FTC Issues Annual Report to Congress on Agency’s Actions to Protect Older Adults

Today, the Federal Trade Commission issued its annual report to Congress on protecting older adults, which shows a big increase in the number of older adults reporting losses of over $100,000 to scams.

The report, Protecting Older Consumers, 2024-2025, A Report of the Federal Trade Commission, details the FTC’s multipronged efforts to stop unfair and deceptive acts and practices that impact older Americans through law enforcement actions, rulemaking, and consumer education campaigns and outreach. It also highlights statistics gathered through consumer reports on fraud targeting older adults.

“The FTC’s latest report details the agency’s commitment to protecting older Americans from scams that rob them of their hard-earned money,” said Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The FTC is doing everything possible to protect older adults and shut down illegal scams.”

Older Adult Fraud Reporting Findings

The report outlines key findings from reports submitted in 2024 to the Consumer Sentinel Network, which collects reports from consumers about fraud and other consumer problems. Key findings include:

• Total fraud losses reported by older adults (ages 60 and over) increased about fourfold from 2020 to 2024, skyrocketing from about $600 million in 2020 to $2.4 billion in 2024. This increase was largely driven by reports of losses over $100,000, often to investment scams, romance scams, or impersonations.
• In 2024, older adults reported losing far more money to investment scams than to any other fraud type, often reporting that the scammers targeted them on social media. In fact, consumers of all ages report social media as the most common method of contact for investment scams.
• Older adults continued to report much higher median individual dollar losses than younger adults. The disparity remained particularly large among people 80 and over, whose median reported loss exceeded $1,600.
• Older adults were much more likely than younger adults to report losing money on tech support scams, prize, sweepstakes, and lottery scams, romance scams, and government impersonation scams. For example, older consumers reported $159 million in losses to tech support scams in 2024.
• Older adults reported losing money to fraud at a lower rate than younger adults. This is consistent with previous years and suggests that older adults may be more likely to avoid losing money when exposed to fraud, more inclined to report fraud when no loss has occurred, or a combination of these or other factors.

The report also details the FTC’s law enforcement actions that had an impact on older adults, which included matters involving debt relief schemes, tech support scams, false and unsubstantiated health and product claims, and undisclosed fees for senior housing. In addition, the report highlights resolutions in two cases that had a significant impact on older adults.

The report also details the FTC’s outreach and education efforts through such programs as the Pass It On campaign, which focuses on providing fraud prevention resources to older adults so they can help protect their communities by sharing the information and materials with family and friends. The report highlights the FTC’s collaboration efforts with a wide variety of partners, including government, academia, AARP, industry, military family and veterans service organizers. These collaborative efforts include work led by the FTC’s Scams Against Older Adults Advisory Group, which was created as a result of the Stop Senior Scams Act.

The Commission vote authorizing the report to Congress was 2-0.