Modern tech like AI has made it easy, nearly effortless, to scam people. Some of the most vulnerable Americans who are 60 and older become easy prey for scammers using a range of techniques, including romance scams and celebrity scams, wherein a con artist digitally masks themselves as someone else entirely to trick someone into thinking they need money.
A new Federal Trade Commission report digs into the numbers and found that fraud targeting older adults blew up from $600 million in 2020 to a massive $3 billion reported in 2025, with total unrecorded damages potentially reaching $119.5 billion.
Older Americans are an easy target because of unfamiliarity with modern tech and the sophistication of modern scams. That, combined with the vast majority of American wealth tied up among the baby boomers and members of the silent generation, and you’ve got a demographic right before scams.
Scammers Stole $3 Billion From Older Americans in 2025, New FTC Report Reveals
Investment scams topped the chart with over $1 billion swiped, more often than not initiated through social media traps. But good old-fashioned phone calls yielded some of the highest individual losses. Older consumers were “over four times (324%) more likely than younger people to report losing money on a tech support scam; (2) over two times (112%) more likely to report a loss on a prize,” according to the report.
Bank transfers served as the primary pipeline for high-dollar thefts, though credit cards were the most frequent payment method overall. The FTC report doesn’t quantify how much of this is happening through AI, but given how rapidly the tech has infiltrated modern society, one could assume AI is used frequently, making digital extortion schemes harder to spot.
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