It was seven in the morning when I got the call. There had been unusual activity on my bank account, and I was under investigation for financial fraud. A man on the line, who claimed to be a representative from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), reassured me that they didn’t suspect I was behind the fraudulent charges. However, they would need to temporarily freeze my accounts.
I was immediately skeptical. I was careful with my accounts, implementing all the standard protections to keep this kind of thing from happening. But when I looked up the man’s name, things seemed to check out: he was listed as a high-level employee on the FTC database. And when I asked for proof, he sent me documents that showed the fraudulent charges and pending freeze on my account – it all looked legitimate. I decided to do what he said.
The situation escalated quickly. The man told me that I needed to follow his directions without any deviation. I was told to go to my bank, withdraw $50,000, and deposit the money in another account, so I’d have access to funds while I waited for my account issue to be resolved. I was not to speak to anyone about this, and to keep him on the phone for security reasons.
Once I had the money in hand, the man on the phone directed me to a smoke shop to deposit the cash. When I arrived, I fed the money into a deposit machine in the back of the store. After I had deposited $46,000, the machine broke.
“You’re lucky,” he told me. “You just saved yourself $4,000.”
Although it’s hard to believe, it wasn’t until this point that I realized I was the victim of a scam. The scammer had leveraged my confusion, trust in authority, and fear of being accused of fraud to drain $46,000 from my bank account. He assuaged my concerns every step of the way.
As surreal as this sounds, my situation is far from uncommon. The FTC estimates that consumers lost more than $12.5 billion to fraud and scams in 2024, up 25% from the year before. And that estimate could be modest. In an earlier report, the agency approximated that adjusting for underreporting, the overall loss in 2023 could have been close to $158.3 billion.
This isn’t just a consumer problem; it’s a national security threat. In fact, a report from September found that Americans get twice as many scam calls than any other nationality. Scam compounds, where workers are often forced to operate under the threat of violence, in countries like Mexico, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and the Philippines specifically target Americans to drain their life savings.
Luckily, our lawmakers are starting to catch on. Last month, the Department of the Treasury sanctioned a network of scam centers in Burma and Cambodia, and recently U.S. senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and John Cornyn (R-TX) introduced legislation that would hold transnational criminal organizations accountable for cyber-enabled fraud schemes targeting Americans, among other crimes.
This is important progress. But if our lawmakers want to stop scams at their root, we need a whole-of-society approach that complements more aggressive international law enforcement efforts with stronger protections here at home.
Social media platforms in particular have become breeding grounds for all types of fraudulent ads, including AI generated deepfakes of celebrities or politicians asking for money for phony investment schemes. While platforms ostensibly have guardrails in place to prevent fraud, they continue to rake in tens of millions in scam ad revenue. There must be more accountability. These companies need to be pushed, and hard, to take proactive action to ensure criminals cannot run rampant on their platforms.
This threat isn’t going to go away. My story is only a drop in the ocean. Many lawmakers are doing the right thing by trying to crack down on scams on the international stage. But they also need to make sure our national strategy keeps pace.
I’ve met with local police and the FBI about my case, with nothing recovered. For me, the money is gone, but I hope my story makes other scam victims feel less alone. We have the opportunity to make sure other Americans don’t fall victim to the same type of scam that I did — and that starts with a whole-of-society effort, right here at home.