Scam facts

The FCC found one auto warranty robocall operation apparently placed approximately 5,187,677,000 calls in three months of 2021, using 1,051,461 unique caller ID numbers.

Prosecutors say defendants in a $703 million Medicare scheme charged in Illinois in 2025 used artificial intelligence to create fake recordings of beneficiaries consenting to receive products.

The FTC's first tax relief case ended in 2013 with a $103.3 million judgment, suspended once the defendants surrendered more than $15 million in cash and assets, including a 2005 Ferrari.

Arizona's veterans department employs roughly 60 benefits counselors for approximately 500,000 veterans, a gap the Attorney General cited in a 2026 settlement with a VA claims company.

By May 2025 Arizona had indicted more than 100 people over sober-living Medicaid fraud that state officials estimate at roughly $2.8 billion in billing, with about $140 million recovered.

A 79-year-old Missouri woman who deposited more than $2 million from 28 lottery scam victims into her own accounts was sentenced to probation, not prison, and ordered to repay $1.97 million.

The FTC's settlements of $1.25 million and $450,000 with two celebrity endorsers of real estate training programs were its first monetary settlements with celebrity endorsers.

The FTC and ten states allege a cancer charity collected more than $18 million from donors between 2017 and 2022 and spent $194,809 on support for patients, about one cent in every dollar.

Prosecutors say a cartel ran call centres charging Americans fees to sell timeshares they owned; about 6,000 US victims reported approximately $350 million lost to timeshare fraud from 2019 to 2024.

FinCEN recorded over 350,000 check-fraud suspicious activity reports in 2021 and over 680,000 in 2022, nearly double, and in February 2023 called it a nationwide surge.

In a 2020 FTC case, as much as 90% of the money raised for sham veterans, police and breast cancer charities went to the telemarketers, and in some cases less than 2% went to charitable purposes.

The FTC said roughly 95% of the Amazon stores Click Profit sold as guaranteed passive income were blocked, suspended or terminated, and over 20% earned zero revenue.

A 2023 CFPB settlement with the two largest US credit repair brands imposed a $2.7 billion redress judgment over illegal advance fees charged to roughly 4 million telemarketed customers.

Manhattan prosecutors say a crypto 'recovery service' used hired actors, fake news articles and invented tracing reports, and that more than 200 of its customers reported recovering nothing.

A man posing as a 'Patent and Trademark Bureau' sent fake renewal notices to more than 2,900 trademark owners, one with a deadline of September 15, 2021 for a registration not due until 2024.

In April 2026 the FBI said its Operation Level Up had contacted almost 9,000 people mid-scam and saved them an estimated $562 million, as prosecutors charged alleged scam-centre managers.

Between February 2023 and February 2024, crypto-scam victims who were then approached by fictitious law firms offering to recover their money reported losses of over $9.9 million to the FBI.

After the FCC ordered US voice providers in July 2022 to stop carrying one operation's auto warranty robocalls, such calls dropped 99% between June and December 2022, according to RoboKiller.

People aged 80 and over reported a median fraud loss of $1,650 to the FTC in 2024, against $189 for those aged 19 and under.

Bank transfers were the costliest way to pay a scammer in 2024: $2.1 billion reported to the FTC from 47,336 reports, against $275 million on credit cards from 108,881.

In 2024 the median loss reported to the FTC for investment-related fraud was $9,196, against $497 for fraud overall.

Cryptocurrency scam payments cost people $1.4 billion in 2024 in FTC reports, more than gift cards, wire transfers and cash put together.

Online shopping and negative reviews drew 383,441 reports to the FTC in 2024, with a median loss of $130, against $2,250 for business and job opportunity scams.

Americans reported losing $12.5 billion to fraud to the FTC in 2024, from 2,600,678 reports.

In 2025 the FBI recorded roughly 725 gold courier complaints with $311.8 million in losses, tied to victims of tech support and government impersonation scams who handed over gold.

HyperFund allegedly promised investors 0.5% to 1% a day in passive rewards from crypto mining, while the SEC alleges its only revenue was money from investors.

