.

Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the announcement that the FTC is committed to protecting older Americans from scams.

What the Numbers Actually Measure

Sentinel is a complaint database, not a survey. People decide whether to file at all, and those who file decide whether to give their age, their payment method, or a dollar amount. Every figure in the report inherits those gaps.

The scale of the gaps is specific. Only about 46% of 2025 fraud reports included the consumer's age. Of the reports that did, about 33% (469,597) came from people 60 and over, and about 123,000 of those indicated a monetary loss. The $3 billion rests on that subset.

So "older adults reported losing about $3 billion" is an accurate sentence and "older adults lost about $3 billion" is not. The report is direct about this, saying the numbers "likely include only a fraction of older adults harmed by fraud."

The shape of the increase matters as much as its size. Reports of losses over $100,000 were just 6% of older adults' loss reports in 2025 but accounted for 70% of their aggregate reported losses. Between 2020 and 2025, combined losses from those six-figure reports grew nearly sevenfold, while the number of older adults reporting any loss rose 78%.

Read together, those two numbers say the roughly fivefold rise in aggregate reported losses was driven mainly by a growing tail of very large individual losses, not by a fivefold increase in the number of people reporting one.

Why the FTC publishes a range

Because most fraud is never reported, the FTC also models what the reported figures are missing. It publishes a range rather than a number because the answer depends almost entirely on one unknown: whether people who lose large sums file reports at the same rate as people who lose small ones.

The first method applies reporting rates drawn from a study that matched nine FTC law enforcement cases against Sentinel records, assuming Sentinel captures 2.0% of losses under $1,000 and 6.7% of losses of $1,000 or more. That produces an estimated $261.5 billion in total 2025 fraud losses across all ages, of which $119.5 billion was lost by older adults, a 47% increase over the same calculation for 2024.

The second method is deliberately conservative. It assumes that everyone who lost $10,000 or more did file a report. That produces $38.1 billion overall and $13.3 billion for older adults, a 32% increase over the 2024 figure computed the same way.

The spread between $13.3 billion and $119.5 billion is nearly nine-fold because large losses dominate the arithmetic. While only 14% of people who reported a fraud loss in 2025 reported losing $10,000 or more, their combined losses equaled 94% of all losses reported to Sentinel that year. A single assumption about that group moves almost the whole estimate.

The report also notes a limit on the evidence behind the less conservative figure: none of the nine cases in the underlying study had an average loss of $10,000 or more. The 6.7% reporting rate is therefore applied beyond the loss range the study observed. The report states the uncertainty plainly:

"Depending on different assumptions on the underreporting of fraud, we estimate the overall cost of fraud to older adults in 2025 to be between $13.3 billion and $119.5 billion. These figures reflect a considerable degree of uncertainty because the scale of underreporting, particularly when losses are high, is not well understood." Protecting Older Consumers 2025-2026, at 20

Elsewhere it puts the same point more briefly, describing the losses recorded in Sentinel as "the 'tip of the iceberg,' as research indicates that most consumers do not report being victimized to anyone other than family and friends" (at 30).

One further measurement caveat is disclosed in the report's own footnotes. Because of a lapse in funding, the FTC took no consumer reports at all from October 1 to November 13, 2025. For the cost estimates, the missing losses were filled in by averaging reported losses over the 30 days before and after the gap. Year-over-year comparisons for 2025 should be read with that six-week interruption in mind.

What the figures do and do not support

They support three statements. Reported losses by older adults rose sharply from 2020 to 2025. That rise is concentrated in a small number of very large individual losses. The true total is unknown and is probably much larger than the reported total.

They do not support treating $119.5 billion as a measured amount, since it is the top of a modelled range the FTC itself frames as uncertain. They also do not support the common claim that older adults are more likely than younger adults to lose money to fraud. On the report's own population-adjusted analysis, older adults reported losing money at a lower rate than adults aged 18 to 59 in 2025. That finding is itself a measure of reporting, not of how often fraud actually succeeds.

