According to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in 2024, about 2.6 million US residents filed a claim that they were victims of fraud. At the same time, the total amount of money that was stolen as a result of fraudulent activity was $12.5 billion.
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That’s up from the $2.5 billion that fell into the hands of scammers in 2023, when the regulator accepted roughly the same number of complaints from victims. Most often, U.S. residents lost money to fraudsters on social media, although the FTC does not publish more detailed information mentioning specific platforms.
As for the most popular methods of fraud, people most often lost money when the attackers pretended to be close relatives or family members of the victim who were in trouble. Fraudsters also often gained trust by posing as representatives of government agencies or technical support specialists.
It is noted that often the scammers act very inventively. For example, a fraudster posing as actor Brad Pitt tricked a French woman out of $800,000. But much more often, the fraudsters try to knock the victims out of psychological balance, make them anxious, confuse them and rush them to transfer funds until the person realizes that they are communicating with a fraudster.
It is noted that it is not always those who are considered more vulnerable who fall victim to fraudsters. It is believed that older people are less familiar with modern technology, so they are more vulnerable to online fraud. However, the FTC data indicates that people aged 20 to 29 were more likely to lose money as a result of fraud than people over 70. When older people did lose money, it was often much larger amounts than younger people.
Some scams have been around for more than a decade, while others are rapidly gaining momentum. The third-most popular scam last year involved schemes to recruit employees and extract profits for businesses. Reports of these types of scams tripled between 2020 and 2024. Losses from employment fraud in 2020 were $90 million, while in 2024, that figure rose to $511 million.
Traditional bank transfers were the most common way to transfer funds to fraudsters. In total, people transferred about $2 billion to the scammers. Another $1.4 billion ended up in the hands of fraudsters in the form of cryptocurrency. Fraudsters use not only social networks, but also telephone communications, email, and instant messengers. As AI-based technologies develop, the number of cases of telephone fraud may increase significantly, since generative AI algorithms are getting better at imitating the voices of different people.