Banking and Finance Law Daily Wrap Up, CRIMES AND OFFENSES—Consumer group says 2025 online scam losses reached $148B, dwarfing FBI reports, (Jul 30, 2026)
Organizations Mentioned:Consumer Federal of America | Consumer Federation of America | Federal Bureau of Investigation | Winghart Law Group, Inc.
Over half of reported losses involved cryptocurrency, with the Consumer Federation of America estimating an $80.7 billion true cost, while newly tracked AI-enabled fraud added $6.3 billion.
The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) estimated that online scams and crimes cost Americans $148.2 billion in 2025, up 25.8 percent from 2024 and more than seven times the losses reported to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in a July 2026 update to The Scam Economy. The update used FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) data, and sharpens risk signals tied to cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled scams, and older consumers. The group cautions, however, that complaint data is an incomplete measure of consumer harm.
The 2025 data showed a wide gap between reported and estimated harm. IC3 received 1,008,597 complaints in 2025, a 17.3 percent increase from 2024, and the all-scams-and-crimes table listed $20.877 billion in reported losses compared with $148.2 billion in estimated true losses. The table put the year-over-year increase at $30.3 billion, or 25.8 percent. CFA also translated the national figure into $1,009 per household, while reporting that annual losses have tripled since 2021. Those figures make the underreporting comparison the report's central data point rather than a footnote to the IC3 complaint count.
The update followed IC3's 2025 Internet Crime Report and serves as a comparison to 2024 totals. Its method underscores that reported complaint totals are only the starting point. CFA said it used the same methodology as in the original paper, updated census data for per-capita estimates, and added per-household true-loss analysis. Ben Winters, CFA's director of AI and privacy, said the update shows a "troubling trend of rapidly increasing scam losses" while tech companies too often avoid accountability.
Crypto, AI, age risks. Cryptocurrency accounted for over half of all reported losses, rose 21.93 percent from 2024, and produced $11.4 billion in reported losses and an estimated true cost of $80.7 billion. IC3 tracked AI-enabled crime instances for the first time in 2025, with $893 million in reported losses and an estimated $6.3 billion in true costs from 22,364 complaints; CFA described AI-enabled fraud as involving synthetic content, social media profiles, and personalized conversations that are becoming easier to make and harder to detect. Seniors age 60 and older remained the largest targeted demographic, with reported losses up more than 60 percent and averaging $38,500 per report, while the under-20 group saw a 198 percent increase from 2024.
Cyber-enabled fraud represented almost 85 percent of all losses reported to IC3 in 2025, up from 83 percent in 2024, with investment fraud the largest listed cyber-enabled fraud category by loss. The platform risk signal was concentrated around Meta services: CFA cited Better Business Bureau findings identifying Facebook at 57 percent, Instagram at 22 percent, and WhatsApp at 8 percent as the top three online platforms associated with scams. CFA also cited findings that 81 percent of scam attempts in the United States occurred on platforms with a direct-message function and that 58 percent of adults receive a suspected scam attempt daily.
Policy responses are beginning to follow the data. CFA highlighted the bipartisan SCAM Act, introduced by lawmakers in Congress, which would require platforms to verify advertisers and act against fraudulent content. Senator Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) said seniors are the top target for online scams and that AI is making those scams "more convincing and harder to spot"; he said the bipartisan Senior Chatbot Protection Act would require companies to clearly disclose when consumers are interacting with AI and strengthen protections for older Americans.
Companies: Consumer Federal of America
IndustryNews: CommunityDevelopment ConsumerCredit CrimesOffenses FinTech UDAAP