Online Scams May Be Costing Americans 7 Times More Than Reported
The fake package text. The too-good-to-be-true investment offer. The stranger in your DMs who quickly starts asking for money. Online scams have become a routine part of everyday internet use, and a new report estimates they may be costing Americans nearly $150 billion a year.
Americans lost an estimated $148.2 billion to online scams and cybercrime in 2025, according to a new report from the Consumer Federation of America. That’s nearly 26% more than in 2024 and roughly three times the losses recorded four years earlier.
The exact amount is impossible to know, and that is partly the point of the report. Americans reported approximately $20.9 billion in losses to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center last year. The Consumer Federation of America estimates the true total is more than seven times higher because most victims never report their losses to law enforcement.
The organization based that calculation on...
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