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America needs a stronger response to financial scams—one that is durable enough to protect its citizens and agile enough to counter emerging threats enabled by artificial intelligence.
Last year, scams surged to a new high, affecting more than 15 million Americans and causing losses of at least $68 billion. Because these crimes are chronically underreported, the true toll may be far higher at potentially up to $200 billion. This is no longer a series of isolated consumer incidents. Scams now pose a threat to American households, businesses, and national security: they weaken household financial stability, erode trust in legitimate services, funnel illicit proceeds to transnational criminal organizations, and introduce broader risks to the U.S. and global economy. Technology is accelerating the problem, enabling fraud at an unprecedented scale and making deceptive communications more convincing than ever.
The defining features of today's scams are that they move swiftly across sectors, jump between communications channels, and attack seamlessly across borders. A scam rarely touches just one platform. Bad actors build trust or urgency over a text, call, social media message, or fake website before a consumer ever sends money or shares account information. In fact, a recent Stop Scam Alliance and Gallup Report supported by JPMorganChase found consumers reported that about 12% of scams leveraged artificial intelligence or a deepfake. Systems of prevention, reporting, and enforcement in the United States remain too fragmented to keep pace.
The logic follows that if scams move across multiple channels, the response must be ecosystem-wide and grounded in shared responsibility to effectively match or decelerate criminal tactics. No single actor representing one stage of the scam lifecycle can solve this alone. Banks, technology companies, social media platforms, telecom providers, non-profits, AI labs, law enforcement, and policymakers each have a role to play. The more these groups partner to drive education, share information, build prevention tools, and expand law enforcement coordination, the harder it becomes for criminals to succeed.
JPMorganChase is making significant investments in fraud prevention technologies and strategies; last year, it safeguarded customers from losing nearly $25 billion in fraud and scam attempts. Yet, banks are often the last line of defense.
By the time a customer comes to withdraw their money from the bank, it is often too late to stop the scam. Most scams originate upstream from banks, on social media, by phone, or through other channels, and that is where prevention must begin. New Federal Trade Commission data shows Americans lost $2.1 billion in 2025 to scams that began on social platforms, while Pew Research found most Americans receive scam calls, emails, and texts at least weekly. The numbers do not lie – only the criminals do.
These crimes are increasingly perpetrated by transnational organized crime rings, with money stolen from Americans funding human trafficking, drugs, and terrorism. It is a national security and quality-of-life issue with implications beyond our borders. That is why the answer cannot rest with any one institution.
We need far more cross-sector, cross-border data sharing and collaboration so that interventions occur earlier to disrupt criminals before a scam is complete, and law enforcement has the resources and tools to break up criminal rings.
Encouragingly, policymakers are increasingly recognizing the scale of this threat. While 82% of U.S. adults believe the government is doing too little to prevent scams, the response is beginning to catch up.
Bipartisan legislation on scam ads, romance scams, and fraud prevention including the Safeguarding Consumers from Advertising Misconduct (SCAM) Act and numerous other proposals reflect a growing consensus that more must be done. The Department of Justice's Scam Center Strike Force took major action against Southeast Asian scam centers, restraining more than $700 million in cryptocurrency. The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned a network of scam centers operating in Southeast Asia, and the Federal Communications Commission has advanced numerous policy proposals, including a proposed rule to combat illegal robocalls.
State policymakers are also taking action. States have enacted legislation empowering financial institutions to further assist customers through placing holds on transactions and implementing trusted contact programs. Texas created the Financial Crimes Intelligence Center to investigate organized financial fraud. And earlier this year, Nebraska enacted a first-of-its-kind law addressing scam ads and their propagation. Policymakers must build on this progress and support law enforcement to prioritize solutions that address the root cause: the criminals.
Emerging technology will continue making scams harder to detect, easier to personalize, and speedier to scale. Staying ahead will require every ecosystem actor to collaborate in ways we have not seen before.
This is what makes cross-industry initiatives so important, including The Aspen Institute’s Scam Prevention Initiative and the Global Anti-Scam Alliance (GASA). By working together, we are one step closer to systems-level change in how we confront fraud and scams here in the U.S.
Americans deserve a stronger response. Government, industry, nonprofits, and law enforcement must work together across every stage of the scam lifecycle—modernizing policy, strengthening enforcement, sharing information responsibly, and investing in prevention, detection, and consumer education. No single sector can solve this challenge alone. A coordinated national public-private strategy can close the gaps criminals exploit and stop more scams before Americans lose their money, trust, or security.
This material has not been reviewed, endorsed, or otherwise approved by, and is not a work product of, any research department of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and/or its affiliates. Information contained in this document has been obtained from sources, including those publicly available, believed to be reliable, but no representation or warranty is made by the document’s author or JPMorganChase as to the quality, completeness, accuracy, fitness for a particular purpose or non-infringement of such information. Sources of third-party information referred to herein retain all rights with respect to such data and use of such data by JPMorganChase herein shall not be deemed to grant a license to any third party. All information contained herein is as of the date referenced and is subject to change without notice.
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