While scams take many forms, they all end the same way: by tricking victims into sending money.
Fraud reports to the Federal Trade Commission, or FTC, surged from 325,000 in 2001 to about 6.5 million in 2024. Advances in technology and AI have made scams more widespread and financially devastating.
The ways scammers like to be paid, according to AARP, are:
Bank transfer or payment. If you give a scammer your account information, you’re money’s gone.
Cash. The scammer, telling you your account has been compromised, may ask you to wrap cash in a newspaper, or may offer to send a courier to pick it up.
Checks. The scammer sends you a check, which is fake, for more than you owe and you’re supposed to send them the overpayment.
Credit cards. You could enter a credit card number into a fake shopping site or put your card into an ATM that has been rigged with a skimmer.
Cryptocurrency. The scammer tells you to take care of an outstanding bill or pay to help a relative at a cryptocurrency ATM.
Gift cards and prepaid debit cards. The scammer, posing as a friend, boss, or religious leader who needs a favor, asks you to buy gift card and read them the numbers.
Gold bars. Posing as a government agent telling you your Social Security number or bank account has been compromised, the scammer directs you to convert your money into gold bars and give the bars to them for “safekeeping.”
Payment apps such as Venmo, Zelle, ApplePay, PayPal, and Cash App. Since these apps are easy to use, scammers run online shopping scams, pretend to be a landlord renting an apartment, say they sent you money by mistake, and much more.
Wire transfer. Scammers pretend to be collecting for a charity, want to sell you a great deal on a cruise, or even want to sell you a cute puppy.
As scams are expected to continue to skyrocket due to AI, financial apps, and other technology, closer coordination between consumer protection and the policing of illegal financing is needed.
A consumer organization argues that over the past two decades, the boundary between illegal financial activity and consumer fraud has eroded, as criminal networks increasingly rely on mainstream financial institutions, payment apps, and digital banking tools to move stolen funds.
In a new report, the Consumer Federation of America, or CFA, says the regulatory systems responsible for policing finance and protecting consumers remain largely siloed. The CFA argues that this separation no longer reflects how modern scams operate and leaves consumers exposed to systemic failures.
Regulations are needed to link consumer protection and illegal financing to stop scams, the CFA, an advocacy organization, recommends.
The report calls on policymakers and financial regulators to close this gap by aligning supervision and enforcement so that efforts to combat money laundering and illegal financing also deliver direct relief to scam victims.
It emphasizes that scams are both a financial crime and a consumer protection issue, and warns that as digital payments continue to expand, consumers will increasingly bear the costs of institutional compliance failures unless safeguards are strengthened.
The CFA report concludes that regulators need to adapt their oversight to ensure innovation doesn’t come at the expense of consumer safety, financial security, and trust in the banking system.
For details, read the report at “Follow the Money: Bridging Consumer Protection and Illicit Finance to Stop Scams.”
