FTC Reports Surge in Consumers’ Losses to Impersonation Scams

A growing number of older adults are losing large sums of money to impersonation scams, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

The number of people 60 and over who said they lost $10,000 or more to this form of fraud quadrupled between 2020 and 2024, while the number who lost more than $100,000 increased eightfold, the FTC said in a Thursday (August 7) press release.

In this form of fraud, scammers impersonate government agencies or businesses, contact consumers to alert them to a fake problem involving their accounts or their identity, and try to persuade them to transfer money to “keep it safe,” according to the release.

The scammers try to create a sense of urgency by telling consumers that their accounts are being used by someone else, that their Social Security number or other information is being used to commit crimes, or that their online accounts have been hacked, the release said.

After persuading consumers to transfer their money, deposit cash into bitcoin ATMs, or hand cash or gold to couriers, the scammers steal those assets, per the release.

“While younger people report losing money to these imposters too, reports of losses in the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars are much more likely to be filed by older adults, and those numbers have soared,” the FTC said in a Consumer Protection Data Spotlight.

The FTC said in April that impersonation scams are consistently one of the top frauds reported to the agency and that these scams led to $2.95 billion in consumer losses in 2024.

The agency said at the time that it had brought five cases involving alleged violations of the Government and Business Impersonation Rule in the year since that law took effect and that it closed down 13 websites it said were illegally impersonating the FTC online.

Threat intelligence research organization Cisco Talos said in July that there has been a surge in brand impersonation scams in which fraudsters send consumers emails in which they impersonate well-known brands and try to persuade consumers to call a number regarding an urgent transaction and disclose sensitive information.

The PYMNTS Intelligence and Featurespace collaboration “How Scammers Tailor Financial Scams to Individual Consumer Vulnerabilities” found that three in 10 U.S. consumers lost money to a financial scam in the last five years and that most victims lost more than $500.