Identity Theft Statistics (2026)

Identity theft is one of the most common consumer harms in America, and the clearest count comes from the FTC's Consumer Sentinel Network. In 2024, consumers filed about 1,135,270 identity theft reports, up 9.5% from the prior year, part of 6.5 million total reports across every fraud and complaint category (see the table below).

The money at stake is large and growing. Reported fraud losses jumped 25% to more than $12.5 billion in 2024, even though the number of fraud reports barely changed. The difference is that a bigger share of victims lost money: 38% in 2024, up from 27% in 2023.

The FTC separates two things that often get blurred. Identity theft is when someone uses your personal information (a Social Security number, a card number) to open accounts or make charges. Fraud is a broader bucket of scams where a victim is tricked into paying, from fake investments to imposters.

Both are tracked in the same Sentinel database, but the losses reported here (the $12.5 billion) come mostly from the fraud bucket. Pure identity theft losses are harder to total because the cost is often borne by banks and card issuers, not disclosed by the victim.

Not all identity theft looks the same. Credit-card fraud was the most-reported type in 2024 at about 449,076 reports, followed by a catch-all other category (359,008) and loan or lease fraud (176,409). Bank-account, employment or tax, phone or utilities, and government-benefits fraud fill out the list (see the chart and table below).

The mix shifts with the times. Credit-card fraud is the durable leader in normal years, while government-benefits fraud spiked during the pandemic. Employment and tax-related identity theft, where a thief files a return or takes a job in your name, remains a persistent tail risk.

The scariest flavor of credit-card fraud is not a stolen card, it is a brand-new account opened in your name. Of the roughly 449,000 credit-card identity theft reports in 2024, about 406,139 involved new accounts versus just 52,432 on existing accounts, so new-account fraud is around 90% of the total (see the table below).

New-account fraud is worse for victims because it can go unnoticed for months and quietly damage a credit score. It has trended up over the past six years, from about 246,695 new-account reports in 2019 to 406,139 in 2024, according to FTC data compiled by the Motley Fool.

Identity theft reports exploded during the pandemic. They roughly doubled to 1,388,532 in 2020, peaked at 1,434,477 in 2021, then eased to just over 1 million in 2023 before rising again to 1,135,270 in 2024 (see the chart and table below).

Even after settling from the peak, reports remain far above pre-2020 levels (about 650,572 in 2019). The rate of identity theft grew from roughly 371,000 reports in 2017 to 1.4 million by 2021, a step-change that has not fully reversed.

The 2020-2021 surge had a specific cause: fraudsters exploited emergency relief programs. The FTC recorded an astonishing 2,920% jump in identity theft cases where victims said their information was used to apply for or receive government benefits, such as unemployment compensation.

For two years, government-documents-and-benefits fraud overtook credit card as the single most common identity theft type. As pandemic programs wound down, credit-card fraud reclaimed the top spot, but benefits fraud (70,324 reports in 2024) never returned to its pre-pandemic floor.

When it comes to dollars, investment scams dwarf everything else. Consumers reported losing $5.7 billion to investment-related fraud in 2024, up 24% and the largest of any category, followed by imposter scams at $2.95 billion (see the table below).

Investment fraud is not just the biggest, it is the most likely to cost you: about 79% of investment-scam reports involved an actual monetary loss, a far higher hit rate than most categories. Business and job-opportunity fraud ($750.6 million) and government imposters ($789 million) round out the fast-growing threats.

Investment scams have become the dominant driver of fraud losses, often pitched through social media, messaging apps, or fake trading platforms that show phantom gains until the victim tries to withdraw. Losses of $5.7 billion in 2024 made this the number-one category by dollars for the second year running.

Crypto is central to the playbook. Many investment scams route victims into cryptocurrency because the payments are fast and hard to reverse, which is a big reason crypto ranks second among all payment methods for reported losses ($1.4 billion).

Imposter scams, where someone pretends to be a government agency, a business, or a family member, are the most frequently reported fraud of all. They cost consumers $2.95 billion in 2024, and government-imposter losses alone rose $171 million to $789 million.

The problem is accelerating. Preliminary FTC data show imposter scams topped $3.5 billion in 2025, the top category for a fifth straight year, with bank impersonators the single costliest sub-type and about $920 million lost to government impersonators (FTC, June 2026).

Email was the most common way scammers made first contact in 2024 (371,664 reports), ahead of phone calls (284,651) and texts (246,783). But the channel that generated the most reports is not the one that drains the most money (see the chart below).

Social media is the costliest funnel by far: fewer reports (186,830) but $1.858 billion in losses, more than email, phone, and text combined. By 2025 social-media losses had climbed to about $2.1 billion, an eightfold rise since 2020, per the FTC.

Payment method is where the biggest dollars concentrate. In 2024 consumers reported losing more through bank transfers or payments ($2 billion) than any other method, followed by cryptocurrency ($1.4 billion), together exceeding all other payment types combined.

A fast-growing conduit is Bitcoin ATMs, where scammers direct victims to feed cash into a crypto kiosk. Losses hit $65 million in just the first half of 2024 (up from $12 million in 2020), the median loss was about $10,000, and people over 60 were more than three times as likely to be victims (FTC data spotlight).

Identity theft is not spread evenly. On a per-capita basis, Florida led in 2024 with 528 identity theft reports per 100,000 residents, followed by Georgia at 517, with Nevada, Texas, and Delaware rounding out the top five (see the table below).

Florida and Georgia were the only two states above 500 reports per 100,000, and both also topped 2,000 fraud reports per 100,000. Denser, faster-growing states with heavy financial and retail activity tend to cluster near the top of these rankings year after year.

Younger adults report fraud more often, but older adults lose far more when they are hit. People in their 20s reported losing money more frequently than people over 70, yet those aged 80 and up reported median losses exceeding $1,600, the highest of any age band.

Older adults as a group reported about $2.4 billion in fraud losses in 2024, concentrated in bank-transfer ($832 million) and crypto ($454 million) scams. The pattern is stark: the young are targeted for volume, the old for size, which is why elder-fraud losses dominate the dollar totals.

The numbers point to a few concrete defenses. Because new-account fraud is about 90% of credit-card identity theft, a free credit freeze at the three bureaus (which blocks new accounts) is the single highest-leverage step, and it does not affect your existing cards or score.

For the fraud side, the loss data is a map of what to be skeptical of: unsolicited investment pitches (the top loss category), anyone urging a bank wire, crypto, or a Bitcoin ATM, and callers claiming to be your bank or a government agency. If you are ever told to move money to keep it safe, that is the scam. Report identity theft at IdentityTheft.gov and fraud to the FTC to keep this data current.