What the Law Actually Says

The reporting duty comes from the Elder Abuse Prevention and Prosecution Act of 2017, Public Law 115-70, enacted October 18, 2017 and codified in relevant part at 34 U.S.C. 21711. Section 101(c)(2) requires the FTC Chairman and the Attorney General each to submit a report every year to the Judiciary Committees of both chambers detailing their enforcement actions over the preceding year in each case in which at least one victim was an elder, or that involved a financial scheme or scam either targeted directly toward or largely affecting elders. For each case the statute asks for the district, the case name and number, a description of the scheme, and the outcome. "Elder" means a person aged 60 or older, through the Act's cross-reference to Section 2011 of the Social Security Act.

That is the whole mandate. The statute asks for a list of cases. The loss statistics, the median figures and the cost estimates are the Commission's own additions, which is worth knowing when the numbers are quoted as a congressional finding.

The substantive prohibition behind the enforcement actions is Section 5 of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 45(a)(1), under which "unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful."

Two FTC rules do most of the work on the scam types the report highlights. The Rule on Impersonation of Government and Businesses, 16 C.F.R. Part 461, was published at 89 Fed. Reg. 15017 on March 1, 2024, with the codified part beginning at page 15030. Section 461.2 makes it a violation, and an unfair or deceptive act or practice, to materially and falsely pose as a government entity or an officer of one, or to materially misrepresent affiliation with one. Section 461.3 applies the same prohibitions to impersonating a business. As codified, the rule reaches government and business impersonation; it does not by its terms cover impersonating a private individual.

The Telemarketing Sales Rule, 16 C.F.R. Part 310, covers the phone channel. Section 310.3(a)(4) prohibits making a false or misleading statement to induce a payment, and Section 310.3(a)(2)(v) reaches misrepresentations about prize promotions, including the odds and whether a payment is required to win. Section 310.4(a)(10) makes it an abusive practice to accept a cash-to-cash money transfer or a cash reload mechanism as payment in telemarketing, and Section 310.4(a)(9) bars remotely created payment orders.

Whether a consumer can reverse a payment is governed by different law again. Under Regulation E, 12 C.F.R. 1005.2(m), an "unauthorized electronic fund transfer" is one "initiated by a person other than the consumer without actual authority to initiate the transfer and from which the consumer receives no benefit." Section 1005.6(b) caps a consumer's liability for such a transfer at $50 or $500 where an access device was lost or stolen, depending on how quickly the consumer gives notice, with a separate rule for transfers that appear on a periodic statement and are not reported within 60 days. The definition is the pivot: a transfer the consumer was deceived into sending themselves generally falls outside it, which is why scam payments and stolen-card payments are treated so differently. We set out the rules method by method in How to Get Money Back After a Scam: Your Rights by Payment Method.

The report also explains at length a remedial gap behind every one of these enforcement actions. In AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC, 593 U.S. 67 (2021), the Supreme Court held unanimously that Section 13(b) of the FTC Act does not authorize the Commission to seek, or a court to award, equitable monetary relief such as restitution or disgorgement. The report says the current leadership believes that decision was correctly decided, while urging Congress to legislate the authority back. In the meantime the Commission obtains money for consumers through other avenues, including Section 19 of the FTC Act, 15 U.S.C. 57b, and work with state attorneys general. Section 19 reaches violations of a Commission rule respecting unfair or deceptive acts or practices, and conduct covered by a final cease and desist order where the court is satisfied the practice is one a reasonable person would have known was dishonest or fraudulent.

Which Scams Drove the Losses

By total dollars reported lost by older adults, the top three categories in 2025 were investment scams, government impersonation and business impersonation.

Investment scam losses were again larger than for any other fraud type and jumped 42% in 2025. The report says these consumers often described being drawn to fake cryptocurrency investment platforms after first being approached on social media.

Government impersonation was second. The largest shares of those losses involved scammers posing as the FTC, the FBI and the Social Security Administration. Across all ages, reported losses were $161 million for FTC impersonation, $144 million for SSA and $28 million for the FBI; among reports that included an age, older adults accounted for 92% of the FTC-impersonation losses, 85% of the SSA losses and 75% of the FBI losses. We explain how government impersonation scams are run and what the callers typically ask for.

