Americans lost an estimated $68 billion to scams in 2025, more than four times the $16 billion reported to the Federal Trade Commission, according to a new study from Gallup and the Stop Scams Alliance.
The survey found that 6% of Americans, roughly 15 million people, were personally scammed out of money last year. The median loss was $500, but the average reached $5,578, pulled upward by scams running into the tens of thousands of dollars.
Why it matters: Scammers most often impersonated tech support professionals (19%), bank or credit union employees (15%) and government or law enforcement figures (14%), and 17% of scams involved a claim that the victim owed money to someone, including the government. That saturation of fraudulent “you owe” contacts risks eroding consumer trust in legitimate collection outreach, which relies on the same channels scammers favor most: phone calls, text messages and email were each involved in roughly 45% of scams.
The financial fallout hits payment capacity. Nearly half of victimized households (46%) reported moderate or severe financial hardship from the scam. The burden fell hardest on households earning less than $80,000 annually, where 58% described the hardship as severe (28%) or moderate (30%). Two-thirds of victims recovered none of their money. For collectors, including those working utility debt, that translates into consumers with diminished capacity to cure delinquencies through no fault of their own.
The reporting gap is a data problem for enforcement. While 79% of victims told at least one entity about the scam, most went to their bank (55%) or a payment app (25%). Just 13% reported to the FTC or federal law enforcement, leaving federal agencies without visibility into roughly seven in eight incidents. Among non-reporters, 75% believed reporting would not recover their money and 58% did not know where to report.
The policy signal is unmistakable. Virtually all adults (98%) view scams as a threat, and 82% say the government is doing too little, a view shared by large majorities of Democrats (87%) and Republicans (76%). That bipartisan pressure suggests regulators and lawmakers may face growing demands to act on fraud prevention, communications authentication and reporting infrastructure, areas where any new rules would likely touch the accounts receivable management industry.
The emotional toll was also substantial: 73% of affected respondents said the scam negatively impacted their mental health or wellbeing, a dynamic collectors may increasingly encounter in consumer interactions.
