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FTC reports fraud losses among adults 60 and over climbed from $600 million in 2020 to roughly $3 billion last year, driven largely by impersonation scams.
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Federal Trade CommissionTech support scams and government impersonation calls are hitting older adults harder than younger ones, according to a new report described by the FTC. If a caller claims to be from a government agency or says a computer needs urgent repair, hang up and call the agency or company back using a number found independently, not one given by the caller.
The report lays out a sharp rise in losses. Total fraud losses reported by older adults, those 60 and over, rose from $600 million in 2020 to about $3 billion last year. That is a fivefold increase in five years.
The pattern inside that number is specific. Younger adults were generally more likely to report losing money to fraud overall. But older adults were more likely to report losing money on three particular kinds of scams: tech support, prize scams, and government impersonation.
That split points to where the scam does its work. A prize scam and a tech support call both rely on a plausible authority appearing at the right moment, a government seal, a security warning, a voice that sounds like it belongs to Microsoft or the IRS. The approach does not need to be sophisticated. It needs to look official enough that calling back the number the caller gives feels like a reasonable next step, rather than a mistake.
The FTC's enforcement work over the past year followed that same territory: cases touching debt relief services, health insurance fraud, government and business impersonation schemes, money-making opportunities, and tech support scams. The agency also ran a public-private campaign called Never Ever, aimed at raising awareness specifically about government and business imposter scams, with materials available for sharing.
The mechanism in all of these scams is the same move: borrow the appearance of an institution a person already trusts, then ask them to act inside that trust before they have time to check it independently. The FTC's own report does not list how someone should verify a caller mid-call. The step that actually breaks the scam is simple and outside the call itself: look up the number separately and dial it directly, rather than using any number or link the caller supplies.
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