Business impersonation followed, with bank impersonation producing the highest reported losses. The report describes a consistent script: convince someone a security problem has put their account at risk, then direct them to transfer money, mail cash, or deposit cash into a Bitcoin ATM to keep it safe. It also notes that the line between government and business impersonation is blurring, with many scammers posing as more than one entity in a single scam.

Totals and likelihood point in different directions, which is easy to conflate. Controlling for population size, older adults in 2025 were 324% more likely than younger people to report losing money to a tech support scam, 112% more likely on a prize, sweepstakes or lottery scam, 48% more likely on a romance scam, and 15% more likely on each of government impersonation and scams impersonating a friend or family member. Our guide to the warning signs of a romance scam covers that pattern in detail.

At the same time, older adults were less likely than younger adults to report losing money on investment scams and job scams, even though investment scams produced their largest reported losses. Online shopping fraud remained the single most frequently reported loss category for older adults by count, as it was for consumers of all ages combined.

How the Money Moved

Bank transfers produced the highest aggregate reported losses for older adults, with cryptocurrency transfers second. Since 2020, older adults' reported losses have grown more than tenfold on scams paid by bank transfer and more than twenty-sevenfold on scams paid in cryptocurrency.

The most frequently reported payment method was different from the most costly one. Older adults most often reported paying scammers by credit card, and nearly half of those credit card payments were on online shopping fraud. Reported gift card payments, by contrast, were overwhelmingly on impersonation scams; gift cards were the method most frequently reported on tech support, romance, family and friend impersonation, and prize scams.

Social media produced both the most loss reports and the highest aggregate reported losses for older adults, and the report puts the 2025 social media figure at "about twelve times higher than in 2020." Median individual losses ran the other way: $3,000 for fraud that started with a phone call against $599 for fraud that started on social media.

People 80 and over were the exception on contact method. That group reported far more loss reports and much higher losses on scams that began with a phone call, with social media a distant second. Reported losses to text scams also stood out, up 61% against 2024.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The most useful thing in this report is its account of its own uncertainty, and that is also the part least likely to survive being quoted.

The $119.5 billion figure is the one most likely to be quoted on its own, and it is the least load-bearing number in the document. It is the top of a range whose width is set by a single unverified assumption about whether people who lose six figures file complaints, applied beyond the loss range of the one study that measured such rates. The $13.3 billion floor is what the FTC itself labels a very conservative estimate. Neither end is a count. The honest summary is that the reported total was about $3 billion and the real total is unknown but larger.

The composition of the increase is the finding with the most practical content. A problem concentrated in a small number of six-figure losses is a different problem from one spread thinly across many victims, for enforcement and for prevention alike. The payment data points the same way: the two methods carrying the largest reported losses, bank transfers and cryptocurrency, are also the two where a consumer who was persuaded to send the money has the least reversal protection. Regulation E's unauthorized-transfer definition turns on who initiated the transfer rather than on whether the consumer was deceived, and transfers through Fedwire or a similar wire transfer system fall outside Regulation E's definition of an electronic fund transfer under 12 C.F.R. 1005.3(c)(3), so the unauthorized-transfer and error-resolution rules do not reach them. Cryptocurrency transfers are generally understood to sit outside those rules as well; part 1005 and its official interpretations contain no provision addressing virtual currency.

The report's rate findings also cut against the framing this topic usually receives. Older adults filed fraud reports at a higher rate than younger adults in 2025 and reported losing money at a lower rate, with about three-quarters of their reports describing a scam they spotted and avoided. The distinctive feature of elder fraud in this data is not frequency. It is the size of the loss when one occurs, and the fact that older adults were more than twice as likely as younger adults to report a six-figure loss.

