A Note from the Editors for This Special Fraud Issue
Fraud is a top-of-mind concern for consumers, financial institutions, and businesses as schemes to defraud them have proliferated in recent years. The 2024 annual report1 from the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Consumer Sentinel Network, which captures data from reports consumers filed with the FTC, highlights the cost of consumer fraud:
- Losses from all fraud/scam categories totaled $12.5 billion dollars — a 25 percent increase from 2023 losses of $10 billion.
- Losses from investment scams totaled $5.7 billion — a 24 percent increase from 2023 losses of $4.6 billion.
- Losses from imposter scams totaled $2.95 billion — a 10 percent increase from 2023 losses of $2.67 billion.
- Losses based on bank transfer/payment totaled $2.09 billion — a 13 percent increase from 2023 losses of $1.8 billion.
- Losses from social media scams totaled $1.9 billion — the single highest category of losses ranked by method of contacting the consumer.
- Losses for military consumers totaled $584 million — a 22 percent increase from 2023 losses of $477 million.
The actual total losses are much greater because the FTC data capture only reported incidents. But the trend is clear: Financial fraud against consumers is significantly increasing each year. Other data sources confirm this finding. Data from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) show a 110 percent increase in total Suspicious Activity Reports from financial institutions for fraud between 2020 (552,920 reports) and 2024 (1,165,642 reports) in the categories of automated clearinghouse, check, credit/debit card, mail, and wire.2
While technology has facilitated many common fraudulent schemes (such as social media scams, text messaging scams, and phishing emails), it is also providing ways to combat fraud. Through advances in technology, private companies are developing sophisticated tools to identify and block fraudulent transactions.
This special issue discusses several fraud topics, including the banking agencies’ recent request for information on payment and check fraud. We hope you find this issue helpful.
1 Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2024.
2 Data were obtained from FinCEN’s Suspicious Activity Report Statistics web page. Consumer Compliance Outlook created a custom report.