FTC 2025-26 Older Consumers Fraud Report: What It Says

Every year the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sends Congress a report on fraud against older Americans. The newest one, "Protecting Older Consumers 2025-2026," is dated October 19, 2026. This page summarizes what it says in plain English. It is a report about fraud in general, not about gold. We cover it because gold and silver buyers are often in the age group it describes, and because one scam type in the report involves handing over cash or gold.

What does the report measure?

The report uses the FTC's Consumer Sentinel database. Sentinel is a collection of fraud reports that people submit themselves. The report says "older adults" means people 60 and older.

Three limits matter before you read any number:

• The FTC says Sentinel data is self-reported and is not a survey.
• Only about 46% of fraud reports included the person's age, so the age-based figures describe the reports that did.
• The FTC did not take consumer reports from October 1 to November 13, 2025, because of a funding lapse. The report says it estimated the missing losses.

How much did older adults report losing in 2025?

According to the report, "reported losses from people 60 and older totaled over $3 billion, up from about $2.4 billion in 2024." People 60 and older made up about 33% of the reports that included an age, or 469,597 reports. About 123,000 of them said they lost money.

The median is the middle value. Half of the people who reported a loss lost less than that amount and half lost more. A steady median alongside a rising total means that the largest losses are driving the increase.

Why do a few big losses matter so much?

The FTC says reports of losses of $100,000 or more were "relatively rare at 6% of older adults' loss reports in 2025," yet "they accounted for 70% of their aggregate reported losses." Reports in the $10,000 to $100,000 range rose from 6,965 in 2020 to 22,655 in 2025.

A scam that moves a large share of a retirement account is rare in the count of reports, but it is where most of the dollars go.

Which scams and payment methods led?

The report says investment scams, government impersonation and business impersonation led the totals for older adults. Investment losses rose 42% in 2025.

For how people paid, the report says bank transfers and cryptocurrency had the highest total losses. Credit cards were the payment method reported most often. Gift cards were the most frequent method in tech-support, romance, family-or-friend impersonation and prize scams.

We did not find gold or precious metals named as a payment method in the parts of the report we read. It does say, in its section on scammers who pretend to be the FTC, that people are often told to "protect" their money by "mailing cash, handing cash to couriers," buying gift cards and sharing the codes, or depositing money into Bitcoin ATMs.

Where does gold show up in the FTC's data?

Not in this report, but it does in an earlier FTC analysis. In an August 2025 data spotlight, the FTC described scammers who tell older adults to move money "to protect it" and who sometimes send couriers to collect cash or gold. The FTC said gold is not a choice on its reporting form, yet it was written in or mentioned in about 5% of 2024 reports of losses of $10,000 or more, and in about 21% of reports of losses over $100,000.

Those numbers describe what people wrote in their reports, not the number of gold purchases. They are also from 2024 data.

What does the report say to do?

The report has no formal checklist for consumers. It does repeat a few messages from the FTC's public campaigns:

• Government agencies will never tell you to move your money to supposedly protect it.
• People dealing with a scammer should stop all contact with them.
• Fraud can be reported to the FTC's reporting site, ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and the FTC encourages people to share what they learn about imposters with others.

For gold-specific steps, see our guides to Gold IRA scam warning signs, how to verify a precious metals dealer and how to report precious metals fraud.

How big is the problem really?

The FTC calls the losses in its database the "tip of the iceberg," because research indicates most consumers do not report being victimized to anyone other than family and friends. Using two different methods, it estimates the overall cost of fraud to older adults in 2025 at between $13.3 billion and $119.5 billion. The report describes the lower figure as conservative. The wide gap shows how uncertain any estimate is. We would treat the reported $3 billion as a floor for what was reported, not as a measure of total harm.

What this means for gold and silver buyers

The report is not an accusation against gold dealers or gold IRAs, and it does not say that any company or product is a scam. It shows that large, sudden transfers of savings are where the biggest losses happen, and describes scammers who pretend to be officials. Those patterns can apply to any financial decision, including buying metal. Reading how regulators describe Gold IRA scams and taking time before moving money are sensible habits. This page is general education, not personal advice. If you think you are being targeted, stop contact and talk to a trusted family member, your bank or a qualified professional.

What we did and did not check

We read the FTC report and the August 2025 data spotlight on the FTC website on October 22, 2026. The fetch of the report was a summary and the final appendix may not have been fully read. We did not check Sentinel data directly, and the report's figures were not independently recomputed. The figures above are the FTC's own, and we have quoted them as the FTC states them.