Every October, someone in the family group chat forwards a warning about tampered Halloween candy. Federal fraud data tells a scarier story, and it splits along generational lines. Younger adults get tricked more often. Older adults lose far more when they do.
In 2024, people ages 20 to 29 reported losing money in 44% of the fraud reports they filed with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). For people 70 to 79 the figure was 24%, and for people 80 and over it was 21%, according to the FTC's Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book. The FTC's latest report to Congress on older consumers, released October 19, found the same pattern in 2025: adults 60 and over reported losing money at a 14% lower rate than adults 18 to 59.
So Grandma wins on frequency. On dollars, it isn't close.
The Numbers Behind the Generational Fright Gap
The FBI's 2025 Internet Crime Report shows the gap in dollars. People ages 20 to 29 filed 112,069 complaints and reported $563.1 million in losses. People 60 and over filed 201,266 complaints and reported about $7.75 billion in losses, roughly 37% of all cybercrime losses the FBI tracked last year, as CyberScoop reported.
Divide those totals by the number of complaints and the average complaint from someone in their 20s comes to about $5,000. The average complaint from someone 60 or older comes to about $38,500.
A small number of devastating cases drive that average. In 2025, 6,769 older adults told the FTC they lost more than $100,000. Those reports were 6% of older adults' loss reports and 70% of their reported dollars. Older adults also accounted for 47% of all reported losses of $10,000 or more, and the median loss for people 80 and over climbed to $2,000, a 21% jump from 2024, per the FTC.
Why Gen Z Keeps Getting Tricked
Younger adults spend their time where scammers buy ads. In an FTC analysis of 2021 reports, nearly 40% of people 18 to 29 who lost money said the scam started on social media. Online shopping fraud topped the list for adults under 60, and most victims said the item never arrived. Somewhere, a pair of limited-edition sneakers is still listed as in transit.
The same FTC analysis found adults under 60 were more than five times as likely as older adults to report losing money to job scams and more than four times as likely to report investment scam losses, mostly fake cryptocurrency opportunities. Their median loss was $500.
Job scams have since sprouted a new head. The FTC's task scam spotlight found reports rose from about 5,000 in all of 2023 to about 20,000 in the first half of 2024 alone. The pitch arrives by text or WhatsApp: get paid to like videos or rate products inside an app. The first payouts are small and real. Then the app asks for a deposit to unlock the next set of tasks, and the balance on screen turns out to be as real as the chainsaw in a haunted house.
Volume explains most of the Gen Z problem. A generation that shops, job hunts, and invests from the same phone sees more scam attempts than anyone else, and some of them land.
Why Grandma Loses More When She Gets Hit
Older adults are better at walking away. About 74% of fraud reports from people 60 and over in 2025 involved no money lost, according to the FTC. The scams that do get through are built for bigger paydays.
Compared with younger adults, people 60 and over were:
More than four times as likely to report losing money to tech support scams
More than twice as likely to report losses to prize, sweepstakes, and lottery scams
48% more likely to report losses to romance scams
15% more likely to report losses to government impersonators and to scammers posing as a friend or family member
The phone is the expensive channel. Older adults' median loss was $3,000 when the fraud started with a phone call, compared with $599 when it started on social media. Investment scams produced the largest losses for this group and rose 42% in 2025. Bank transfers and cryptocurrency carried the biggest dollar totals, and older adults' crypto losses have grown more than twenty-sevenfold since 2020.
Gen Z gets a hoodie that never ships. Grandma gets a polite caller from fake tech support who needs remote access to her computer and, eventually, her savings.
The Monster That Haunts Every Generation
Some scams don't check birth certificates. Investment fraud was the costliest category in the FBI's 2025 report at almost $8.65 billion, per CyberScoop. And in May 2026, the FBI warned about AI virtual kidnapping scams that use cloned voices and altered photos to convince families a loved one has been abducted, KIRO 7 reported. The FBI's advice: agree on a family code word that only close relatives know.
A cloned voice works on a 22-year-old checking on a parent just as well as it works on a grandparent who thinks a grandchild is in trouble.
What This Means for Financial Firms
For registered investment advisers, family offices, and other financial firms, these numbers land in two places: your clients and your own staff.
Clients first. Older clients hold the largest balances and suffer the largest per-incident losses, so a single romance or investment scam can drain an account built over decades. Todd Mitchell made the case for client-facing cybersecurity education last week, and the FTC's new report strengthens it. Family offices face a version of the same problem with household staff, advisors, and family members, as we covered in what ultra-wealthy families want from their IT provider.
Then your team. People in their 20s report losing money to fraud more often than people in their 70s and 80s. If they're the ones answering client email or processing payments at your firm, that matters. Business email compromise cost nearly $3.05 billion in 2025, per CyberScoop. Security awareness training built only around grandparent scams misses half the risk. Pair it with the tactics in our guide to spotting phishing and the callback rules from our post on wire fraud at closing.
Five Treats That Beat Every Trick
Pick a family code word, as the FBI recommends, and use it to verify any emergency call.
Hang up and call back on a number you look up yourself, whether the caller claims to be your bank, Medicare, or your grandson.
Refuse any request to pay by gift card, cryptocurrency, or wire transfer from someone who contacted you first. Gift cards were the most common payment method in tech support, romance, and prize scams against older adults, per the FTC.
Treat any job that pays you to like videos or rate products as a scam.
Look up a store outside the social media ad that sent you there before you buy.
Techvera's cybersecurity services include security awareness training for every age on your payroll, built for financial services firms with regulators to answer to. See where your controls stand with our Compliance Readiness Checker, or schedule a consultation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who gets scammed more often, younger or older adults?
Younger adults report losing money more often. In 2024, people ages 20 to 29 reported a loss in 44% of their FTC fraud reports, compared with 21% for people 80 and over, according to the FTC Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book.
What scams target Gen Z the most?
Online shopping scams, job and task scams, and investment scams, often starting on social media. Task scam reports rose from about 5,000 in all of 2023 to about 20,000 in the first half of 2024, per its task scam spotlight.
Why do older adults lose more money to scams?
Older adults face scams built for large payouts, such as tech support, romance, and investment fraud, often by phone and paid by bank transfer or cryptocurrency. People 60 and over reported about $7.75 billion in cybercrime losses to the FBI in 2025, roughly 37% of all reported losses, per CyberScoop.
About the Author
Team Techvera
Techvera Team
Articles written collaboratively by the Techvera team, combining expertise across cybersecurity, managed services, and digital transformation.