$15.9 Billion Lost to Scams in 2025: What the FTC Says

Consumers reported losing $15.9 billion to fraud in 2025, according to testimony the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) gave to Congress on 25 March 2026. A year earlier the agency counted more than $12.5 billion for 2024. By my arithmetic that is about a 27% rise in one year. The number of reports also grew, from 2.6 million to 3 million.

Fraud is no longer something that happens to the careless: in 2024, 38% of the people who reported it said they lost money.

That last figure comes from the FTC's earlier release and is worth sitting with. It means that when someone files a fraud report, they are now more likely than not to be describing a loss they could not get back. This guide goes through what the two FTC releases say, what they leave out, and the habits that matter most when you are buying things from strangers.

The headline numbers, side by side

The FTC also noted that the share of people who said they lost money rose from 27% in 2023 to 38% in 2024. Be careful comparing the two columns. The 2024 line counts "2.6 million consumers" while the 2025 line counts "3 million reports," and the agency's two documents do not always phrase things the same way. The direction is clear even if the exact comparison is not.

Where the money goes

Two kinds of scams dominate the dollars:

1. Investment scams cost the most. They were the largest loss category in both years the FTC described.
2. Imposter scams are the most commonly reported. Someone pretends to be a government agency, a bank, a business or a friend. In 2024 the FTC said government imposter losses alone reached $789 million.

Neither of those is a shopping scam. But the FTC's 2025 release also says online shopping was the second most commonly reported fraud category in 2024. It did not give a dollar figure for it, so I will not make one up. What matters is that people are reporting these problems often, even when each loss is small.

How the money moves

The 2025 release has one finding that every buyer should remember. In 2024, losses paid by bank transfer and by cryptocurrency were bigger than the losses paid by every other method combined. Those are the two payment methods that are hardest to reverse.

That fits a pattern we explained in the payment method scammers ask for gives them away. A seller who steers you away from a card, and toward a transfer or crypto, is not doing it for your convenience.

Why the real number is bigger

The FTC's own figure counts what people reported. Plenty of people never file a report because they are embarrassed, assume nothing will happen or do not know where to go. So $15.9 billion is a floor, not a ceiling.

It is also not the whole story of the agency's work. In fiscal year 2025 it brought 40 law enforcement actions and obtained more than $1.8 billion in redress for affected consumers. That shows enforcement is happening, but the redress figure is a small fraction of the losses reported.

What to do with this as a shopper

I should be clear that the following are practical habits, not FTC instructions:

• Slow down on anything urgent. A countdown clock or a "last one" message that pushes you to pay now is a reason to pause, not to hurry.
• Check where you are paying. A normal storefront checkout is very different from a request to wire money or buy a gift card.
• Look for a real return policy you can read in full before you pay. If there is none, treat the price as final.
• Inspect in person where you can. In the DC, Maryland and Virginia area, many sales can be looked at before paying. That alone defeats a whole family of online tricks.
• Check recalls on anything electrical or built for children. Our five-minute recall test takes less time than reading a review.

The bottom line

Reported fraud losses reached $15.9 billion in 2025, and the more worrying figure may be that a large share of people who report fraud say they lost money. The tools that protect shoppers have not changed: a payment method you can dispute, a seller whose rules you can read, and a willingness to walk away. When you want to see what a clear process looks like, the help page lays out how DealsDMV handles bidding, payment and pickup.

If someone you know is about to buy something from a stranger online, send them this first.