Investment fraud was the costliest internet crime reported to the FBI in 2025: $8.6 billion, from 72,984 complaints.

People aged 60 and over reported $7.7 billion in internet crime losses to the FBI in 2025, the largest of any age band, from 201,266 complaints.

By March 2025 India told Parliament it had blocked 83,668 WhatsApp accounts and more than 3,962 Skype IDs used for digital arrest scams, yet keeps no separate national count of such cases.

Police-impersonation fraud made up 38.7% of Japan's special-fraud cases but 68.6% of the money lost in the first eleven months of 2025, and 99.0% of it began with a telephone call.

One Nevada fake-lender scheme charged small-business owners up to 5% of the requested loan as an advance fee, on loans often above $100 million.

The FTC alleged MediaAlpha used sites like ObamacarePlans.com to imply a government link and sold approximately 119 million consumer leads in 2024 alone; it and Assurance IQ settled for $145 million.

Under US federal rules, an interstate mover cannot require more than 110% of a non-binding estimate at delivery, or 100% of a binding one, before it unloads your belongings.

In 2025, operators using names like Blackstone Legal Group and Viking Legal Services were hit with an $8,254,368 judgment for threatening arrest at work over debts the FTC says never existed.

A Boise couple, one holding power of attorney over a retired schoolteacher, bought her 46-acre ranch for only the amount owed on it, about half its assessed value; he got 41 months in prison.

In April 2025 a Las Vegas printing and mailing business owner pleaded guilty to conspiracy over her part in producing millions of fraudulent prize notices, in a scheme that took more than $15 million.

New York's Attorney General alleges that in roughly 3,000 arbitrations on one online platform, 97% proceeded without the small business appearing, and lenders won nearly all of them.

One US psychic-letter mail fraud operation ran from 1994 to November 2014, sending near-identical letters claiming a personal vision about the recipient to tens of thousands of people a week.

An FTC survey of one real estate seminar company's customers found more than 95 percent paid it more than they cleared in later real estate transactions.

A fake ID was enough to SIM-swap a phone number and take over the SEC's account on X, and a false post from it moved the price of bitcoin by more than $1,000 within minutes.

In 2025, people aged 60 and over filed 6,121 sextortion reports to the FBI, roughly a quarter as many as people in their twenties, but lost more than twice as much money as any other age group.

Reported US losses to SIM-swap fraud fell 76% between 2022 and 2025, from $72.7 million to $17.4 million.

On 5 August 2025 the FTC sent $743,230 to 6,269 consumers harmed by a student-loan debt relief scam, about $119 each, nearly two years after the operators were banned in October 2023.

Internal data cited in an FTC complaint against a trading-education MLM showed roughly 60% of customers stopped paying within one month and about 90% within six months.

A payday lender charging up to 700% interest claimed tribal ownership to escape state law, yet the tribes named as lenders received roughly 1% of revenue; the judgment was $1.3 billion.

The FBI's 2025 report attributes over $5 million in losses to voice-cloned distress scams, a small slice of the $893,346,472 lost across 22,364 complaints that mention AI.

An FTC and Utah case against a real estate coaching company ended in judgments of more than $111 million, but the defunct corporations held about $5 million in receivership.

Binary options pioneer Banc de Binary told regulators it had about 250,000 investors by 2012, before settling SEC and CFTC fraud charges for more than $11 million.

A federal court ordered more than $204 million from the binary options network behind BeeOptions, Glenridge Capital and Rumelia Capital, whose six named defendants never appeared to contest the case.

A binary options CEO who ran the BinaryBook and BigOption brands was sentenced to 22 years in prison for a $145 million fraud, then ordered to pay $28 million in restitution.

A Tacoma attorney drained his disabled client's trust account to $15, then had her take out a reverse mortgage in 2018 to refill it while he kept transferring money to himself.

A Chicago contractor was sentenced to 205 months, just over 17 years, after prosecutors said his scheme defrauded more than 100 elderly homeowners out of at least $7 million using reverse mortgages.

