Financial Fraud in America: Where Fraud Is on the Rise [Data]

Fraud is a major problem in the United States, as millions of Americans fall victim to these kinds of crimes every year, with criminals making off with billions of dollars as a result.

So the All About Cookies team analyzed data from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to discover how often people in each state fall victim to financial fraud, where instances of fraud increased the most in the last year, and more.

Key Findings

• Washington, D.C. has the highest number of fraud victims per capita in the country: 2,509 for every 100,000 people.
• South Dakota has the fewest fraud victims per capita of any state, at 676 victims per 100,000 people.
• Residents of California lost $1,678,700,000 to fraud last year, the most of any state in the country.

Financial fraud across the nation

Fraud has been on the rise the last few years, both in the total amount of victims and the total amount of money lost.

These kinds of crimes aren’t new, but new technology and increased access to victims and crucial data via the internet may be changing how often these crimes are committed and how effective each attack is. From 2022 to 2024, the number of fraud reports submitted to the Federal Trade Commission increased by more than one million, an alarming 22% jump in that time.

Even worse, the amount of money that fraudsters were able to take from their victims increased at an even greater rate. In 2022, fraud victims lost $8.8 billion, then that total increased by more than $1 billion to $10 billion lost to fraud in 2023. An even bigger increase took place last year, as fraud losses ballooned to 12.5 billion across the country. All told, that is a 42% increase in fraud losses across the United States in the last three years.

All told, this data points to an environment in America where the sheer amount of fraud is increasing and the amount of money criminals are taking from their victims is growing at an even faster rate.

The most common types of financial fraud

For the purposes of this study, financial fraud is defined as anything that violates consumer protection laws that are enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. There are dozens of crimes that qualify as financial fraud, though some are more common than others.

More than 85% of all financial fraud fell into one of the 10 most common types of fraud reported to the FTC last year.

The most common kind of financial fraud in the U.S. in 2024 was credit, information, and report fraud. While a generic category, this kind of fraud revolves around things like credit reports and credit history, typically involving illegal manipulation of those reports. A specific example would be selling consumer credit reports without proper authorization.

This type of fraud saw a tremendous jump in prevalence last year, as there were around 700,000 reports in 2023 and over 1.3 million in 2024, a 90% increase from one year to the next. The 1.3 million reports of credit, info, and report fraud were also more than 500,000 reports higher than any other kind of fraud in 2024.

Imposter scams are the second-most common kind of fraud in the U.S. Examples of imposter scams include things like texts, calls, or emails that claim to be from a company like Amazon or an institution like a bank and try to get victims to give them valuable information such as social security numbers or bank account data. Nearly 850,000 people fell victim to this kind of fraud last year.

Rounding out the top three is online shopping and negative reviews fraud, which includes things like posting fake reviews, paying people to leave positive reviews about a product or service, posting fake reviews that link to phishing websites, and more. More than 380,000 people reported this type of fraud last year.

It’s worth noting, however, that how often a certain type of fraud is committed does not necessarily equate to how profitable that kind of fraud is for criminals.

For instance, the FTC reports that just 22% of the 845,000 victims of imposter scams (186,000 people) actually lost money last year, with total losses totaling a little less than $3 billion. On the other hand, a troubling 79% of the almost 119,000 people who fell victim to investment-related scams (around 94,000 people) lost money, with losses amounting to $5.7 billion.

When looking at per-case losses for each kind of fraud, the median victim of imposter fraud lost $800, while the median investment fraud victim lost more than 11 times as much money: $9,196.

States with the most fraud victims per capita

Financial fraud is a problem throughout the country, with thousands of people in all 50 states falling victim to fraud schemes yearly. However, there are still states where the problem is more common than others.

Residents of Washington, D.C. reported 2,509 instances of financial fraud per 100,000 people last year, the most of anywhere in the country. Florida (2,163 reports per 100K), Georgia (2,108 per 100K), and Delaware (1,876 per 100K) take up the 2-4 spots in this metric. Nevada is the state with the fifth-highest rate of financial fraud in the country, at 1,867 reports per 100,000 people.

On the other hand, South Dakota reports fraud at the lowest rate of any state, with “just” 676 reports per 100,000 citizens. A pair of states that touch South Dakota round off the lowest fraud rates in the country, as North Dakota (696 reports per 100K) and Iowa (715 per 100K) have the two lowest instances of financial fraud after South Dakota.

States where financial fraud is on the rise

Comparing FTC reports year-over-year allows us to look beyond just the numbers from last year to pinpoint states where the frequency of fraud reports rose the most from one year to the next, marking them as potential financial fraud hotspots going forward.

In total, the number of financial fraud reports per 100,000 people increased last year in every single state in the country (including Washington, D.C.). The smallest increases were in Idaho and Maine, where fraud cases per capita rose by “just” 7% year-over-year. In every other state in the country fraud reports rose by at least 10%.

This indicates that fraudsters are ramping up their attacks just about everywhere in the country, though some states saw outsized increases — with Louisiana coming out on top. In that state, the number of financial fraud reports per capita rose by 40%, the biggest increase in the country. Florida was second with a 38% increase, followed by Texas at 37%. Reports increased by at least 35% in four more states, with fraud reports rising by at least that amount in New Jersey, Mississippi, New York, and Georgia last year.

States with the largest losses to financial fraud

The goal of fraudsters is to get money from their victims, something they unfortunately succeed in doing all across America. We identified the states where criminals successfully defrauded people for the highest total amount of money last year.

Population and fraud loss are very closely correlated, as the top four states by population are also the top states by total money lost to fraud in 2024. Californians lost $1.7 billion to fraud in 2024, nearly twice the amount lost by residents of any other state. This was followed by Texas ($898 million in losses), Florida ($866 million), and New York ($534 million).

Arizona rounds out the top five with total financial fraud losses of $337 million last year, despite having a population size that is less than half that of the states ranked 1 through 4.

Bottom line

Financial fraud can affect not only your financial safety but also your personal safety. The All About Cookies team recommends the following to prevent falling victim.

• Recognize the signs. Knowing what the early signs of identity theft and fraud look like will help you recognize what’s going on much sooner if your information is stolen, so you can recover much quicker.
• Keep financial accounts secure with a password manager. Online accounts with the financial institutions where you keep your money will be harder to access if they’re protected by unique, secure passwords. A password manager can help keep you organized while staying secure.
• Double up on security measures. If a password manager still doesn’t feel secure enough, you can grab an identity theft protection service that will automatically scan all your personal information to make sure nothing fishy is happening.

Methodology

All About Cookies analyzed the Federal Trade Commission’s 2022, 2023, and 2024 Consumer Sentinel Network Data Books to find the data on financial fraud in every state as well as the country as a whole.

For the purposes of this analysis, only data relating to crimes falling under the “Fraud” and “Other” categories were included, while data relating to identity theft was excluded throughout, except when discussing nationwide fraud reports and fraud loss totals.