Scammers who posed as Federal Trade Commission staff took $161 million from victims in 2025, and fake Social Security agents took another $144 million, the FTC says. Those totals sit in the agency’s annual report to Congress on older adults, released October 19. The agency also repeats a rule that does not change: it will never demand money.
What the $161 million and $144 million count
The FTC counts reported losses by people of any age to scams that impersonate three agencies. For 2025 the report lists $161 million for scams using the FTC’s own name, $144 million for Social Security impostors and $28 million for scams posing as the FBI. Among older adults, government-impersonation scams ranked second in losses, behind only investment fraud.
Older adults carry most of the weight. The report says people 60 and older made 92% of the FTC-impersonation loss reports, 85% of the Social Security reports and 75% of the FBI reports, counting only complaints that included an age. The agency adds that its complaint data leave out FBI internet-crime reports and that losses are likely underreported.
Anyone who gets a call from someone claiming to be with the FTC or Social Security faces the same choice: pay, or hang up. The FTC says no genuine caller from the agency will ask for money. The report says victims of these impostors were told to transfer money, mail cash or deposit cash into Bitcoin ATMs to keep it “safe.”
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The script impostors use
The FTC’s Never Ever campaign, described in the report, tells the public that government agencies will never tell anyone to move money to protect it. The FTC’s consumer site gives the same warning. It says the agency will never threaten anyone, say money must be transferred to “protect it,” or tell a person to withdraw cash or buy gold and give it to someone. Any such request, the site says, is a scam.
Social Security describes the same pattern from its side. Its scam page says impostors may call, email, text, write letters or message on social media, spoof official phone numbers, use real employees’ names, threaten arrest or suspension of a Social Security number, and demand secrecy. The agency says it will never ask for sensitive or personal information through social media, email or text message.
Payment is the giveaway. Social Security says scammers frequently ask for gift cards, cryptocurrency, wire transfers, prepaid debit cards, precious metals or cash because those forms of payment are hard to trace. The FTC report found phone contact the costlier route for older adults: the median loss when the fraud started by phone was $3,000, against $599 when it started on social media.
The larger count behind the impostor totals
The impostor figures sit inside a bigger number. The FTC says reported fraud losses by people 60 and older topped $3 billion in 2025, up from about $2.4 billion in 2024 and roughly five times the $600 million reported in 2020. Investment scams account for the most, with those losses jumping 42% to more than $1 billion.
Single losses can be enormous. The number of older adults reporting a loss above $100,000 rose from 1,136 in 2020 to 6,769 in 2025, the report says. Those reports were only 6% of older adults’ loss reports last year, yet they made up 70% of the dollars older adults reported losing.
The typical case is smaller. The combined median loss reported by people 60 and over held at about $900, and for people 80 and older the median was $2,000. The FTC estimates the true cost of fraud to older adults in 2025 falls between $13.3 billion and $119.5 billion, depending on the method used, because reports capture only part of what is lost.
Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the agency’s announcement, “The FTC is committed to protecting older Americans from scams.” The Commission voted 2-0 to issue the report, which also covers enforcement actions and referrals of victims with large losses to the Justice Department’s National Elder Fraud Hotline.
Where to report an impostor
The FTC’s consumer site asks people to report fraud, scams and bad business practices at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and identity theft at IdentityTheft.gov. Reports matter beyond the one case: the report’s 2025 age and loss figures come from complaint data the FTC collects through its Consumer Sentinel network.
Impostors who use Social Security’s name have a separate route. The agency’s inspector general takes scam reports through the online form listed at oig.ssa.gov/report, with a second form for benefit fraud. The page lists no phone hotline. Social Security tells anyone who lost money to stop contact with the scammer and report the crime to local police.
Hanging up costs nothing. Social Security tells people to pause, hang up or ignore the message and not to click links or open attachments, even when the caller already has some of the person’s personal information. Impostors spoof official numbers and borrow real employees’ names, so a name on a caller ID proves very little.
That leaves one test, and the FTC has already written it down: the agency says it will never demand money, make threats, tell anyone to transfer money or promise a prize. A call that does any of those things is not the FTC, whatever name or badge number it gives. The open question for most households is what to do in the first hour after a caller like that has already frightened someone.
What should happen in the first hour after a fake FTC call?
The FTC’s report shows how fast a wrong answer gets expensive: 6,769 older adults reported a single loss above $100,000 last year, and the median for people 80 and older was $2,000. Money sent by wire, cash or Bitcoin ATM is hard to trace, as Social Security itself says.
The report is about spotting impostors. The Senior Fraud Defense & First-Hour Recovery Kit finishes the next job, which is what to do once money has already moved. It includes the first-hour recovery plan, the free credit-freeze steps and a fraud evidence and report log, so each report goes out with its details in order.
Get the first-hour recovery plan for an impostor call in the fraud defense kit →
More Financial Reading
- 21 Ways to Stretch a $2,087 Social Security Check
- 15 Places to Find Your Share of the $4.25 Billion States Give Back
- 15 Ways Retirees Are Tapping a Record $14.9 Trillion in Home Equity
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
