Americans age 60 and older reported losing $7.7 billion to internet-enabled crime in 2025, roughly 60 percent more than the year before, according to FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center data reported by AARP. And reported losses are only part of the picture; many victims never report at all, out of embarrassment, fear, or not knowing where to turn.
Prevention campaigns matter. But the persistent gap in elder fraud response is coordination.
Why victims fall through the cracks
An older adult who has been defrauded may need help from Adult Protective Services, a victim service provider, local police, a bank’s fraud team, federal investigators, and sometimes a legal aid attorney, often all at once. Each holds a piece of the case. Few share information easily, and the victim is left to retell a painful story again and again.
What coordination looks like
- A single point of contact for the victim, so one advocate guides them across agencies.
- Shared intake that captures the facts once, with consent, and routes them to the right partners.
- Pattern analysis across cases, because the same scheme often hits many victims in a region.
- Trauma-informed services: financial exploitation is a profound betrayal, often by someone the victim trusted.
- Measurable outcomes: recovered funds, cases referred, victims served, repeat victimization prevented.
Where technology helps
Secure case management and analytics can connect the pieces: linking related reports, flagging repeat targets, and giving each partner the information it is permitted to see. As in every human services setting, the technology should support trained people, not replace them.
Every fraud victim should have to tell their story only once.
Sources: AARP, reporting on FBI IC3 2025 data (April 2026) · FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center