Modern tech like AI has made it easy, nearly effortless, to scam people. Some of the most vulnerable Americans who are 60 and older become easy prey for scammers using a range of techniques, including romance scams and celebrity scams, wherein a con artist digitally masks themselves as someone else entirely to trick someone into thinking they need money.

A new Federal Trade Commission report digs into the numbers and found that fraud targeting older adults blew up from $600 million in 2020 to a massive $3 billion reported in 2025, with total unrecorded damages potentially reaching $119.5 billion.

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Older Americans are an easy target because of unfamiliarity with modern tech and the sophistication of modern scams.…