The false text of the package. The investment offer too good to be true. The stranger in your DMs who quickly starts asking for money. Online scams have become commonplace in everyday Internet use, and a new report estimates they could cost Americans nearly $150 billion a year.
Americans lost an estimated $148.2 billion to online scams and cybercrime in 2025, according to a new report from the Consumer Federation of America. This is almost 26% more than in 2024 and around three times the losses recorded four years earlier.
The exact amount is impossible to know, and that is partly the purpose of the report. Americans reported about $20.9 billion in losses to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center last year. The Consumer Federation of America estimates the true total is more than seven times higher because most victims never report their losses to law enforcement.
The organization based this calculation on a 2017 federal survey that found only about 14% of financial fraud victims reported the crime to police. Applying this reporting rate to the FBI’s figures for 2025 produces a much larger estimate of $148.2 billion.
That doesn’t mean every American household lost money to a scam last year. But it suggests that official figures reflect only a fraction of the problem — and that even the FBI’s most conservative estimates show that losses from scams are growing rapidly.
Crypto scams dominate
More than half of the losses reported to the FBI involved cryptocurrency. Victims reported losing nearly $11.4 billion due to crypto-related incidents, an increase of about 22% from the previous year. The Consumer Federation of America estimates the true cost could be closer to $80.7 billion.
Crypto is particularly useful to fraudsters because payments can be difficult to reverse and funds can be quickly transferred through multiple wallets. Many victims are first targeted through fake investment opportunities, social media ads, dating apps, or messages from scammers pretending to be businesses or government agencies.
Investment fraud was the costliest category according to FBI data, accounting for more than $8.6 billion in reported losses. Business email and tech support scams followed, amounting to approximately $3 billion and $2.1 billion, respectively.
AI makes familiar scams easier
The FBI also measured AI crime for the first time in 2025, recording 22,364 complaints and $893 million in associated losses. Using the same underestimation calculation, the Consumer Federation of America estimated AI-related losses at around $6.3 billion.
This doesn’t mean that AI has created an entirely new category of $6.3 billion fraud, separate from existing schemes. An AI-generated voice clone, for example, can also be classified as an impersonation scam. Instead, this figure provides a first indication of how generative AI is being integrated into familiar types of fraud.
Fraudsters can now inexpensively create convincing profiles, personalized messages, fake documents and cloned voices at scale, allowing them to launch thousands of personalized attempts until a victim responds.
Older people continue to lose the most
People 60 and older reported nearly $7.75 billion in losses to the FBI, a 59% increase from 2024. The average reported loss for this age group was $38,500, and more than 12,000 plaintiffs reported losing more than $100,000.
The youngest, however, are not immune. Reported losses among those under 20 have almost tripled in a year, although this group still accounts for the lowest number of total losses.
These figures come as scam attempts have become almost inevitable in online life. The AP-NORC Public Affairs Research Center, a nonpartisan research organization run by The Associated Press and the University of Chicago, released a poll in June finding that 58% of American adults encounter suspected scams daily, while 92% receive them at least once a month.
Many of these scams appear on social networks, including Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, all of which are owned by Meta.
The Consumer Federation of America says stopping scams will take more than just teaching people to spot suspicious messages. He wants social media companies to vet advertisers, remove fraudulent content and accept greater responsibility when their platforms repeatedly deliver victims to fraudsters.
For now, any unexpected messages requesting money, cryptocurrency, a verification code, or immediate action should be treated with caution, even if it appears to come from someone you know. If a message, call, or online offer asks for money or personal information, verify it through a website, phone number, or account that you already know is legitimate.
With over a decade of experience, Nelson covers Apple and Google and writes about iPhone and Android features, privacy and security settings, and much more. See full bio
