Financial Fraud in America 2026: State Loss Rates, Income, Age and Scam Type

Short answer: this report measures activity reported to the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center, not every fraud incident in the United States. IC3 recorded 1,008,597 complaint reports and $20.877 billion in reported loss during 2025. The FBI reported that loss was 26% higher than in 2024 and listed an average reported loss of $20,699.

A complaint report is not necessarily a unique person, a verified crime or the location of an offender. Some incidents are never reported, some records omit age or complete loss information, and reporting behavior can vary by place and circumstance. For that reason, this report uses phrases such as reported complaints, reported loss and complaints per 100,000 residents.

The FBI's three-year tables show that Credit Card/Check Fraud complaint reports increased from 12,876 in 2024 to 18,774 in 2025. FinanceFirst calculates a 45.8% increase. Reported loss increased from $199.9 million to $282.7 million, up 41.4%.

The FBI category is broader than credit-card-only fraud. The public state tables do not provide a credit-card-only ranking.

Investment complaint reports increased from 47,919 in 2024 to 72,984 in 2025, up 52.3%. Reported Investment loss increased from $6.571 billion to $8.649 billion, up 31.6%. Separately, the FBI recorded 181,565 complaints with a cryptocurrency nexus and $11.367 billion in associated reported loss. Cryptocurrency is an overlapping descriptor, so it is never added to Investment or another crime type.

California led the 50 states in total 2025 IC3 complaint reports and reported loss. Raw totals describe the volume reported from a jurisdiction; population-adjusted rates describe reported activity relative to resident count. Neither measure is a probability that a resident will experience fraud.

Among the 50 states, Alaska had the highest complaint-report rate at 434.3 per 100,000 residents, followed by Nevada at 407.2 and Arizona at 378.7. California had the highest reported loss per 100,000 residents at $9.34 million, followed by Nevada at $9.21 million and Arizona at $8.27 million.

Washington, D.C. recorded 448.8 complaint reports and $14.04 million in reported loss per 100,000 residents. It is shown separately because it is a federal district and is not included in the 50-state ranks, medians, quintiles or correlations.

Why this matters: measured local patterns, not assumed causes

The table below adds context using measures that are actually present in the verified dataset. It does not attribute a state's position to age, digital-banking adoption, phishing groups or any other factor that was not tested.

Use the interactive dashboard below to search all 50 states and rerank them by complaint reports per 100,000, reported loss per 100,000 or average reported loss per complaint. Download the full CSV for raw totals, rates, ranks and classification fields.

A raw total, complaint rate and average loss answer different questions. To give local reporters a clearer starting point, FinanceFirst divides the 50 states at the state medians: 252.2 complaint reports per 100,000 and $18,137 average reported loss per complaint. Washington, D.C. is excluded.

Download the editable SVG, high-resolution PNG or chart data.

Across the 50 states, the relationship between 2024 median household income and 2025 reported loss per 100,000 residents was Pearson r = 0.634 and Spearman rho = 0.745. The deterministic 10,000-resample Spearman bootstrap interval was 0.577 to 0.849. Recalculating Pearson r after leaving out one state at a time produced a range of 0.609 to 0.688.

The same validation package reports Pearson and Spearman associations for complaint rate, average reported loss per complaint and cryptocurrency-descriptor loss rate. The full values, bootstrap intervals and leave-one-out ranges are in the analysis workbook, journalist workbook, JSON dataset and validation report.

Income quintiles show a similar descriptive pattern. Median reported loss per 100,000 residents was $3.26 million in the lowest-income group of 10 states and $5.93 million in the highest-income group. Median complaint-report rates were 214.5 and 302.4 per 100,000, respectively.

This does not show that higher income causes fraud. Median household income is not household wealth. The analysis is state-level, not person-level, and does not control for reporting awareness, transaction volume, urbanization, industry mix, population age, digital activity or other factors. It cannot identify which households reported losses or why.

The FBI reported 201,266 complaint reports and $7.748 billion in reported loss for people age 60 and older, the highest loss among the displayed age groups. The agency reported an average loss of $38,500 for that group and said 12,444 complainants reported losses greater than $100,000.

Age was not available for every complaint. The headline age-loss values are rounded in the FBI's accessibility description, so the displayed groups do not sum exactly to the national total. The age chart is national and should not be read as a state-level age analysis.

For complaints with a cryptocurrency nexus, the FBI reported $4.432 billion in losses for the 60-and-older group. Cryptocurrency descriptors can overlap crime types and are not added to Investment totals.

The public tables establish that reported losses increased. They do not isolate one national cause. Investment was the largest 2025 IC3 crime type by reported loss at $8.649 billion, and cryptocurrency investment fraud was described by the FBI as the highest source of financial loss to Americans at about $7.2 billion. The FBI also described long-running manipulation, fake trading platforms, social-media and messaging outreach, impersonation and recovery scams.

