Crime03 September, 20262 min read
Scams Hit Record $15.9 Billion in U.S. Losses, Victims Say They’re Abandoned
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US scam losses reached $15.9 billion in 2025, up 25% from the prior year. Many victims receive little recovery help and underreport scams due to embarrassment.
5 outlets told this the same way.
Record scam losses
Scams in the United States hit record levels, with Americans reporting $15.9 billion in scam losses in 2025, a 25% increase from the previous year. The Associated Press reported that the Federal Trade Commission estimated actual scam losses in 2024 were close to $200 billion, equivalent to about $550 million every day. A survey by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 98% of Americans believe they have been targeted by scammers, and about three in 10 said they had personally lost money or information to scams.
In interviews with 58 scam victims aged 32 to 90, losses ranged from several thousand dollars to as much as $4 million, and many said they felt abandoned after reporting the crimes to authorities. The FBI receives nearly 3,000 internet crime complaints every day through its IC3 reporting system, and a retired FBI official estimated that only around 10% to 12% of reported IC3 cases are investigated.
Victims face revictimization
Erin West, founder of the nonprofit Operation Shamrock, said, “What happens after the scam might even be worse than the scam itself,” describing how victims can face consequences even after the initial theft. The investigation described a retired nurse, Susan Bivins, who was tricked into sending more than $200,000 to a scammer posing as a federal agent and later received an $80,000 tax bill from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Bivins said, “I wanted to drive off a cliff,” after learning she had to sell her home and move into a small one-bedroom apartment.
The Times of India reported that the IRS said Bivins owed $80,000 in taxes on money she had withdrawn from her retirement accounts and then lost to the scammer. Kathy Stokes, AARP’s fraud prevention lead, said victims should not be left with financial obligations created by crimes against them, adding, “Essentially they’re being revictimized by the US government.”
Tracing funds and policy
The AP/FRONTLINE investigation said stolen funds can be traceable, using leaked documents and cryptowallet addresses to locate Emily and Simon’s stolen funds to a notorious scam complex in Myanmar. Fortune reported that Simon’s stolen funds originated in Myanmar, where “much of the Myanmar compound where his scam originated lies in rubble, destroyed by local authorities,” yet “many of the illicit operations simply moved, new sites opened immediately.” The Justice Department’s Scam Center Strike Force said it restrained $832 million in cryptocurrency linked to Chinese transnational criminals, though authorities did not disclose how much, if any, had been returned to victims.
The Times of India said a bill currently before Congress, called the Tax Relief for Fraud Victims Act, would bring back an allowance for victims to deduct losses from certain scams. The same report noted that before 2018, victims of theft or fraud could sometimes deduct their losses from taxable income, but a provision in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act removed tax breaks for personal losses from many common scams and made that provision permanent in 2025.