The Federal Trade Commission recently released its 2024-2025 “Protecting Older Consumers” report, revealing a sobering trend: Senior citizens in the United States are being targeted by high-stakes scams at an unprecedented rate. While older adults often report fraud less frequently than younger generations, the financial impact when they do fall victim could prove to be devastating.
The Rising Cost of Fraud for Seniors
The most alarming takeaway from the report is the sheer scale of financial loss. Total fraud losses reported by adults age 60 and older skyrocketed from $600 million in 2020 to $2.4 billion in 2024. This 400% increase is primarily driven by a surge in “large-scale” losses —specifically reports of individuals losing more than $100,000 to a single scam.
Key Trends in Senior Scams
The recent study focuses on specific areas where older consumers are most vulnerable:
- Investment scams: This remains the costliest category. Scammers frequently use social media to lure victims into fraudulent schemes, leading to higher total losses than any other fraud type.
- The age gap in losses: While younger adults report losing money more often, older adults lose more per instance. For those age 80 and over, the median loss exceeds $1,600.
- Specific tactics: Older adults are disproportionately targeted by tech support scams (costing victims $159 million in 2024), lottery or sweepstakes scams and government impersonation.
How the Government Is Fighting Back
The director of The Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection emphasized the agency’s “commitment to protecting older Americans from scams that rob them of their hard-earned money.”
The strategy is three-pronged:
- Law enforcement: Taking aggressive action against debt relief schemes, false health claims and undisclosed fees in senior housing.
- Rulemaking: Establishing stricter regulations to shut down illegal operations before they reach consumers.
- Education: Programs like the “Pass It On” campaign encourage seniors to share fraud prevention tips within their communities.
How To Protect Yourself From Scams
The federal agency reminds the public that its representatives will never demand money, threaten citizens or insist on wire transfers to “protect” accounts.
Those who encounter scams should report them by going to reportfraud.ftc.gov. The government will use the information to build cases and prevent others from becoming victims.
The public should be aware that when a company reaches out via emails or texts, they should go into their accounts through the company’s portal or website; they should not click on the link. Likewise, people who receive phone calls should hang up and call the numbers they normally utilize to reach the companies.
Other measures can be taken to thwart scammers. For FTC landline customers, the telemarketer interceptor will reduce the number of robo calls. Essentially, an actual person has to respond to a prompt to complete calls. The cost for the telemarketer interceptor service is $1.50 per month.
For iPhone users, the Ask Reason for Calling feature, which was introduced in IOS 26, requires callers not in a user’s contacts to state their names and reason for calling. The iPhone user, after the callers have identified themselves, can decide whether to answer or allow it to go to voicemail. To get to the feature, the user would need to go to Settings, Apps and Phone then scroll down to Screen Unknown Callers and select Ask Reason for Calling.
For users of Samsung Android devices, utilizing Call Assist and Text Call through Bixby can help in a similar way. The user should click on Phone app, More Options, Settings and enable Text Call. Once the callers respond to the prompts and identify themselves, the Samsung users can then decide whether they want to take the call.
