For the ninth year in a row, imposter scams are the most reported fraud category in the United States.

That is the headline finding from the Federal Trade Commission’s May 2026 report, which shows that in 2025, Americans submitted more than one million reports about imposter scams to the FTC — and reported losing $3.5 billion to them.

That figure, significant as it is, almost certainly understates the problem. The FTC estimates that only a fraction of fraud victims file official reports. The true losses from imposter fraud in 2025 are likely several times higher.

What Is an Imposter Scam?

An imposter scam is exactly what the name implies: a criminal who pretends to be someone they are not in order to steal money or personal information.

The “imposter” can be a government official, a bank representative, a tech support agent, a romantic partner, a celebrity endorsing an investment, or even a family member in distress. What these scams share is a false identity used to manufacture urgency or trust — and then exploit it.

The FTC’s nine-year streak at the top of the fraud chart is not a coincidence. It reflects how versatile the basic formula is. As each specific variant gets more media coverage — as consumers learn to avoid one type — scammers adapt the impersonation to a new context. The core mechanism remains the same; only the costume changes.

The Newest Costume: Overdue Toll Messages

The fastest-growing variant in 2025 was fake overdue toll notifications.

Government impersonation scams overall rose 40 percent in 2025, and the FTC attributes a significant portion of that increase to text messages claiming the recipient has an unpaid toll balance and faces fines or legal action if they do not pay immediately.

These texts are sophisticated. They spoof real toll program names — EZPass, SunPass, FasTrak, TxTag, and others — and direct victims to websites that visually replicate the actual state toll authority’s interface. The payment page collects credit card numbers, billing addresses, and in some cases, Social Security numbers under the guise of “identity verification.”

The payments processed are small, often $10 to $35, which makes victims less likely to dispute them or report the fraud. But the financial data collected is the real product — it is sold to larger criminal networks or used to make larger unauthorized charges later.

If you receive a text about an unpaid toll:

  • Do not click any link in the message.
  • Navigate directly to your state’s toll authority website by typing the address yourself.
  • If you have unpaid tolls, they will show up there.

The FTC has seen the same pattern deployed with fake parking violation notices, library overdue fees, and missed jury duty summons.

The New Job Recruiter Text Scam

Alongside the toll text surge, the FTC flagged a new threat gaining momentum heading into mid-2026: fake job recruiter texts.

These messages typically arrive without prior contact and claim to be from a recruiter at a well-known company, often in tech, logistics, or healthcare. The text says there is an open position matching the recipient’s background and provides a link to “apply” or “schedule a screening call.”

The scam operates in several ways depending on the criminal’s objective:

Data theft: The fake application page collects personal information — full name, Social Security number, date of birth, bank routing numbers “for direct deposit setup” — and disappears.

Upfront fee fraud: The victim is told they’ve been hired and must purchase equipment, pay for a background check, or cover training materials. Money is sent; no job materializes.

Task-based scam escalation: A newer variant involves the “recruiter” offering a simple paid task (rating products, clicking links, completing surveys) that appears to pay small amounts. Victims are shown a growing balance on a fake platform, then told they must deposit funds to “unlock” their earnings. The deposit is stolen; the earnings are fake.

This third variant, often called a task scam or app scam, has grown aggressively in 2025 and 2026. The FTC notes that it tends to target people who are actively job seeking, recently unemployed, or looking for supplemental income — populations that are already under financial stress and more susceptible to the promise of quick earnings.

The FBI received thousands of task scam complaints in 2025, with individual losses frequently exceeding $50,000 and in some cases reaching six figures before victims realized the platform was fraudulent.

Why Imposter Scams Keep Winning

The nine-year dominance of imposter scams in FTC data is worth examining on its own terms. Why do they persist when so much consumer awareness effort has been directed at them?

Low barrier to entry for criminals. Running an impersonation scam requires no technical hacking capability. A phone, a script, and basic social engineering skills are sufficient. This keeps the criminal pool large and the supply of attempts high.

Authority works on almost everyone. Psychological research consistently shows that people respond to perceived authority — a uniform, an official-sounding title, a badge number — with compliance rather than skepticism, especially when combined with a threat. Education reduces this effect but does not eliminate it.

The scripts keep improving. AI tools have enabled scammers to generate more natural-sounding dialogue, write better phishing emails, and create more credible fake websites. The quality floor for imposter fraud has risen sharply.

Payment methods have diversified. In 2025, victims sent money to impersonators via bank wire, credit card, cryptocurrency, gift card, Zelle, Venmo, and even cash through ATMs. Each payment channel has its own victim profile; attackers test all of them.

The $3.5 Billion Is Not Evenly Distributed

The FTC’s data shows sharp age-based patterns in imposter scam losses:

Younger adults (ages 18–39) reported being victimized more often than older adults — but their individual losses were smaller, typically because they had less money available to lose.

Adults over 60 were targeted with government and business impersonation schemes specifically calibrated for their higher asset levels. When someone in this age group loses money to an imposter scam, the median loss is substantially higher: in some categories, it exceeds $10,000 per incident.

The FTC notes that for the first time in 2025, social media surpassed phone calls as the primary contact method in business impersonation fraud, reflecting the broader shift of scam activity onto platforms where identity and credentials are unverified.

What to Do When You Suspect an Imposter

The FTC’s guidance for handling suspected imposter contact is straightforward:

  1. Stop the interaction. Hang up, close the window, or end the chat. Do not try to argue or prove you know it’s a scam — engaging extends the interaction and gives the scammer more time to pressure you.

  2. Do not send money in response to an unsolicited contact. Legitimate government agencies do not call or text demanding immediate payment. Banks do not ask you to transfer funds to a “safe account.” Recruiters do not charge fees before employment begins.

  3. Verify independently. If you think the contact might be legitimate, look up the organization’s official contact information yourself and initiate a new call. Never use numbers or links provided by the person who contacted you.

  4. Report it. File a complaint at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. Even if you lost no money, reports help the FTC identify emerging scam patterns and issue public warnings faster.

For nine consecutive years, imposter fraud has been the most common way Americans lose money to crime. That run will likely continue into 2026 and beyond — unless the number of people who know how it works, and what to do when they encounter it, keeps growing.

That starts with awareness. Pass this on.