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Criminals are increasingly pilfering the retirement and other financial accounts of older Americans via so-called “imposter” scams, the Federal Trade Commission reported Thursday.
The frauds tend to go like this: Scammers conjure a fake crisis and pose as trustworthy sources — perhaps a representative for a bank or companies like Amazon, Apple or Microsoft, or workers at a federal agency like the Social Security Administration or FTC — who can supposedly help them fix it.
In the process, they persuade unsuspecting victims to transfer their money to “keep it safe” or for another bogus reason, the FTC said.
In 2024, the FTC received 8,269 reports from adults age 60 and older, claiming to have lost at least $10,000 to an imposter scam. That figure is up 362% from 1,790 reports in 2020, according to FTC data.
Total losses among older Americans amounted to $700 million in 2024 — a more than fivefold increase from $122 million in 2020, the FTC said.
Sometimes, financial loss amounts to households’ entire life savings.
“Some people 60+ have reported emptying their bank accounts and even clearing out their 401ks,” the FTC wrote.
Losses over $100,000 swell 700%
Losses among those older adults who lost at least $100,000 have swelled to $445 million in 2024 from $55 million in 2020, according to the FTC.
The increase in imposter scams tracks an increase in overall elder fraud reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Internet crime led to $4.9 billion in losses from 147,127 consumer complaints in 2024. Those figures represent a 43% increase in losses, and a 46% jump in complaints from 2023, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
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“The reported losses are most likely much higher because older Americans are less likely to report fraud because they either don’t know how to report it, are embarrassed, or don’t know they have been scammed,” the FBI wrote in June.
Losses over $100,000 were three times as likely to be reported by adults 60 years and older compared with younger households, according to the FTC’s 2024 data.
How to avoid imposter scams
Here are a few ways the FTC suggests to avoid falling victim to imposter scams:
- Don’t move money to “protect” it. Never transfer or send money, cryptocurrency or gold to anyone you don’t know — no matter who they say they are — in response to an unexpected call or message, the FTC said.
- Don’t believe people who say to quickly move your money to “protect” it. Anyone who tells you that is a scammer, the agency said.
- Hang up and verify. Even if the scams start online, they generally still rely on phone calls at some point in the process. Contact the company or government agency in question using a phone number, website or email address you know is real. “Don’t trust what an unexpected caller says, and never use the phone number in a computer security pop-up or an unexpected text or email,” according to the FTC.
- Block unwanted calls. Learn about call blocking options through your carrier that can stop scammers before they reach you.