The latest report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reveals that American adults lost a record amount of money to acts of fraud in the year 2023, totaling around $10 billion.
As reported by Axios, the number of Americans who fell victim to fraudulent scams was roughly 690,000. The average lost amount per person was $500.
The previous year saw a slightly lower amount of both the number of victims and the overall amount of money lost, at approximately 624,000 defrauded Americans and $8.9 billion in lost funds.
These scams include false promises of investments, business decisions, government services, and even romance, in exchange for money. Scams involving impersonation of a legitimate business, such as retail companies or tech support, increased by 18% in 2023, to a total of 474,000 acts of fraud, compared to less than 400,000 in 2022. Meanwhile, scams where the culprits pretended to be government agents rose by 15%, to a total of over 228,000 such incidents this year.
One reason why such crimes are committed so frequently is the lack of law enforcement resources to go after the culprits, primarily because each instance involves such small amounts of money stolen. Scammers make sure to keep their targets to low amounts in order to avoid being considered a top priority by law enforcement.
Scammers are known to target older Americans who are less likely to be tech-savvy than younger Americans, who are more aware of what identifies a suspicious phone call or suspicious email.