If you’ve spent any time online, you’ve probably encountered technology you trust: antivirus pop-ups, bank alerts, a “grandchild” texting from a new number. Criminals count on that trust. Each year, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) collects tens of thousands of reports from people over age 60 who lost money to exactly these kinds of schemes. This article walks through what the IC3 is, how it organizes what it sees, and the fraud categories that hit older adults hardest. We also provide a short video below to help the numbers sink in.
Step 1: What Is the IC3, and Why Should You Trust Its Numbers?
The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a unit of the FBI that has operated since 2000 as a central place for the public to report suspected internet-facilitated crime (Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], 2025). Think of it like a national tip line, but for online fraud: a victim (or a bank, or a family member) files a complaint describing what happened, and an IC3 analyst reviews it and assigns it a crime type — a standardized label such as “Tech Support” or “Confidence/Romance” — so the FBI can spot patterns across hundreds of thousands of complaints nationwide (FBI, 2025).
A few basic facts about how this data works, since they affect how you should read any statistic in this article:
1. Each complaint gets exactly one crime type, even if a scam involved several tactics (FBI, 2024). An analyst picks the category that best fits the overall scheme.
2. The numbers are almost certainly an undercount. Many victims — especially older adults — never file a report at all, often out of embarrassment (FBI, 2025).
3. “Losses” means self-reported dollar amounts that victims told the IC3 they lost, converted to U.S. dollars when needed (FBI, 2024).
Step 2: A Quick, Plain-Language Math Refresher
This article uses two simple statistics repeatedly, so let’s define them before diving in:
Percentage change just answers: “how much bigger or smaller is this year’s number compared to last year’s?” If elder fraud losses went from $100 to $159, that’s a 59% increase — you take the difference ($59), divide it by the starting number ($100), and turn it into a percent. The IC3’s 2025 report uses this exact kind of comparison: complaints from people 60+ rose 37% and losses rose 59% compared to 2024 (FBI, 2025).
Average loss just means: total dollars lost, divided by the number of people who lost money. It tells you the “typical” hit, though a handful of very large losses can pull the average up. In 2025, the average loss reported by someone 60+ was $38,500 (FBI, 2025).
No calculus required — just addition, division, and percentages.
Step 3: The Key Elder Fraud Categories
According to the IC3’s 2025 Annual Report, people age 60 and older filed 201,266 complaints in 2025, reporting $7.748 billion in losses (FBI, 2025). Here are the categories responsible for the largest share of that damage.
A. Investment Fraud
What it is: Scammers convince a victim to put money into something — often cryptocurrency — that promises unusually high, “guaranteed” returns (FBI, 2023). This can include Ponzi schemes (early investors are paid with new investors’ money, not real profits) and pyramid schemes (profit depends on recruiting more people, not on an actual product).
Why it’s the biggest problem: Investment fraud was the single costliest category for older victims in 2025, with 16,926 complaints and $3.52 billion in reported losses (FBI, 2025). Many of these scams start on dating apps or social media as a friendly or romantic relationship, then pivot into “let me show you how I made money trading crypto” (FBI, 2023) — a pattern sometimes called “pig butchering,” where the criminal spends weeks building trust before asking for money.
B. Call Center Fraud: Tech/Customer Support and Government Impersonation
What it is: A criminal, often working from an illegal overseas call center, poses as a tech support representative (e.g., “your computer has a virus”) or a government official (e.g., “the IRS” or “Social Security”) demanding immediate payment or account access (FBI, 2023).
A term worth defining: you may see this referred to as “social engineering.” In plain terms, it just means manipulating a person’s trust or fear — rather than hacking a computer system — to get them to hand over money or access voluntarily.
The scale: In 2025, older adults filed 21,333 Tech/Customer Support complaints ($1.04 billion in losses) and 8,628 Government Impersonation complaints ($413.2 million in losses) (FBI, 2025). One notable variant is the “Phantom Hacker” scam, where a criminal first poses as tech support, then as a bank employee, convincing the victim to move their savings to a “safe” account that the criminal actually controls (FBI, 2023).
C. Confidence/Romance Fraud
What it is: A criminal builds a fake relationship — romantic, family, or friendly — with the victim, then asks for money, gift cards, or wire transfers (FBI, 2025). This category also includes the Grandparent Scam, where a criminal impersonates a panicked grandchild claiming to need emergency bail or medical money right away (FBI, 2023).
The numbers: In 2025, older adults reported 10,188 Confidence/Romance complaints and $584 million in losses (FBI, 2025). In 2023, this category also produced over 3,300 sextortion complaints from people over 60, where a scammer threatened to release compromising images unless paid (FBI, 2023).
D. Personal Data Breach and Phishing/Spoofing
What they are:
Personal Data Breach is when a criminal gains unauthorized access to someone’s private information — like account numbers or a Social Security number — usually through a hack of a company’s systems (FBI, 2025).
Phishing/Spoofing is when a criminal sends a fake email, text, or phone call pretending to be a real company or agency, hoping the victim will hand over login details or personal data (FBI, 2025). “Spoofing” specifically means disguising a phone number or email address so it looks legitimate.
The numbers: Phishing/Spoofing was actually the single most-reported crime type among people 60+ in 2025, at 48,064 complaints, though the dollar losses per complaint tend to be lower than investment or tech support scams (FBI, 2025). Personal Data Breach added another 11,705 complaints.
E. Cryptocurrency as a Payment Method
Cryptocurrency isn’t its own crime category in IC3 data — it’s tracked as a “descriptor,” meaning it flags the payment method used, layered on top of whichever crime type applies (FBI, 2024). In 2025, cryptocurrency was involved in 42,271 elder fraud complaints, tied to $4.35 billion in losses — more than half of all reported elder fraud losses that year (FBI, 2025). Most of that flows through investment scams, since cryptocurrency transfers are difficult to reverse once sent (FBI, 2023).
Step 4: Why This Matters Going Forward
The trend line is not improving. Comparing 2023, 2024, and 2025 IC3 Elder Fraud data shows both complaint counts and total losses climbing year over year, with investment fraud and call center fraud consistently the two costliest categories (FBI, 2023, 2024, 2025). Recognizing the category — is this a fake tech-support pop-up? An unexpected online “boyfriend” who wants crypto? A caller claiming to be from the Social Security Administration? — is often the first and most effective step toward not becoming a statistic in next year’s report.
References
ConsumerAffairs Research Team. (2024, January 24). Elder financial abuse statistics 2026: Common scams & frauds. ConsumerAffairs. https://www.consumeraffairs.com/finance/elder-financial-abuse-statistics.html
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2023). 2023 elder fraud report. Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2024). 2024 internet crime report. Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. (2025). 2025 internet crime report. Internet Crime Complaint Center.