A congressional investigation found the fintech Blueacorn processed over $1 billion in PPP loans, nearly three times as many as every major bank combined, while its own co-founders ran a fraud scheme through it.

A Henderson, Nevada man used $11 million from three fraudulent PPP loans, filed under a fictional entity called Holdings Trust, to buy about 25 properties, luxury vehicles and fund extensive gambling.

A Kansas City woman charged $2,000 to $7,000 a time to prepare 43 fraudulent PPP loan applications using counterfeit IRS forms, earning at least $75,833 before she was caught.

The Anti-Defamation League estimates there may be 350,000 to 400,000 sovereign citizen movement adherents in the US, the pool these debt-elimination schemes recruit from.

One sovereign citizen tax promoter helped almost 1,000 people file $763 million in fraudulent refund claims against the IRS, which paid out $14 million before catching the fraud.

A sovereign citizen group's self-proclaimed 'president,' who held nationwide seminars on paying debt with fake bonds, personally mailed a $300 million fictitious bond to the US Treasury.

A fake psychic's extortion escalated until a Maryland man, convinced a woman he loved was in danger, embezzled more than $4 million from his own employer to pay it.

A Fort Lauderdale family of self-described psychics took more than $17.8 million from clients, including a bestselling novelist, before a federal jury convicted the matriarch on 14 counts.

A Romanian man who ran a software platform for fraudsters admitted it operated for 99 months and victimized at least 14,000 people through fake rental and auction ads.

A New York man took deposits on two Finger Lakes vacation homes he could not rent, promised an escrow account that did not exist, and cost more than 20 victims approximately $137,272.46.

Prosecutors alleged one double-booking scheme was linked to more than 10,000 reservations at nearly 100 properties in 10 states.

In December 2025 the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center warned that virtual kidnapping scammers now send AI-altered photos lifted from a family's own social media as fake proof a relative has been kidnapped.

A federal judge called National Prearranged Services 'an enormous Ponzi scheme,' run for over 15 years, that took more than $450 million from over 97,000 prepaid funeral customers across 16 states.

A Houston woman was sentenced to 88 months in federal prison for collecting cash drops after a caller in Mexico threatened to cut off a kidnapped child's fingers unless 39 targeted families paid up.

A Colorado funeral home collected over $130,000 from grieving families while leaving at least 190 bodies uncremated, some given concrete mix in an urn instead of ashes.

A Tijuana-based virtual kidnapping ring placed up to 5,000 random calls a day from about 30 phone numbers, and still collected at least $500,000 from families who happened to have a relative crossing the border.

A French national stole $1.8 million from California's unclaimed-property division by posing as the real owners with fake IDs and forged notary stamps, after attempting to take $9 million.

A Tennessee woman was sentenced to two years and five months in prison for filing 128 false claims worth $398,537 against California's unclaimed-property fund using a fabricated identity.

A father and son running a California 'unclaimed property' finder business are accused of stealing as much as $300,000 from a single client, and $1.6 million overall, before being criminally charged.

A single New Orleans staged-crash ring, Operation Sideswipe, ran from 2011 to 2024 before 63 people were charged, including two of the city's own personal injury attorneys.

A St. Louis man staged car accidents by himself, at night in remote areas, and collected $107,951 from two insurers before being sentenced to 18 months in prison.

One Spokane woman staged more than 30 fake car accidents across four states to defraud 19 insurance companies out of $5,659,026.

A Utah real estate promoter who told fellow Latter-day Saints his investment program was inspired by God was sentenced to 170 months in prison after investors lost $45.2 million.

A Brooklyn man who told fellow Haitian Americans he had a risk-free investment paying 10% monthly returns was sentenced to 24 months in prison after inducing over $350,000 from people in his own community.

A California sweepstakes cafe operator forfeited more than $1.5 million after prosecutors said the game results were predetermined by the company's own software, not chance.

A Washington jury awarded $24,940,366 against High 5 Games in 2025 after a court agreed with players' allegations that its 'social casino' coins were illegal gambling, the first such verdict against an operator.

