For Press & Journalists

HCSK Inc. is the U.S. nonprofit reference site for online scams targeting older adults. Journalists covering elder fraud, AI-enabled scams, retirement-account fraud, romance scams, scam compounds, and related federal data are welcome to contact us for comment, fact-checking, and access to our published analysis.

Primary source: HCSK Inc. team (cybersecurity and AI background).

Press email: [email protected] — please include “press” in the subject line and your deadline.

General contact: [email protected]

Our fact-checking pledge

We will respond to fact-checking inquiries from credentialed journalists within 24 hours on business days and 48 hours on weekends and holidays. If your deadline is tighter, mark the subject line “URGENT — [deadline]” and we will respond as quickly as possible.

We will:

  • Confirm or correct any statistic we have published
  • Provide the primary source (FBI IC3, FTC Sentinel, FinCEN, DOJ, etc.) for any data point
  • Point you to the specific page and section in the relevant source document (FBI IC3, FTC, FinCEN, DOJ, etc.)
  • Direct you to a more authoritative source if our data is downstream of a federal agency

We will not comment on individual fraud cases or victims, speculate beyond what the data supports, or provide off-the-record quotes (everything we say is on the record).

What we can comment on

  • Elder fraud data and trends (FBI IC3, FTC Sentinel, FinCEN, DOJ)
  • AI-enabled scams (voice cloning, deepfake video, generative fraud)
  • Retirement-account fraud (401(k) rollover, IRA scams, pension buyout fraud)
  • Pig butchering and cryptocurrency fraud
  • Romance scams and family-emergency scams
  • VA benefits fraud and veteran-targeted scams
  • Estate fraud and post-death scam patterns
  • Government impersonation (IRS, SSA, USCIS, Medicare)
  • Rural / mail / door-to-door fraud
  • Loneliness and isolation as fraud risk factors
  • State-by-state fraud comparison
  • International scam compounds
  • Federal and state legislative response

What we do not comment on: individual case investigation, legal advice, specific product endorsements.

Quick stats journalists can cite

Every figure below is sourced. All stats current as of May 2026 unless noted.

  • $7.748 billion — Elder fraud losses reported to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center by Americans aged 60 and over in 2025. Source: FBI IC3 2025 Annual Report.
  • +59% — Year-over-year increase in elder fraud losses (up from $4.885 billion in 2024).
  • 201,266 — Elder fraud complaints filed with IC3 in 2025.
  • $10.1 billion to $81.5 billion — Estimated true annual cost of fraud against older Americans. Source: FTC, Protecting Older Consumers report, December 2025.
  • $27 billion — Suspicious activity reported in elder-fraud-related Bank Secrecy Act filings during a single year (June 2022 – June 2023), across 155,415 SAR filings; may include attempted as well as completed transactions. Source: FinCEN Financial Trend Analysis, April 2024.
  • 4.8% — Share of fraud victims who report their experience to a government or BBB entity. Source: FTC research.
  • ~45% — Share of elder fraud losses attributable to investment scams in 2025 ($3.5 billion of $7.748 billion). Source: FBI IC3 2025 Annual Report.
  • $4.35 billion — Cryptocurrency-related elder fraud losses in 2025.
  • +1,130% — Five-year elder fraud loss growth in Idaho (2021-2025), the fastest-growing state. Source: HCSK Inc. analysis of FBI IC3 state data, 2021-2025.
  • $540.5 million — Stolen from prior fraud victims via "recovery scams" reported by adults 60+ in 2025. Source: FBI IC3 2025 Annual Report (2,529 complaints).

Pre-approved quotes — drop directly into stories

Each quote is approved for direct attribution to HCSK Inc. Edited for length without prior approval, provided the meaning is preserved.

On the scale of the crisis

“Elder fraud is the fastest-growing category of cybercrime in the United States. In 2025, Americans aged 60 and over reported $7.7 billion in losses to the FBI — a 59 percent year-over-year increase. The Federal Trade Commission estimates the true cost is between $10 billion and $81 billion when you account for the 95 percent of victims who never report.”

On AI as a force multiplier

“AI does not create new categories of fraud. It removes the human labor constraint that used to limit how many people a scammer could deceive at once. One operator with voice-cloning tools and a generative chatbot can run thousands of romance scams in parallel. That is what we are seeing in the 2025 data — the same scam scripts, deployed at unprecedented scale.”

On who is hit hardest

“The financial damage is not distributed evenly. Recent retirees in the first three years after retirement face the highest single-transaction risk because their 401(k) and pension money is in motion. Surviving spouses face concentrated risk in the first 90 days after a death. And isolation is the most reliable predictor of all — approximately one in four Americans over 65 lives alone, and scammers explicitly target that loneliness.”

On rural state growth

“The fastest-growing states for elder fraud in our analysis are almost all rural: Idaho is up 1,130 percent in five years. Nebraska is up 1,100 percent. Maine is up 1,012 percent. New Mexico, New Hampshire, Arkansas, Georgia, and Montana are all up more than 690 percent. Scammers have run out of low-hanging fruit in major metropolitan areas and are expanding into smaller markets where local law enforcement has limited cyber expertise.”

On underreporting

“The FBI’s reported $7.7 billion in 2025 elder fraud losses is roughly five to fifteen percent of actual losses. The Treasury Department’s FinCEN identified $27 billion in elder-fraud-related suspicious activity in a single year (June 2022 to June 2023) — multiples of what victims reported directly to the FBI in the same period. The real number is probably somewhere between $10 billion and $30 billion annually.”

Many more quotes available on request. For a custom quote tailored to your specific story angle, email [email protected].

Press kit downloads

Cite our work

Standard citation:

HCSK Inc. (2026). Elder fraud by state — FBI IC3 2025 data with five-year growth rates [Data set]. https://seniors.hcsk.org/for-researchers/

Journalism short form: “…according to HCSK Inc., a U.S. nonprofit publishing analysis of elder fraud.”

All content on seniors.hcsk.org is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0). Reproduce, quote, embed, and adapt freely with attribution.

Annual report

HCSK Inc. plans to release an annual integrated analysis of elder fraud in the United States. The release date and final scope are not yet announced. Journalists interested in early notification when the report is released can email [email protected] to be added to the notification list.

About the organization

HCSK Inc. is a Delaware non-stock nonprofit corporation, organized exclusively for charitable and educational purposes. Director: Yuksel Aydin. For broader background, see our About page.