Reporting a scam can feel pointless in the moment, especially once the money’s already gone — but it genuinely helps stop fraud operations, track patterns, and sometimes even recover losses. FTC research puts it at fewer than 1 in 20 fraud victims actually reporting to a government agency, which means most scams operate with way … Read more
Realizing you’ve been scammed ranks among the most distressing things a person can go through — and wanting to panic, feel ashamed, or just hide it entirely is completely understandable. But what you do in the first hours and days afterward genuinely matters, both for limiting the damage and for recovering funds where that’s still … Read more
Adults 60 and older reported $7.7 billion in fraud losses in 2025 — nearly 60% more than the year before, and disproportionately higher than any other age group, per the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. That’s not coincidence, and it’s not bad luck. Scammers target older adults on purpose, and understanding exactly why makes the … Read more
The FTC logged over a million imposter scam reports in 2025, with losses totaling $3.5 billion — and reports specifically involving fake government officials jumped 40% that year. This category spans a lot of ground, from bogus IRS agents to fake jury duty warrants, but strip away the details and nearly every version runs on … Read more
Lottery, sweepstakes, and inheritance scams pulled more than $138 million from American seniors in 2025 alone — a 57% spike from the year before, according to FBI data. Older adults report losing money to this specific fraud category at far higher rates than younger people, and the FTC keeps flagging it as one of the … Read more
Government impersonation scams drained $413 million from American seniors in 2025 — nearly double the year before, per FBI data. And the Social Security Administration holds an unwanted title: most-impersonated federal agency in the country, with over 330,000 reported scam contacts in 2025 alone. What makes these scams especially dangerous is simple — they hijack … Read more
Romance scams drained $929 million from Americans in 2025, per the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center — and adults 60 and older accounted for $584 million of that, roughly 63 cents of every dollar lost. What makes these particular scams so damaging isn’t just the money. It’s that the loss almost never happens in one … Read more
Tech support scams racked up over $1 billion in reported losses in 2025, and older adults bear an outsized share of that — FTC data consistently ranks it among the five costliest fraud categories for adults 70 and up. What makes this particular scam sneaky is that it doesn’t need a phone call to get … Read more
The grandparent scam has been around forever, and it’s stuck around because it goes after something scammers know works better than greed ever does: love, mixed with panic. Someone calls claiming to be a grandchild in trouble, and that jolt of hearing a “family member” in distress is often enough to override judgment that would … Read more
Phone scams keep targeting older adults for one simple reason: they work. And the scale of it is honestly hard to wrap your head around. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center put adult 60+ fraud losses at $7.7 billion for 2025 — up nearly 60% from the prior year. The FTC’s own data backs this … Read more