Finally, the remedial gap deserves attention. The report devotes its monetary relief section to explaining that the Commission cannot obtain consumer redress under Section 13(b) after AMG Capital Management, and asks Congress to restore that authority. It reports more than $513 million for consumers of all ages in fiscal 2026, obtained through other routes, describing that sum both as money returned to consumers and as relief resulting from enforcement actions. Relief obtained in an enforcement action is not the same thing as money delivered to a particular person, and an FTC case against an operation is not a refund mechanism for the people it took money from.

How This Affects You

Nothing in this report changes anyone's legal rights. It creates no new duty for any business, no claim process, and no deadline. If you see it described as a new elder fraud law, that description is wrong.

Reports go to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov, which is the intake feeding Sentinel. Which agency is the right one depends on the scam and sometimes on the payment method, and we set out which agency to report a scam to for the common situations.

Reporting is not a recovery process, but it can occasionally matter mechanically, and speed is the variable. The FTC refers some high-dollar reports, with the consumer's agreement, to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center's Recovery Asset Team, which can ask banking partners to try to freeze funds. In 2025 the FTC referred 680 reports, 451 of which went to that team; it acted on the 200 that met its criteria, and on reported losses of more than $18.7 million it froze more than $10.8 million. Those figures show that freezing is partial and conditional. No report or referral guarantees that money comes back.

What the law generally provides depends heavily on how the money moved, and the differences between a credit card charge, a debit card transaction, a bank transfer you authorized, a gift card and a cryptocurrency transfer are large. Our payment-method guide linked above covers each route and the deadlines that apply to it.

The report also describes a support referral rather than a legal remedy: older adults who report significant or very recent losses to the FTC may be connected with, or given the number for, the Department of Justice's National Elder Fraud Hotline. Since the FTC enhanced that referral partnership in April 2026, it says more than 320 callers were connected to the hotline and almost 6,000 online filers were given its number.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers a United States federal agency report and the federal statutes and rules named in it, and reflects sources verified on October 20, 2026. Laws change and this story is developing; consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• I Got Scammed: What to Do, How to Get Money Back, Where to Report
• Tech Support Scams and Fake Invoices
• Lottery and Sweepstakes Scams: Fake PCH Calls and Prize Fees
• Zelle, Venmo, Cash App and PayPal Scams: Can You Get Money Back?

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Last updated: 2026-10-20. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-20.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much do seniors lose to scams?

Adults 60 and over reported losing about $3 billion to fraud in 2025, up from about $2.4 billion in 2024, based on roughly 123,000 reports to the FTC's Consumer Sentinel Network that stated both an age and a loss. Because most fraud is never reported, the FTC separately estimates total 2025 losses by older adults at between $13.3 billion and $119.5 billion, depending on the assumptions used.

What is the most common scam against older adults?

It depends on which question you are asking. By the number of reports in which older adults said they lost money, online shopping fraud was the most common category in 2025. By total dollars reported lost, investment scams were the largest, followed by government impersonation and business impersonation.

Can you get money back after a scam?

Sometimes, and it depends mostly on how the money moved and how quickly the loss is reported. Regulation E, at 12 C.F.R. 1005.2(m), defines an unauthorized electronic fund transfer as one initiated by someone other than the consumer, which generally excludes a transfer the consumer was deceived into sending. Credit cards, debit cards, bank transfers, gift cards and cryptocurrency each follow different rules, and our payment-method guide covers each one.

Does the FTC report change the law on elder fraud?

No. It is the ninth annual report required by Section 101(c)(2) of the Elder Abuse Prevention and Prosecution Act of 2017, and it describes enforcement actions, outreach and data for the period ending September 30, 2026. It is not a rule or an enforcement action and it creates no new legal duty.

Are older adults more likely to be scammed than younger people?

Not on this data. The FTC reports that in 2025, after controlling for population size, older adults reported losing money to fraud at a 14% lower rate than adults aged 18 to 59, and filed reports about scams they avoided at a 34% higher rate. These are reporting rates rather than measured incidence. What differed was the size of the loss: a median of about $900 for everyone 60 and over, and $2,000 for people 80 and over.