Americans Over 60 Lost $7.75 Billion to Scammers in 2025, FBI Says

Tech rebounded, telecoms tumbled on a SpaceX deal, and the Dow gained 423 points.

The quick scan: Friday closed a choppy week on a firm note. Mega-cap tech recovered from Thursday's sell-off and lifted all three major indexes. Telecom stocks were the session's big losers after SpaceX said it would buy a nationwide low-band spectrum portfolio, while tower operators jumped. Humana surged after CMS restored its Medicare Advantage star rating. The 10-year Treasury yield held just under 5.25%.

S&P 500: +0.59% to 7,811.54 – recovered Thursday's tech losses; telecom giants T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon were the index's three biggest decliners, down roughly 8.5% to 13%, while Humana jumped about 12%
Dow Jones: +0.83% to 51,654.95 – added 423 points, the strongest percentage gain of the three major indexes
NASDAQ: +0.64% to 27,366.17 – mega-cap tech bounced after Thursday's slide, though the gain trailed the Dow's in percentage terms.

What's driving it: Two stories shaped the session. First, tech buyers returned after Thursday's sell-off, which is the usual pattern in a market that has spent the week second-guessing itself. Second, the SpaceX spectrum announcement redrew the telecom map in a single morning: the three big carriers sold off hard while tower owners such as Crown Castle, SBA Communications and American Tower gained between 7% and 16%. Humana's jump followed improved 2027 Medicare Advantage star ratings from CMS. Treasury yields stayed elevated, with the 10-year near 5.25%, which keeps pressure on anything that competes with bonds for attention. Looking ahead, bond markets are closed Monday for Columbus Day, and bank earnings start Tuesday.

Bottom line: A busy tape is easy to blame for a bad year. The FBI's numbers tell a different story for people over 60: the largest single category of losses was not a market drawdown, it was an investment pitch from someone who should never have had your number. Markets will keep swinging. The more controllable risk is who you let into the conversation.actical response to a high-cost world is to check the costs you can actually control.

Why Are Scammers Taking $7.75 Billion a Year From People Over 60?

The scoop: $38,500. That is the average loss reported by Americans aged 60 and over who filed a fraud complaint with the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center in 2025. For many of us, that is a sizeable slice of a retirement pot, gone after a few friendly messages.

The figure comes from this year's FBI report on internet crime, published in April and covered by AARP alongside new data from the Federal Trade Commission.

The headline number

People aged 60 and over filed 201,266 complaints in 2025, up 37 percent on 2024. They reported losing $7.75 billion, up 59 percent. Across all ages, the FBI logged more than one million complaints and $20.9 billion in losses, up 26 percent. So the 60-plus group accounts for a little over a third of the dollars. People in their 30s and 40s reported $4.6 billion, which is a reminder that nobody has a monopoly on being targeted.

More than 12,400 older complainants lost over $100,000 each. Read that again before assuming these are small, embarrassing slips. Many of them are life-changing amounts.

A caution before going further. These are complaints that people chose to file. Fraud is widely under-reported, often out of embarrassment, so the true totals are higher than any report can show.

Where the money went

Investment fraud was the biggest category for the 60-plus group by a wide margin: $3.52 billion, much of it tied to cryptocurrency and fake trading platforms. Next came tech and customer-support scams at $1.04 billion, then confidence and romance scams at $584 million. Business email compromise, where a fraudster poses as someone you are paying (a home sale is the classic setting), cost older victims $568 million across 4,566 complaints.

The report also looks at cryptocurrency as its own slice: 42,271 complaints from the 60-plus group and $4.35 billion lost. Crypto ATM and kiosk incidents accounted for 6,188 of those reports and $257.5 million, up 58 percent. The report slices the same losses in several ways, so please do not add the lists together.

How it usually starts

The FBI describes the pattern in one sentence. Scammers "typically initiate contact through text messages, social media sites, advertisements, or dating applications and then quickly move the conversation to a messaging platform."

Notice the second half. A stranger who is in a hurry to change the venue of the conversation is telling you something. Legitimate advisers, banks and relatives rarely need to take you somewhere more private on day one.

The newer tricks

Older Americans filed more than 3,100 complaints that referenced artificial intelligence, with losses above $352 million. Voice-cloning "distress" scams, where a caller who sounds like a relative claims to be in trouble, accounted for over $5 million.