The FBI reported 22,364 complaints with an artificial-intelligence nexus and $893.3 million in associated loss. Investment complaints with a reported AI nexus accounted for $632.0 million, but the FBI cautioned that many complainants may not realize AI was involved. These figures show a reported AI connection, not proof that AI caused the overall increase.

Any stronger explanation requires transaction-level research, controlled analysis or verified practitioner evidence. The report therefore avoids attributing the national increase to one technology, age group, income level or state characteristic.

The clearest public operational evidence in the 2025 IC3 report involves rapid coordination after a fraudulent transfer. The FBI's Recovery Asset Team uses the Financial Fraud Kill Chain to communicate with financial institutions and law-enforcement partners and request freezes. For 2025, the FBI reported 3,900 incidents, $1.164 billion in attempted theft and $679.0 million frozen, described as a 58% success rate. These are FBI-reported program outputs, not the recovery rate for every fraud complaint.

Operation Level Up uses IC3 data to identify and notify people believed to be caught in cryptocurrency investment scams. The FBI reported 3,780 people notified in 2025, said 78% were unaware they were being scammed and estimated $225.9 million in savings. Again, these figures describe the program's selected cases, not the entire market.

The FBI advises people who discover a fraudulent transfer to contact their financial institution immediately, request a recall and file an IC3 complaint with complete transaction details. Speed matters because funds can move through multiple accounts. Policies and outcomes vary by institution and case.

1. Contact the financial institution or payment platform immediately using a verified number, website or app. Ask whether a transfer can be stopped, recalled or frozen. Reporting to a government portal does not replace this step.
2. Secure affected accounts. Change compromised credentials, enable stronger authentication where available and ask the institution whether cards or account numbers should be replaced.
3. Preserve evidence. Save dates, amounts, transaction IDs, wallet addresses, account details, phone numbers, messages, emails and screenshots. Keep original files where possible.
4. Write a short chronology. Record what happened, when you discovered it, who you contacted and the response. Use the same verified facts across reports.

Then use the reporting guide near the top of this page to choose the federal, state and product-specific route that matches the incident.

Citation-ready national finding: FBI IC3 recorded 1,008,597 complaint reports and $20.877 billion in reported loss during 2025. Complaint reports are not unique victims, verified incidents or total fraud prevalence.

Citation-ready state finding: California ranked first among the 50 states in reported loss per 100,000 residents, while Alaska ranked first in complaint reports per 100,000. Washington, D.C. was higher than every state on both rates but is reported separately as a federal district.

Citation-ready trend finding: from 2024 to 2025, Credit Card/Check complaint reports rose 45.8% and Investment complaint reports rose 52.3%. Credit Card/Check is a combined FBI category, not a credit-card-only measure.

Local reporting angles

• Compare each state's raw reported-loss rank with its population-adjusted rank. Rhode Island moved from 40th in raw reported loss to 7th in reported loss per 100,000.
• Use the four-way matrix to ask state agencies, banks, credit unions and consumer groups about local reporting access, case mix, transfer speed and prevention resources.
• Pair the state table with local interviews. The dataset cannot explain a state's position or establish whether an individual case is representative.
• Use the national age table carefully: it is not a state-by-age table, and some complaints omitted age.

Suggested citation: FinanceFirst Research. Financial Fraud in America 2026: State Risk, Category Trends, and Income Patterns. Version 1.2, August 27, 2026. https://financefirst.co/reports/financial-fraud-by-state-2026.

For due diligence, download the claim-to-source audit, validation report, state newsroom table and complete media kit.

The complete public package is ungated and designed for checking, local reporting and citation. It includes:

Reporter-ready files

• Journalist tables workbook with quick facts, a 50-state table, national tables, statistical validation, quality checks, sources and a suggested citation.
• Two-page journalist fact sheet and one-page methodology brief.
• Journalist media kit ZIP and SVG, PNG and chart-data pack.
• State rankings and newsroom angles, publication-safe quotable findings and journalist briefing notes.

Data and reproducibility

• 51-jurisdiction CSV, structured JSON and 12-sheet analysis workbook.
• National trend and age tables, source ledger and data dictionary.
• Claim-to-source audit, machine-readable validation report and SHA-256 checksum manifest.
• Full methodology PDF, machine-readable methods, version and corrections log and data and sources ZIP.
• Citation formats: plain text, Citation File Format and BibTeX.

Review status: Version 1.2 passed the published automated checks but does not claim approval from a Certified Fraud Examiner, payments-risk professional, attorney, cybersecurity specialist or other external reviewer. Source reconciliation and calculation checks are not a substitute for human expert review.

Questions and corrections can be submitted through FinanceFirst contact. The public corrections policy explains how material updates are handled.