Managers of SweepsCoach deposited roughly $14 million in gaming proceeds into their own bank accounts over nearly six years before pleading guilty in 2025.

A fabricated story about a homeless veteran giving his last $20 for gas raised more than $400,000 from over 14,000 GoFundMe donors before any of it was real.

A Texas entrepreneur raised more than $800,000 through four Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns for a 'smart' backpack, delivered none of it, and was permanently banned from crowdfunding by the FTC.

A California woman faked a cancer diagnosis for seven years, raising $105,513 from 349 donors before a judge ordered her to repay every dollar as restitution.

A Seattle woman's pandemic-aid fraud ring sought $6.8 million and enlisted over 50 associates to pose as fake tenants and landlords, in what prosecutors called the largest such rental-assistance theft case in the nation.

A Fort Wayne woman used a fake charity to file at least 30 fraudulent rental-assistance applications, attempting to steal $400,000 and collecting $166,292 before her 50-month sentence.

An employee of the Indiana nonprofit trusted to distribute pandemic rental aid falsely listed her own family members as landlords, and was ordered to repay $352,300 after being sentenced to 24 months in prison.

A 2022 California State Auditor report found Los Angeles County hospice agencies had grown 1,500% in a decade, with evidence that stolen medical identities were used to get some of the licenses.

Texas hospice owner Rodney Mesquias was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison after the Merida Group billed Medicare more than $150 million for patients who were not terminally ill.

A Glendale hospice operator collected about $6,000 a month from Medicare for every patient kept enrolled, and paid recruiters up to $1,000 of that per patient in illegal kickbacks.

An Alabama grocer made 36 cash withdrawals of $9,200 to $9,900 to stay under a bank's $10,000 reporting threshold while laundering food stamp fraud proceeds.

A Boston store owner trafficked nearly $7 million in SNAP benefits through a single 150-square-foot store before his 2026 sentencing.

Federal law has taxed the purchase of someone's structured settlement payments at 40% since 2002, unless a court first finds the sale serves the seller's best interest.

Access Funding paid some Baltimore lead-poisoning victims as little as 8 cents on the dollar for structured settlement payment rights worth more than $21 million combined.

A Virginia settlement administrator was sentenced to 70 months in prison for embezzling $7,957,750 that was supposed to buy annuities for 13 injured children.

A Texas doctor who ran a cash-only pill mill selling prescriptions to drug dealers was sentenced to 12.5 years after issuing scripts for more than 3 million opioid pills.

A Houston-area pill mill run by a doctor and his stepson collected more than $1.2 million in cash in just 14 months while distributing over 600,000 opioid and other controlled-substance doses.

Prosecutors said a Michigan doctor who pioneered a "shots-for-pills" opioid protocol was responsible for over $120 million in fraudulent bills submitted to insurers.

A Pennsylvania judge ordered rent-to-own operator Vision Property Management to deed 285 homes outright to the tenants living in them, after finding the company's contracts were built to fail.

A Minnesota truck driver paid about $170,000 toward a Lakeville home sold to him as an interest-free contract for deed before he abandoned it in 2023.

Minnesota's attorney general alleges a contract-for-deed company bought a home for $399,900 and resold it, the same day, for $931,950 to a buyer locked into seller financing instead of a mortgage.

One stolen-identity tax refund ring used 3,493 stolen identities to open bank accounts at 443 financial institutions and sought more than $35 million in IRS refunds.

A Texas man who led a scheme using stolen Social Security numbers and stolen tax-preparer credentials to seek $110 million in IRS refunds was sentenced to more than 14 years in prison.

Four labs in New Jersey, Georgia and Texas billed about $522 million for genetic tests that marketers sold at health fairs and door to door, and insurers paid about $84 million.

One Kansas City man's labs billed Medicare over $174 million in about a year and a half for genetic tests ordered through telemarketers and telemedicine doctors, and received over $55 million.

In 2019 federal prosecutors charged 35 people, including nine doctors, in Operation Double Helix, a crackdown on cancer genetic testing fraud in which Medicare was billed $2.1 billion.

