Reported cybercrime cost Americans over 60 about $7.75 billion in 2025

When her neighbor texted that she had been scammed, the cybersecurity educator who tells this story in The Conversation sent back the usual list: change your passwords, contact your financial institution, file an identity theft report, and perhaps make a police report if it was serious ^[2]. The neighbor, a woman in her early 70s ^[1], wrote back: "I think you better come down here and let's talk." ^[3]

That list assumes an outsider got into her accounts. Her case ran the other way. She had been locked out of her bank account and called the bank herself. Somewhere in what she believed was a transfer to technical support, she ended up talking to scammers ^[5]. A warning then appeared on her computer saying it was being hacked and that she should contact Microsoft immediately. The scammers persuaded her not to talk to anyone who might interrupt ^[6]. They had her move her money into cryptocurrency, supposedly to protect it from being stolen or seized ^[7]. She made the transfers herself, on instructions she believed came from her bank or a software company, and a password reset does nothing about those. The money, the author wrote, "was now long gone." ^[7]

Her loss, about $100,000 over three days ^[4], is roughly 2.6 times the $38,500 average among complainants aged 60 and older in the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center's 2025 data ^[11][7]. That age group filed about 20% of more than 1 million complaints and accounted for more than 37% of nearly $21 billion in reported losses, about $7.75 billion ^[8][10]. Their share of losses is about 1.85 times their share of complaints ^[1]. The figures are consistent with each other: $7.75 billion divided by $38,500 is about 201,000 complainants, close to a fifth of just over a million ^[2]. Across all ages the average is at most about $21,000 per complaint ^[3]. An older complainant reports losing roughly 1.8 times that ^[4].

The author attributes the gap to access to a nest egg, discomfort with newer technology, loneliness and declining cognitive abilities ^[12]. The complaint data cannot rank those causes. Bigger savings alone would raise the average loss per case even if older people were fooled no more often than anyone else.

Florida shows the same pattern. The state generated 71,843 complaints and nearly $1.6 billion in reported losses, third in the country and about what its size as the third-largest state would predict ^[14]. For residents over 60 it ranked second, with more than 17,000 complaints and nearly $710 million lost ^[15]. Older residents thus account for about 44% of the state's reported losses ^[5], at roughly $41,800 or less per over-60 complaint ^[6]. The population figure the author gives, 23% of Floridians or 5.3 million people, counts those 65 and older ^[13]. It does not line up exactly with the FBI's 60-plus bracket. The state Department of Elder Affairs runs Operation Senior Shield, a program that sends free scam alerts by email, text or phone to older adults and caregivers ^[16].

Every one of these numbers counts what people chose to report. In a 2026 Global Anti-Scam Alliance survey of 3,110 US adults, 82% had encountered a scam in the previous year ^[17]. Some 86% said they were confident they could recognize a scam, yet 43% interacted with a scammer and 9% lost money or data ^[18]. Only 40% of the victims who lost money reported the incident ^[19]. The survey is not the FBI's data. If a similar share of victims report to the FBI, the $7.75 billion is a floor. These figures measure losses reported, not money recovered, and one case cannot show which order of response recovers the most.