Around $3 billion was lost in 2025 to fraud from people aged 60 and over in the US.

Just when older adults need their money for retirement, many of them are being robbed. On Monday, the Federal Trade Commission issued its annual report to Congress on protecting older adults, noting that adults 60 and over continue to report losing far more money to investment scams than to any other type of fraud.

Adults 60 and over lost $3 billion to fraud in 2025, five times the $600 million reported five years prior, in 2020. This increase was driven largely by growing reports of extraordinarily large individual losses. Fraud losses due to investment scams jumped 42% in 2025 to over $1 billion, with consumers reporting that scammers often reach them on social media.

The full 58-page report, Protecting Older Consumers 2025-2026, is available online. It summarizes fraud and consumer complaints submitted to the Consumer Sentinel Network in 2025. The network is a free online investigative FTC tool that gives its member groups access to millions of fraud reports to assist their investigations.

Adults 60 and over continue to report much higher individual dollar losses than younger people, with people 80 and over faring the worst, with a median reported loss of $2,000. According to the report, older adults are more likely to report losing money to tech support scams; prize, sweepstakes and lottery scams; romance scams; government impersonation scams; and scams in which someone impersonates their friends or family members.

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