One credit card rate-reduction robocall operation used at least 10 company names since at least 2007 to keep calling after each shutdown, the FTC said in 2010.

A federal court ordered Kevin Guice to pay $23,099,878 after his Orlando robocall operation falsely claimed to be a 'licensed enrollment center' for Mastercard and Visa.

The FTC's consumer alerts about this exact credit card interest rate robocall are dated April 2010 and April 2026, 16 years apart, describing the same script both times.

A Texas man's equipment companies and an offshore call center in the Philippines were behind a $61.5 million scheme to bill Medicare for braces and foot baths beneficiaries did not need.

In April 2019 prosecutors charged two dozen people in Operation Brace Yourself and put the alleged losses from a telemedicine brace scheme at $1.2 billion.

One New Jersey telemedicine operator's providers signed orders for four or more orthotic braces each for over 3,000 Medicare beneficiaries, and more than 40 of them received orders for 10 or more.

A regional center's USCIS designation does not mean USCIS, the SEC or any other agency has approved the investments it offers, and EB-5 investors are not guaranteed a visa.

The SEC says a Chicago EB-5 hotel and convention center offering raised approximately $158 million from close to 300 foreign investors, and a court returned $147 million of frozen principal.

About 169 investors put roughly $85 million into a Vermont EB-5 biotechnology project that was never built, and its owner was sentenced to 60 months in prison.

In an Arizona wound-graft case, the Justice Department says sales representatives were told to order grafts of 4x6 centimeters or larger even when wounds were much smaller, because it maximized insurer reimbursement.

An Arizona couple's companies submitted more than $1.2 billion in false claims for expensive amniotic wound grafts between November 2022 and May 2024, and insurers paid $614,990,420.

According to figures released by the administration and reported by Fox 9, Medicare skin substitute claims rose 7,100% between 2019 and 2025, from $200 million to $14.4 billion.

The Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General found FEMA had made more than $3 billion in improper and potentially fraudulent disaster assistance payments since 2003.

Two Honolulu residents falsely claimed to have lived through both the 2023 Lahaina wildfire and the 2025 Pacific Palisades wildfire, collecting $60,458 in FEMA aid before being sentenced.

A Pennsylvania woman recruited nearly 200 people through social media to file fake Hurricane Ida FEMA claims, netting $1,744,982.64 in federal disaster aid before she was sentenced to 5 years.

A Washington State guardian who was payee for at least 13 clients took money from 21 clients' accounts on 240 occasions over about seven years, by checks to himself and ATM withdrawals.

A Washington, D.C. rooming house operator who became the Social Security payee for some of her tenants took more than $400,000 in Social Security and VA benefits between 2009 and 2020, and was sentenced to 32 months.

A tribal social worker barred by her employer from being a child's payee applied anyway, and was exposed in July 2024 when she went with her supervisor to Social Security and it reported that she was the payee.

An Education Department inspector general official told ABC News that the government has investigated more than $350 million in ghost student fraud over five years, and that it is only what has been adjudicated.

A former Texas adjunct professor changed female straw students' names to masculine versions while keeping their real Social Security numbers, to pose as them more easily, and was sentenced to 78 months.

A Detroit man pleaded guilty to submitting fraudulent student aid claims for more than 1,200 individuals at over 100 schools in 24 states, causing more than $16 million in aid to be awarded.

A hired test-taker was paid $10,000 a test to sit the SAT or ACT in other students' places, or secretly correct their answers, across 27 exams for 24 students.

William "Rick" Singer, who built a $25 million 'side door' into elite colleges, was sentenced to 42 months in prison in January 2023.

About two-thirds of the more than 50 people charged in the college admissions bribery scandal received three months or less in prison, and many served none at all.

A psychologist was paid almost $200,000 to sign Social Security disability evaluation forms without ever reviewing them.

A Kentucky disability lawyer paid a federal judge about $10,000 a month, in cash, to approve claims that obligated Social Security to pay out more than $550 million.

A Social Security judge approved nearly 100% of the disability claims he considered, against a national average of about 62%.