Around 6% of U.S. adults, or about 15 million people, were scammed out of money last year, according to a new Gallup and Stop Scams Alliance survey. Victims reported that 12% of those successful scams involved AI or deepfakes.
The survey of 5,173 U.S. adult respondents, conducted in January and February, found that Americans lost a staggering $68 billion to scams in 2025. That figure is nearly four times higher than the losses reported to the Federal Trade Commission, largely because many victims do not formally report scams to authorities.
“These guys aren’t called organized crime for nothing. They’re actually organized, and they’re using their organization to start attacking us with scale now to the tune of $68 billion, which is like the annual revenues of Delta Airlines. It’s like a Fortune 500 company. It’s huge,” Stop Scams Alliance founder and CEO Ken Westbrook told NBC News.
The Rise of AI-Powered Scams
The survey noted that “the use of AI may be difficult to detect by scam victims.” Westbrook said the results align with other signs of the burgeoning issue of AI-fueled fraud.
In March, Interpol warned that AI could enhance and fuel fraud. “Enabled by artificial intelligence, low-cost digital tools and increased global criminal collaboration, we are witnessing the industrialization of fraud,” Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza said.
AI companies have also documented the trend. In February, OpenAI released a report documenting attempts to use its technologies to commit fraud and scams around the world, including one instance targeting people who were already victims of scams with faked advertisements for “scam recovery” services.
The Human Toll
The survey found that 1 in 4 Americans say they have been personally scammed at some point in their adult lives. The scams brought about severe financial hardship for 21% of respondents and moderate financial hardship for 46%.
Seventy-five percent of respondents reported that being scammed had negative impacts on their mental health and well-being.
“There’s a line in the Gallup report that hit me like a hammer when I read it. It says that ‘the emotional impact of scams can be more injurious than the financial impact,'” Westbrook said. His own mother was scammed in spring 2023 after clicking on a fake obituary page, which eventually robbed her of her life savings.
The survey also found higher scam rates among lower-income adults, people of color, and people without bachelor’s degrees.
Common Scam Methods
Fraudulent websites were among the most prevalent scams, reported by 40% of respondents. Phone, text, and email were each involved in nearly half of all scams, with 50% of scams involving two or more methods.
In nearly half of all scams, 49% of victims were deceived into personally sending money to scammers. Payment apps like Zelle and PayPal were the most commonly used methods.
Scammers used sophisticated research and impersonation techniques. One woman told Gallup that scammers contacted her after she posted about her two missing cats online, impersonating the sheriff’s department and an emergency vet clinic, and demanded around $780 for fake surgery.
The Data Gap
The survey helps fill a critical gap in understanding the scale of scamming in the U.S., Westbrook said. The U.S. does not regularly collect information from residents about scamming, unlike the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia, which conduct annual surveys.
“The government can’t even tell you what the percentage of people in the United States being scammed is. That’s because they just get victim reports, but they don’t know how much is unreported. So that’s the gap that we’re able to fill in with the Gallup survey,” Westbrook said.
The Bottom Line
A new Gallup and Stop Scams Alliance survey found that 15 million U.S. adults were scammed out of money in 2025, with total losses reaching $68 billion. Twelve percent of successful scams involved AI or deepfakes. Fraudulent websites were the most common method, and payment apps like Zelle and PayPal were frequently used to transfer money. The survey also found that scams caused severe financial hardship for 21% of victims and negatively impacted the mental health of 75% of respondents.
