Identity Theft And Scams Happen Far More Often Than All FBI Reported Crimes

This article is based on new data from Gallup.

Many communications on the internet, text messages, email, and phone calls have a scam element. It’s impossible to escape it.

Identity theft and scams are feared more than violent or property crime. The reason is that people get suspicious phone calls, emails, texts, and messages almost daily. To the average person, it seems unrelenting. To older Americans, it can be horrifying.

An older neighbor told me that his bank contacted him about possible misuse of his credit card. He did the right thing by contacting the fraud number for his credit card service instead of relying on the number offered by the email. But he told me the episode made him feel as if he were under constant attack by criminals.

I attended a seminar on identity theft years ago led by an expert who admitted a computer scam had victimized him. He (and I) now employ commercial identity monitoring services.

So many people are being contacted daily by fraudsters who use our phones and computers that it feels like we are walking down a street at night in a dangerous part of the city.

A person who wanted to highlight my work asked why I wasn’t responding to his emails. I told him that I don’t click on links from anyone. Fear of fraud is rapidly destroying email and commercial marketing. It’s scaring the hell out of average Americans.

For additional information on prevention and reporting identity theft and scams, see the appendix of this article.

Identity Theft And Scams Greatly Outnumber Total Crimes Reported by the FBI

The number of Americans reporting that they were personally scammed in one year exceeds the total number of FBI Index violent and property crimes by a minimum of roughly two to one.

Total FBI Index violent and property crimes for the last full report in 2024: approximately 7.20 million violent and property offenses.

There are approximately 19.8 million violent and property crimes as measured by the USDOJ’s National Crime Victimization Survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

So if Gallup found that 6% of Americans reported being personally scammed in 2025, that equates to approximately 20.5 million Americans.

Per Gallup, in 2025, 6% of U.S. adults — or an estimated 15.1 million — say they were personally scammed out of money.

An additional 4% of U.S. adults told Gallup that another person in their household was scammed in 2025, leading to a total of 10% of those surveyed who said they or a household member was scammed in 2025.

Who Commits Identity Theft And Scams?

Criminals are not stupid; they go to whatever opportunity provides the greatest profit and the least amount of risk (which is why the disabled have four times the amount of criminal victimization). Criminals prey on the easiest targets.

I wrote Safer, Smarter, Richer: Why Criminals Are Leaving the Streets for Screens because we celebrate declining reported crime in America, even as categories of property crime (identity theft, scams, cargo theft, porch pirating, mail theft, retail theft and many others) are significantly increasing.

While undoubtedly much of the identity theft and scam problem is committed by overseas actors, American criminals have access to kits and instructions on the dark web telling them how to engage in scams and identity theft.

There is no reliable estimate of what proportion of identity theft is committed by domestic versus foreign offenders. In many cases, foreign cybercriminals and domestic accomplices work together, making attribution to a single country impossible.

Traditional identity theft and scams (stolen wallets, mail theft, local credit card fraud) have a substantial domestic component.

Cyber-enabled identity theft and large-scale financial scams are disproportionately associated with international organized crime networks.

Many crimes are hybrid: criminals overseas steal identities, while accomplices or money mules in the United States open accounts, receive funds, or make purchases.

Per Gallup’s “United States of Scams: The Financial and Emotional Fallout:”

Six percent of Americans report being personally scammed in 2025, with those scams costing U.S. adults an estimated $68 billion — more than four times what was reported to federal authorities in FTC complaint data in 2025.

About one in four Americans (24%) have been personally scammed at some point in their adult life, and one in 10 have been scammed more than once.

Scam attempts are pervasive: About four in 10 (41%) Americans are contacted by an attempted scam daily.

Nearly half of individuals (46%) say their household experienced at least a moderate financial hardship as a result of being scammed, including 21% who say it was a severe hardship.

Lower-income households were most likely to be meaningfully impacted, with almost six in 10 (58%) of these households saying the scam created a severe (28%) or moderate (30%) financial hardship.

The emotional toll of being scammed may be just as heavy as the financial one. Nearly three-quarters of individuals who say they or their household experienced a scam in 2025 say it had a negative impact on their mental health or wellbeing.

Qualitative interviews indicate that many individuals felt the emotional impacts outweighed the financial ones.

The most common entry points for scams were online purchases, phone calls and social media.

Scam victims report that most of the communications with the scammer took place via phone calls, text messages and email.

Most scams are reported to banks, with fewer going to federal agencies and law enforcement. While 79% of victims say they told at least one entity about the scam, only 13% reported it to either the FTC or federal law enforcement, leaving these agencies without the data needed to fully identify the scope of scam victimization in the United States.

Virtually all adults (98%) believe scams pose a threat to individuals in the U.S., with two-thirds saying the threat is “major.” The vast majority of U.S. adults (82%) think the government is doing too little to prevent scams.

An Estimated 15 Million Americans Were Victimized in 2025 Alone

In 2025, 6% of U.S. adults — or an estimated 15.1 million — say they were personally scammed out of money.

An additional 4% of U.S. adults told Gallup that another person in their household was scammed in 2025, leading to a total of 10% of those surveyed who said they or a household member was scammed in 2025.

The incidence of scams varies across some demographic groups, with higher scam rates reported among lower-income adults, people of color and those without a bachelor’s degree. Scam victimization rates are similar across different age cohorts.

Two-Thirds of Americans Say Scams Are a Major Threat

Virtually all adults (98%) believe scams pose a threat to individuals in the U.S., with two‑thirds (66%) saying they are a major threat and an additional 32% saying scams are a minor threat.

Older adults are notably more alarmed: 80% of those aged 60 and older say scams are a major threat, compared with 68% of 40- to 59-year-olds and 51% of 18‑ to 39-year-olds.

Conclusions

It’s proper that we acknowledge declining rates of reported crime (most crimes are not reported to law enforcement) as offered by the FBI while understanding that the USDOJ’s National Crime Victimization Survey states that rates of violent crime increased by 44 percent in 2022 and stayed steady in 2023 and 2024 (last full report).

But per Gallup’s numbers, crime in the form of identity theft and scams massively outweighs all crimes reported to the FBI.

The question is whether crime is shifting in the US from street-level infractions to digital offenses. There is growing evidence that a portion of criminal activity may be shifting from traditional street offenses toward cyber-enabled fraud and scams.

One could make the case based on the National Crime Victimization Survey and Gallup that crime is not receding in the US; it’s just taking on different forms of victimization.

That level of victimization leads to greater fear of crime.

Appendix