Latest U.S. phone scam statistics for 2026, including FTC complaints, FBI losses, robocalls, spoofing, and what the numbers really measure.
These figures come from different government datasets and must not be added together as a single “phone scam loss” total.
Americans are losing enormous amounts of money to fraud. But one of the easiest ways to mislead people about phone scams is to take a huge fraud number and pretend it measures phone calls alone.
It usually does not.
The FBI recorded more than one million complaints and $20.877 billion in reported losses in 2025 through its Internet Crime Complaint Center. The Federal Trade Commission separately said consumers submitted 3 million fraud reports and reported $15.9 billion in fraud losses in 2025. Those are extraordinary numbers, but they cover many kinds of fraud and many ways scammers reach people — not just phone calls.
The strongest conclusion is more precise: phone calls remain a major channel for unwanted contact, impersonation and fraud, but there is no single trustworthy federal number for “all money lost to phone scams.”
Data note: Government complaint datasets measure reports, not confirmed incidents or unique victims. Different datasets may overlap and use different definitions. Reported caller-ID numbers can also be spoofed.
The latest full-year U.S. data mostly describes 2025 activity, even though this article is published in 2026. That distinction matters.
| Measure | Latest figure | What it actually measures |
|---|---|---|
| FBI IC3 complaints, 2025 | Top summary figure | Complaints of suspected internet/cyber-enabled crime, not phone scams alone |
| FBI IC3 reported losses, 2025 | Top summary figure | Reported cyber-enabled crime losses across many crime types |
| FTC fraud reports, 2025 | 3M | Fraud reports across contact channels |
| FTC reported fraud losses, 2025 | $15.9B | Reported fraud losses across contact channels |
| FTC imposter-scam losses, 2025 | Top summary figure | Impersonation scams reached victims through phone, text, email, social media and other channels |
| FTC Do Not Call complaints, FY2025 | Top summary figure | Consumer complaints about unwanted telemarketing/robocalls, not confirmed scam victims |
| Phone as initial contact method | Discussed below | Share of FTC loss reports with an identified contact method that began by phone — not a share of dollars lost |
The FBI figure comes from the 2025 IC3 Annual Report. The FTC’s 2025 fraud totals were summarized in testimony to Congress, while its imposter-scam figures were published in June 2026 in FTC data on 2025 imposter scams.
A scam can start with a call, continue by text, send the victim to a fake website and end with a bank transfer or cryptocurrency payment. Which channel gets credit for the loss?
Different government datasets answer different questions.
The FBI’s IC3 report measures suspected internet and cyber-enabled crime. The FTC’s fraud reports cover consumer fraud across many contact methods. The FTC’s imposter-scam category includes scams that begin through phone calls, texts, email, social media, search results and other channels.
That is why the FTC’s $3.5 billion in 2025 imposter-scam losses should not be relabeled as “$3.5 billion lost to scam calls.” It would be inaccurate.
Among FTC 2025 fraud reports with a reported loss and an identified contact method. This is a share of reports, not a share of dollars lost.
The FTC gives us a better clue about the phone’s role. In its 2025 fraud reports where a consumer reported a loss and identified how the scam started, phone calls accounted for that share. Websites/apps accounted for 31%, social media 28%, email 10% and text messages 7%. The FTC explains those percentages in its April 2026 Data Spotlight on scam contact methods.
Again: that percentage is a share of loss reports with a known contact method. It is not a share of all dollars lost.
The FTC’s National Do Not Call Registry offers one of the clearest official measures of unwanted-call complaints.
In fiscal year 2025, the FTC received more than 2.6 million Do Not Call complaints. Its Data Book breaks them down into roughly 1.60 million robocall complaints, 802,000 live-caller complaints, and about 214,000 complaints where the call type was not reported.
Those numbers come from the FTC National Do Not Call Registry Data Book for FY2025.
But the FTC explicitly warns that these complaints are unverified consumer reports. They are not the result of a representative survey, and they do not prove that every reported caller-ID number belongs to a scammer.
So this sentence is defensible:
More than 2.6 million unwanted-call complaints were filed with the FTC in FY2025.
This one is not:
The FTC confirmed 2.6 million scam calls in 2025.
A phone number that looks familiar is not proof of identity.
The FTC warns that scammers can manipulate caller ID so that a call appears to come from a local number, a government agency, a bank or another trusted organization. That technique is called caller-ID spoofing. The agency specifically tells consumers not to rely on caller ID to verify who is calling. See the FTC’s guidance on phone scams and blocking unwanted calls.
Spoofing creates a second problem: the number shown on your screen may belong to an innocent person or business. That is why a reported phone number should be treated as a reported caller-ID value, not automatic proof about the owner of that number.
No call-blocking tool can replace basic fraud awareness.
If an unexpected caller claims to represent your bank, a government agency or another institution and asks for money or sensitive information, the FTC recommends ending the call and independently contacting the organization through a number or website you know is legitimate.
For unwanted calls, blocking and call labeling can reduce interruptions, but spoofing means blocking one displayed number does not guarantee the same caller cannot appear under another number.
A separate strategy is to reduce the classes of calls that can interrupt you in the first place. For example, you might block calls from numbers outside your contacts, maintain exceptions for important callers and temporarily relax that rule when you are expecting a legitimate unfamiliar call.
That is call control, not scam detection.
Disclosure: LineLayer Learn is published by the makers of LineLayer.
LineLayer is an Android call-filtering tool built around explicit call rules and exceptions. Its role is to help you decide which eligible calls can reach you — not to certify that a caller is fraudulent.
If you prefer a rules-based approach to unfamiliar callers, you can learn how LineLayer works.
For the terminology behind these rules, see private, hidden and unknown calls and what “Unknown” actually means in Phone by Google.
The numbers are large enough without exaggerating them.
In 2025, the FBI recorded $20.877 billion in reported cyber-enabled crime losses. The FTC recorded $15.9 billion in total reported fraud losses, more than $3.5 billion in imposter-scam losses, and more than 2.6 million Do Not Call complaints.
Those figures measure different things. They should not be added together or turned into a fictional “phone scam total.”
The useful conclusion is simpler: scammers still use phone calls, caller ID can be manipulated, and reducing exposure to unwanted calls can be one part of a broader strategy for staying harder to reach and harder to pressure.