Here’s something you may not be expecting to hear: according to data released by the FBI, Americans between the ages of 30 and 49 are more likely to fall victim to investment scammers than those who are older.
As reported here on Business Insider, the 30-49 age group reported 13,300 complaints to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center last year, split almost 50-50 between the 30-39 age group (6,654) and the 40-49 age group (6,680).
The 50-59 age group filed 5,608 complaints, and the 60+ group, 6,404 complaints.
Is this good news? Should “older” Americans be patting ourselves on the back because the younger generations are just as susceptible to investment scams? Why are we reporting on this story in the first place?
In our view, this report should make older Americans even more wary. If you were on the alert for frauds and scams before, you should intensify your awareness and your precautions now. Here’s why.
1. The fact that younger generations are just as susceptible shows how skilled the scammers are. If the younger generations, who are justifiably proud of their technical savvy and Internet skills, can fall victim in such large numbers, then this demonstrates that the fraudsters are staying ahead of the game in developing new scam techniques.
2. The age breakdown applies to those scams where the age of the victim was noted. There may be others where the age was not mentioned, and — even more likely — a high number of scams that were not reported at all. We know from past reports that older people are reluctant to come forward and report that they were scammed.
3. This report covers only investment scams. There are a host of other categories, including many (like fake tech support alerts) designed to gain access to your computer, your passwords and your banking information. They are not pitching you on an investment; they are going straight for your bank accounts or credit cards. And, as we’ve reported here, a particularly dangerous new scam is emerging, using AI to generate “deep fake” video or audio of your loved ones to fool you into sending money or revealing other sensitive information.
As for this particular category, investment scams, the dollar volume of losses tops any other category. It totaled almost $5 billion in 2023, a staggering 38% increase over the previous year. And the volume of complaints, adding up all age groups, at nearly 40,000, was double the total of 20,000 in 2021, just two years earlier.
What drove these large increases? In one word: crypto.
“Crypto-related frauds cost investors $3.04 billion in 2023 … making up over three-quarters of last year’s investment scam losses.”
What do the scammers do? The age-old promise of con men: big returns at little or no risk.
“After contacting prospective victims, scammers may claim they have a ‘secret’ or ‘proven’ investment strategy and offer faux training and products, according to the FTC. Alternatively, they may direct victims to a specific site or app to invest their money, while pocketing the money themselves; they may even send fake investment reports and urge further investments.”
Sometimes they even pose as celebrities: “In 2021, a German man made headlines after he lost $560,000 worth of bitcoin to a scammer posing as Elon Musk on Twitter. The man from Cologne — whom the BBC gave a pseudonym — described giving away his fortune in the mistaken belief that Musk would double his money.”
One good rule of thumb in the investment category, according to the FBI, is to never send money, or release financial information, to anyone you’ve never met in person.