Then there are recovery scams, which hit people who have already been burned. Fake officials and law firms contact earlier victims, promising to get the money back for a fee. These cost older victims $540 million. Being scammed once, it turns out, puts you on a list for a second pitch.

There is some good news. The FBI's Recovery Asset Team froze $32.9 million of $65.4 million in elder cases through its Financial Fraud Kill Chain. Money can sometimes be caught, but only if someone reports. The lesson is not that every loss can be undone. It is that silence helps the scammer far more than it helps you, and that a phone call made on the first day beats one made after a month of private shame.

A second set of numbers

The Federal Trade Commission publishes its own data, and it points the same way. Reported fraud losses hit a record $15.9 billion in 2025, up from $12.5 billion, across about three million reports. People aged 50 and over lost $4.3 billion, against $2.3 billion for younger adults. Investment scams were the top category at $7.9 billion.

Treat the two agencies' numbers as separate pictures. The FBI counts people aged 60 and over, the FTC counts 50 and over, and the underlying reports overlap, so adding them together would count some losses twice.

What this report cannot tell us

These are United States figures, built from complaints rather than a survey, so they say nothing about why older people lose more or how readers elsewhere fare. They also show nothing about the many people who lost money and told no one. Averages hide a wide spread, too: an average of $38,500 sits alongside more than 12,400 people who lost over $100,000 each, so individual experiences vary enormously. Use the numbers to understand the scale of the problem, not to predict your own odds.

Nor do they say older people are careless. The numbers show a lot of money moving and a great many people asking for it with polished stories. Officials' advice, as reported, is simple: use multifactor authentication on financial accounts, never send cryptocurrency to someone you have only met online, verify an urgent money request by calling the family member on a number you already have, and report any loss at ic3.gov regardless of the amount.

If there is a theme running through the report, it is that the danger rarely arrives looking like danger. It arrives looking like a friendly message, a helpful voice, an opportunity that seems to have been made for you. Retirement is a stage of life with more time, more savings in one place and, for many of us, fewer people checking over our shoulders. That is a good reason to talk with a partner, a sibling or a grown-up child, and agree on a few simple habits now, while nobody is pressing us for money.

This is general information, not legal or financial advice.

Actionable takeaways for L-Plate Retirees:

• Treat a move to a private chat as a warning light. The FBI's own description of the typical scam is first contact by text, social media, advert or dating app, followed by a quick switch to a messaging platform. If a stranger wants to take the conversation somewhere private, slow down and tell someone you trust.

• Never send crypto to someone you have only met online. Investment and crypto-linked scams account for the largest losses in the report. No genuine relationship, romantic or professional, requires you to buy digital coins and send them to a person you have never met in the flesh.

• Call back on a number you already have. For an urgent request from a family member, hang up and ring them on a known number, or ask another relative. Voice cloning means a familiar voice on the line is no longer proof of anything.

• Turn on multifactor authentication wherever money lives. Bank, brokerage, pension and email accounts all count, since email access can be used to redirect payments. It takes a few minutes, and it closes a door scammers like to find open.

• Expect a second pitch after a first loss. Recovery scams cost older victims $540 million. Anyone who contacts you offering to retrieve lost money for a fee deserves the same suspicion as the original stranger. A real agency or law firm will not demand an upfront fee, or payment in gift cards or crypto, to hand back your money. If the claim is real, it will survive a day of checking.

• Report it, whatever the amount. File at ic3.gov even if the sum feels small or embarrassing. The FBI's Recovery Asset Team froze about half the money in the elder cases it worked through the Kill Chain, and fast reports give that process its best chance.

Your Turn: 
If a message from a relative asked for money urgently tonight, what is the one thing you would do before replying – and does your family know that is the plan, or is it only in your head? 
The report says first contact usually comes by text, social media, an advertisement or a dating app before moving to a private chat. When did you last get a message like that, and what made you pause – or not? 
Fraud is under-reported, often out of embarrassment. What would make it easier for people in your circle to say "I think I've been scammed" out loud and early?

👉 Hit reply and share your thoughts – your answers could inspire fellow readers in future issues.

☕ If today's issue helped you see that a $7.75 billion fraud figure is really thousands of ordinary conversations that began with a text, consider supporting L-Plate Retiree on Ko-fi. Your support keeps these plain-spoken money reality checks coming.

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