The data · Report
Scam statistics 2026: what the public data actually shows
By untrappable · Published July 16, 2026 · Figures verified against primary sources
Here's what the public record shows about scams heading into 2026. Americans reported a record $20.9 billion in losses to online crime in 2025, on top of $12.5 billion in fraud logged by the FTC in 2024. The people who lose the most are older; the messages that reach the most people come by email, text, and robocall; and the money concentrates in a handful of high-value scams — investment fraud above all. Below are the headline findings, five charts you're free to reuse, and a primary source for every number.
1,008,597 complaints to the FBI — a record, up 26% in a year.
Up 25% over 2023 — driven by more reporters losing money, not more reports.
The hardest-hit age group by total dollars, up 59% from 2024.
48% were automated robocalls; 150,984 were about text messages.
Cite this page
untrappable. (2026). Scam statistics 2026: text, call, and email fraud by the numbers. Retrieved 2026-07-16 from https://untrappable.com/scam-statistics
Key findings
Twelve things the numbers say — each stated once, in a sentence you can quote, with the primary source attached.
- $20.9B
Americans reported losing $20.9 billion to online crime in 2025, a record and 26% more than the year before, across 1,008,597 complaints to the FBI.
Source: FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report - +25%
Reported fraud losses to the FTC jumped to $12.5 billion in 2024, up 25% in a single year — even though the number of reports barely moved. The share of reporters who lost money rose from 27% to 38%.
Source: FTC, March 2025 - $7.7B
Older adults lose the most in total: people 60 and over reported $7.7 billion in losses in 2025 — more than any other age group, and a 59% jump from 2024.
Source: FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report - 44% vs 24%
The youngest report losing money most often: 44% of 20–29-year-olds who reported a fraud said they lost money, versus 24% of 70–79-year-olds — the age gap is in the size of the hit, not how often it lands.
Source: FTC Consumer Sentinel Data Book 2024 - $417 → $1,650
When older adults do lose, they lose far more per incident: the median fraud loss was $417 for people aged 20–29, but $1,650 for those 80 and older.
Source: FTC Consumer Sentinel Data Book 2024 - $8.6B
Investment scams are the costliest category by a wide margin — $8.6 billion in 2025 — driven by $7.2 billion in cryptocurrency-investment fraud alone.
Source: FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report - 191,561
The most-reported crime isn't the most expensive: phishing and spoofing drew the most complaints in 2025 (191,561) but ranked far down by dollars ($216 million). The damage is downstream — in the logins and data those messages harvest.
Source: FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report - 25%
Email is the single most common way scammers reach people who report fraud — 25% of reports, for the second year running — ahead of phone calls, then text messages.
Source: FTC Consumer Sentinel Data Book 2024 - 864,765
The phone is still ruled by robots: of ~1.79 million unwanted-call complaints in the FCC's public dataset, 864,765 (48%) were automated — prerecorded, abandoned, or autodialed — 83% more than live-caller complaints. Another 150,984 were about text messages.
Source: FCC unwanted-call complaints (our analysis) - $1,500
Job scams punch above their weight: employment scams were the #2 riskiest scam type in 2024 and #1 for adults 18–34, with a $1,500 median loss. An estimated 14 million people are exposed to them every year, losing about $2 billion.
Source: 2024 BBB Scam Tracker Risk Report - $893M
AI has entered the scam economy: the FBI logged its first-ever AI category in 2025 — 22,364 complaints and $893 million in losses from AI-generated profiles, voices, and messages.
Source: FBI IC3, 2025 Internet Crime Report - 16 of 41
Across the 41 scam patterns we've documented, every one impersonates a trusted name or process — a bank, a payment app, a delivery service, big-tech support, or a government agency — and they arrive most often by text (16 of 41), then email (12) and phone (11).
Source: untrappable Scams A–Z
The numbers, in five charts
Each chart is drawn from one primary source, named on the chart. Colours adapt to light and dark automatically.
Reported losses climb steeply with age
FBI IC3 complaints, total dollars lost by victim age group, 2025
Where the money actually goes
FBI IC3, reported losses by crime type, 2025
The phone is still ruled by robots
FCC unwanted-call complaints by call type — our analysis of 1,795,231 complaints
Bars cover the five classified call types (1,487,432 complaints). The remaining 307,799 records — unclassified or blank call-type entries — are counted in the 1,795,231 total but not shown.
The older the target, the bigger the hit
FTC Consumer Sentinel, median loss per fraud report by age, 2024
The 68 patterns we've documented, by channel
untrappable's documented scam patterns, grouped by how they arrive
Methodology
What this page is
This is a synthesis of the largest public fraud datasets in the United States, compiled and cross-checked by untrappable. Every figure is drawn from a primary government or Better Business Bureau source, linked below, and was verified against that source on 16 July 2026. We report each number with the year of the data it describes — the datasets publish on different schedules, so 2025 figures (FBI IC3) sit alongside 2024 figures (FTC Consumer Sentinel), and we don't blend them into a single year.
The public sources
FBI IC3 — the 2025 and 2024 Internet Crime Reports, for total losses, complaint counts, losses by age, and losses by crime type. FTC Consumer Sentinel Network — the 2024 Data Book, for fraud reports, contact methods, payment methods, and median losses by age. FCC — the public "Unwanted Calls" consumer-complaint dataset (opendata.fcc.gov, dataset vakf-fz8e), which we downloaded and aggregated ourselves; the by-call-type figures on this page are our own count of 1,795,231 complaint records, retrieved 16 July 2026. Better Business Bureau — the BBB Job Scams Study and the 2024 BBB Scam Tracker Risk Report, for employment-scam figures.
What our own corpus is — and isn't
The channel breakdown of "68 documented patterns" is untrappable's own editorial catalogue of distinct scam patterns we've written up and checked against official sources. It is a qualitative reference library, not a survey or a representative sample of scam volume — it tells you what the common patterns look like and how they reach people, not how many victims each one claims. When you see a national number on this page, it comes from the government or BBB sources above, never from our corpus.
Caveats
Report-based datasets undercount fraud, because most scams are never reported — so every total here is a floor, not a ceiling. The FTC and FCC figures are self-reported and unverified by the agencies. Counts can shift as agencies add late-arriving reports. We link the primary source for every figure so you can check it and cite it directly.
Sources
- Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024— Federal Trade Commission
- New FTC Data Show a Big Jump in Reported Losses to Fraud to $12.5 Billion in 2024— Federal Trade Commission
- 2025 Internet Crime Report (IC3)— FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center
- 2024 Internet Crime Report (IC3)— FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center
- Consumer Complaints Data — Unwanted Calls (dataset vakf-fz8e)— Federal Communications Commission
- Reports of Unwanted Telemarketing Calls Down More Than 50 Percent Since 2021— Federal Trade Commission
- BBB Job Scams Study— Better Business Bureau
- 2024 BBB Scam Tracker Risk Report— Better Business Bureau
Frequently asked
How much money did Americans lose to scams and online crime?
What is the most common way scammers contact people?
Which age group is most affected by scams?
What kind of scam causes the biggest losses?
Recognise one of these in your own inbox or messages? See the 68 scam patterns we've documented for the exact tells and what to do, or start with the free steps to protect yourself.