The FTC ranks "wrong number" texts among the five biggest text scams
In April 2025 the FTC published its analysis of 2024 text-message fraud reports and placed the "wrong number" opener fifth among the top five text scams — the only one of the five with no pretext at all. The same analysis records $470 million lost to text-initiated fraud in 2024, more than five times the 2020 figure, and a doubling in the share of text scam reports that involved actual money lost.
- Year
- 2025
- Where
- United States
- Outcome
- Ongoing
- Reported loss
- $470.0 million
- Victims
- Not stated in the sources
- Schemes
- Wrong number texts, Pig butchering, Phishing and smishing
- Last reviewed
- 2026-09-06
The facts, as recorded
- US consumers reported $470 million lost to fraud that started with a text message in 2024 — more than five times the 2020 total.
- The FTC ranked the top five text scams as package delivery, job and task scams, fraud alerts, unpaid tolls, and "wrong number" messages.
- Those five together account for about half of all text frauds reported to the Consumer Sentinel Network in 2024.
- 11% of text scam reports in 2024 said money was lost, up from 5% in 2020.
- The FTC describes the pattern as a fake friendship, often with romantic undertones, that leads to claims of investing success and then to a bogus investment platform.
- An earlier FTC alert of 3 June 2024 warned that replying at all confirms a working number, even when the reply is only to say they have the wrong person.
- The FTC notes that the vast majority of frauds are never reported, so the figure reflects a fraction of the actual harm.
Why this case matters
Four of the FTC’s top five text scams arrive with a pretext. A package is held. A toll is unpaid. Your bank has spotted a purchase. There is a job going.
The fifth has no pretext at all. It is a message to the wrong person, and its entire content is that it was not meant for you.
That is what makes it worth a page of its own. Every defence people have learned about scam texts — do not click the link, check the sender, never enter your card details — is aimed at a message that wants something. This one wants nothing, on purpose, for as long as it takes.
What the data actually shows
The FTC published the analysis on 14 April 2025 and announced it on 16 April. Its headline is the $470 million lost to text-initiated fraud in 2024, more than five times the 2020 figure.
The number underneath is the more interesting one. In 2020, 5% of text scam reports involved money actually lost. In 2024, 11% did. The proportion of scam texts that succeed has roughly doubled.
Read alongside the Australian data — reports down 62%, losses up — the same picture appears in two countries. Filtering removes the cheap, generic messages. What survives is the patient kind.
The rank is not the harm
Wrong number sits fifth of five by report volume, and that ranking understates it badly.
Package and toll texts are reported in enormous numbers because everybody gets them and most people recognise them instantly. A report is generated by receiving the text, not by losing anything.
A wrong number message that works produces no report for weeks or months, because the person on the other end does not yet know they are in a scam — and when they do find out, what they report is an investment loss, which the FTC counts in a different category. The opener disappears into the outcome.
What the FTC says the sequence is
The regulator’s own description, across the spotlight and the 2024 consumer alert, is consistent: an innocuous message, an apology, a conversation that continues, a fake friendship often with romantic undertones, then claims of investing success, an offer to share the method, and a bogus platform.
The 2024 alert makes one further point that the statistics cannot. Replying at all — including to say they have the wrong number — confirms a working number attached to a person who answers strangers. Politeness is the data point.
Sources
- Top text scams of 2024. US Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Protection Data Spotlight. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The ranking of the five text scams, the $470m total, the 11% loss-report share and the under-reporting caveat.
- New FTC Data Show Top Text Message Scams of 2024; Overall Losses to Text Scams Hit $470 Million. US Federal Trade Commission. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The 16 April 2025 announcement, the $470m figure and the description of wrong number scams evolving into romantic conversation.
- Why it's not rude to ignore "hi, how are you?" text messages from strangers. US Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Advice. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: The 3 June 2024 alert, the apology-and-befriend sequence, the crypto pivot and the working-number confirmation.
- Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024. US Federal Trade Commission. Accessed 2026-09-06. Supports: 246,784 fraud reports with text as the contact method and the $1,000 median loss.