According to the Federal Trade Commission, Americans lost $12.5 billion to fraud in 2024, a 25% increase from $10 billion a year earlier. Surprisingly, the actual number of people reporting being victims of fraud (2.6 million) did not increase in 2024. What has increased is the proportion of people who have lost money to these scams - from 27% in 2023 to 38% last year.

The biggest losses are from investment fraud. This type of fraud has caused losses as high as $5.7 billion. The median loss suffered by victims is more than $9,000, which is higher than any other scam category.

These investment scams are often referred to as "pig killing," which involves fattening the animals before slaughtering them and nurturing the victims over time to gain their trust before convincing them to make large investments. Once someone hands over money to a scammer, the criminals cut off all communications.


The second most successful type of fraud, and the most commonly reported, is imposter fraud. The FTC wrote that $2.95 billion has been lost to victims of this type of crime, which involves scammers impersonating government officials, business representatives, family members or romantic partners to persuade others to hand over their money. In particular, losses from government impersonation fraud increased from $171 million in 2023 to $789 million in 2024.

Older people are stereotypically the most likely to fall victim to scams, but younger people report more fraud losses than those over 70, with 20 to 29-year-olds accounting for 44% of all reports. This may be because more and more young people are online.

Elsewhere, losses from business and job offer scams surged from $250 million to $750.6 million.

For the second year in a row, the most common method used by scammers to first contact their victims is email. Next came phone calls, then text messages. However, while $1.9 billion has been lost to scams started using these more traditional methods, more than $3 billion has been lost to scams started using the Internet.

It's worth noting that most scams go unreported, usually because victims feel too embarrassed, so the actual number is likely much higher.