The financial news that actually matters
Older Americans reported losing a record $7.7 billion to fraud last year, the highest total the FBI has ever recorded, and the average victim was taken for roughly $38,500. For a retiree, that is not an abstract number. It lands close to a full year of Social Security benefits, the money that pays the mortgage,…
A proposal moving through the House would do something Social Security has not done in more than half a century: raise every beneficiary’s monthly check across the board, on top of the usual inflation adjustment. The bill would lift benefits by 2% for current and future recipients, the first such increase in 52 years, and…
Federal prosecutors say a single network of companies and clinicians billed Medicare more than $4 billion for skin grafts that were marked up roughly 2,000 percent, then paid kickbacks to make sure the costly patches kept getting applied to older patients. The allegations sit at the center of the Justice Department’s 2026 national health-care fraud…
Michael Burry, the investor who made a fortune betting against subprime mortgages before the 2008 collapse, has turned his skepticism toward the artificial-intelligence trade that has helped push the stock market to record highs. In a late-June disclosure, he revealed wagers against Nvidia, Tesla and several other names tied to the AI boom, and cautioned…
A federal jury convicted 25 defendants on April 24, 2026, for running an international business email compromise operation that stole roughly $215 million from more than 1,000 victims spread across 47 states and 19 countries. The case, prosecuted out of the Northern District of Ohio, stands as one of the largest BEC prosecutions by defendant…
Roughly one in ten federally backed reverse mortgages is now in default, and the federal agency responsible for tracking those loans lost sight of nearly 13,000 of them. For seniors who took out Home Equity Conversion Mortgages, or HECMs, to age in place, a default triggered by unpaid property taxes or lapsed homeowners insurance can…
A married couple who funneled $1.4 million stolen largely from elderly victims in San Diego County into luxury cars abroad has been sentenced by a federal court. The pair, both Romanian citizens, admitted to laundering proceeds from jewelry grand thefts, robberies, swindles, and California pandemic unemployment fraud. As part of their plea, they agreed to…
Each year, roughly 4 million Americans cross the age-65 threshold, entering retirement in a country where traditional employer-funded pensions have largely disappeared. The result is a growing cohort of older adults who depend almost entirely on Social Security and whatever they managed to save on their own. With the 65-and-older population now outnumbering children in…
Anyone with more than $250,000 sitting in a single bank account faces a straightforward risk: federal deposit insurance will not cover the excess if that institution fails. The FDIC cap applies per depositor, per insured bank, for each account ownership category, and multiple accounts in the same category at one bank are added together before…
About 71.255 million Americans received Social Security payments in June 2026, and the average monthly check across all beneficiary types came to $1,937.53. That figure, roughly $1,940, masks sharp differences between retired workers, disabled workers, and survivors, differences that a 2.8 percent cost-of-living adjustment applied in January has done little to erase. For tens of…