FTC: Investment Scams Top 25% Spike in 2024 Fraud Losses

New Federal Trade Commission (FTC) data shows consumers reporting more than $12.5 billion in fraud losses last year.

That number marks a 25% increase over 2023, the FTC said Monday (March 10). However, the number isn’t driven by an uptick in fraud reports, which remained stable.

Rather, the percentage of people who reported losing money to a fraud or scam rose by double digits. In 2023, 27% of people who reported a fraud also reported losing money. In 2024, that figure climbed to 38%, the FTC said.

“The data we’re releasing today shows that scammers’ tactics are constantly evolving,” said Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The FTC is monitoring those trends closely and working hard to protect the American people from fraud.”

According to the FTC, consumers reported losing more money to investment scams — $5.7 billion — than any other category last year. That figure represents a 24% increase over 2023.

Coming in second place in reported losses were imposter scams at $2.95 billion. And consumers last year reported losing more money to scams where they paid using bank transfers or cryptocurrency than all other payment methods combined.

The commission said it received fraud reports from 2.6 million consumers last year, almost the same amount as 2023. The most commonly reported scam category was imposter scams, with losses to government imposter scams in particular climbing $171 million from 2023 to a total of $789 million last year.

The second most commonly reported fraud category was online shopping issues, followed by business and job opportunities, where reported losses totaled $750.6 million — up nearly $250 million from 2023.

The findings come amid an explosion in scams against banks and their customers, as PYMNTS wrote last week.

“Fraudsters pull at human nature in a bid to gain access to accounts and drain them — pleading through texts, phone calls and artificial intelligence (AI) prompts for donations, romance, bail to get out of jail and more,” that report said.

“Scammers are industrious, becoming more businesslike, moving beyond blast emails toward a personalized approach as they pick their victims.”

Research by PYMNTS Intelligence from the “The Impact of Financial Scams on Consumers’ Finances and Banking Habits” found that two types of scams cause more financial damage than average: Investment scams, with a median loss of $1,104, and romance scams, which have a median loss of $1,996.

The research also found that romance scams also string targets along for an average of 3.6 transactions, which is close to twice as many transactions as other types of scams.