Last year, senior fraud losses amounted to $3.4 billion

The types of scams being reported to the federal government haven’t changed much from last year, but the losses are growing. According to a new fraud book, the Federal Trade Commission is predicting $10 billion in losses for consumers in 2023. That’s $1 billion more than the losses in 2022 and the highest losses ever reported.

During a Thursday hearing on fighting fraud held by the Senate Special Committee on Elderly Care, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), chairman of the committee, released the group’s ninth annual fraud book, “Fighting Fraud: Scams to Watch Out For,” which chronicles the most common scams targeting seniors and tools to prevent fraud reported to various sources.

According to Casey, FBI data shows that losses from senior fraud could reach $3.4 billion in 2023.

Many of the scams reported to both the committee’s fraud hotline and the FTC in 2023 were similar to those reported the year before, and included impostor scams, sweepstakes and lottery fraud. However, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence and social media scams continued to play a significant role.

“The scams being perpetrated against seniors today are similar to scams that have been around for a number of years,” Casey said at the hearing, adding that scammers have become “increasingly sophisticated” in the way they approach and prey on seniors. “We must continue to educate seniors about the scams that can target them, and we must work together at all levels of government to identify and root out these bad actors.”

A recent analysis by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network found that between June 2022 and June 2023, there were more than 155,400 bank filings totaling $27 billion alleging financial exploitation of seniors.

In 2023, the Aging Committee’s fraud hotline received 536 new complaints from individuals, bringing the total number of complaints filed since 2013 to nearly 12,300. Reported fraud accounts for nearly 2.6 million of the 5.4 million complaints filed with the FTC in 2023, with common fraud categories including impostor scams, online shopping and negative reviews, prize and lottery fraud, and investment-related fraud.

The FBI reported that tech support scams were the biggest scam to hit seniors in 2023, with a reported loss of nearly $590 million. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3, investment fraud was the costliest scam for seniors, with reported losses of more than $1.2 billion last year, a 400% increase since 2021.

The Federal Communications Commission reported that calls about health-related scams targeting seniors tended to spike during Medicare’s open enrollment period, from October to December. Last year, there were $17 million in confirmed losses to health-care scams. Committee Ranking Member Mike Braun (R-IN) said Medicare stands to lose $60 billion to fraud, error and abuse by 2023.

The total number of fraud, identity theft and other reports to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network in 2023 was 5.5 million. Texas had the most complaints, with 437,790, followed by Florida with 435,579 complaints and New York with 267,377.

Fraudulent collection fraud was the most common type of scam reported to the FTC, with more than 850,000 reports in 2023. Other common types of scams reported to the FTC last year included debt collection (12,400 reported cases), mortgage fraud (26,200), and identity theft (1 million).

Last year, victims also lost more than $126 million to Social Security scams, according to the FTC, while more than 64,000 consumers reported losing more than $1.1 billion to romance scams. Prize, sweepstakes and lottery scams cost victims $338 million.