Common Scams People Fall For Every Day
From imposter calls to AI-powered investment fraud, scammers are stealing more money than ever before — here is what you need to know to stay protected.
Every day, millions of people across the United States become targets of common scams — phone calls from fake government agents, emails impersonating banks, job offers that never existed, and online investment platforms engineered solely to drain bank accounts. According to data released by the Federal Trade Commission in 2025, consumers reported losing more than $12.5 billion to fraud in 2024 alone, a 25 percent increase over the prior year. That figure, staggering as it is, almost certainly understates the true scale of the problem: law enforcement agencies estimate that only two to seven percent of scam victims ever file a formal report. The reality is that scammers have never been better funded, better organized, or more technologically sophisticated — and the people falling for their tactics are not gullible. They are ordinary individuals, often caught off guard by schemes designed by professionals whose full-time occupation is deception.
Why Imposter Scams Remain the Most Commonly Reported Fraud
Imposter scams — in which a fraudster pretends to be a trusted authority figure, company, or government official — ranked as the most commonly reported fraud category in the FTC’s 2024 data book. Losses from this category reached $2.95 billion, with government imposter scams alone accounting for $789 million, up $171 million from 2023. The mechanics are consistently effective: a caller claims to represent the Social Security Administration, the IRS, Medicare, or even the FTC itself, and tells the target that their identity has been compromised, their benefits are at risk, or that they owe a debt that must be settled immediately.
The FTC has noted that these scams often escalate quickly, with fraudsters directing victims to withdraw cash, deposit money at Bitcoin ATMs, or hand currency directly to a courier who arrives at their home — methods the agency emphasizes no real government body would ever request. The FBI reported that government impersonation complaints nearly doubled between 2024 and 2025, rising from approximately 17,300 cases to nearly 32,500, with documented losses of $797 million in 2025. Part of this surge is attributed to the growing use of artificial intelligence tools that enable scammers to produce phone calls, emails, and even video messages that appear genuinely authentic.
The FTC emphasizes that no legitimate government agency — including the IRS, Social Security Administration, or the FTC itself — will ever demand payment via cryptocurrency, gift card, wire transfer, or cash courier. Any such request is a definitive indicator of fraud.
Investment Fraud and “Pig Butchering” Scams Driving Record Losses
Investment scams generated the largest financial losses of any fraud category in 2024, with the FTC recording $5.7 billion in consumer losses — a 24 percent increase from 2023. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center documented even higher figures across its own reporting channels. A significant driver of these losses is a category known colloquially as “pig butchering,” a scheme that typically begins on social media or dating apps, where a stranger gradually builds a personal relationship over days or weeks before steering the conversation toward a supposedly exclusive investment opportunity, most often involving cryptocurrency.
Victims are shown fabricated dashboards reflecting impressive returns on platforms that appear professional and legitimate. When they attempt to withdraw funds, they are told they must pay a tax or fee first — a final extraction before contact disappears entirely. According to the FTC, 79 percent of people who reported an investment-related scam said they lost money, with a median loss exceeding $9,000 per case. The Kansas City Federal Reserve has noted that scammers increasingly direct victims toward cryptocurrencies and payment apps precisely because these methods offer little to no possibility of fund recovery once a transfer is made.
Phishing Attacks and Online Shopping Scams That Target Everyday Consumers
Phishing — the practice of using deceptive emails, text messages, or websites to trick individuals into surrendering personal or financial information — remained the most frequently reported cybercrime category in the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Complaint Center report, with more than 191,000 formal complaints logged that year alone. The Anti-Phishing Working Group, which tracks phishing attack infrastructure globally, recorded 3.8 million unique phishing attacks in 2025. These attacks have grown measurably more sophisticated, with AI-generated content allowing scammers to craft messages that closely mimic the language, formatting, and branding of legitimate institutions.
Online shopping fraud, separately, was the second most commonly reported category in the FTC’s 2024 data. Fake e-commerce websites — often appearing in paid search results or promoted through social media advertisements — accept payment for products that either never arrive or bear no resemblance to what was advertised. The FTC reported that people contacted through social media were more likely to lose money to fraud than those reached by any other contact method, with 70 percent of victims reached via social platforms reporting a financial loss totaling $1.9 billion collectively in 2024.
Text message scams have followed a similar trajectory. The FTC reported $470 million in losses to text scams in 2024, more than five times the figure from 2020. Common variants include fake package delivery notifications, fabricated bank fraud alerts, and messages from unknown numbers asking the recipient to complete a simple online task — a category the FTC flagged as a growing subcategory with particular appeal to younger adults seeking remote work.
Romance Scams and the Emotional Cost of Confidence Fraud
Romance scams occupy a distinct and particularly harmful corner of the fraud landscape because they exploit trust and emotional vulnerability rather than technical confusion. In these schemes, fraudsters construct detailed fake personas on dating apps, social media platforms, and even in casual messaging threads, cultivating what appears to be a genuine romantic relationship over weeks or months before eventually requesting money — typically framed as an emergency involving medical expenses, travel costs to visit the victim, or a business opportunity.
The FBI’s 2024 Internet Crime Complaint Center report listed romance scams among the top five most financially damaging cybercrime categories. The FTC has also documented that older adults are disproportionately targeted, with the agency noting a four-fold increase since 2020 in reports from adults 60 and older who lost $10,000 or more to impersonation and confidence-style scams. Combined losses reported by older adults who lost more than $100,000 to these categories increased eight-fold between 2020 and 2024, from $55 million to $445 million. In the FBI’s 2025 reporting cycle, AI-related romance scams were specifically flagged as a category responsible for $19 million in documented losses, with investigators noting that synthetic personas are increasingly powered by large language models capable of sustaining months-long conversations.
