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Investment fraud is up, and not just for Boomers.
By Dorothy Gambrell and Reyhan Harmanci | Bloomberg Businessweek | February 21, 2025
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It’s no secret that the Digital Age has been good for scam artists. In the third quarter of 2024, the most recent period for which US government data is available, $2.5 billion was reported lost to fraud—more than tripling since the first quarter of 2020, with the median loss increasing from $321 to $500. The biggest increase in money affected people contacted on social media.
The nature of fraud has changed in recent years. Impostor scams, where the aggressor pretends to be someone known or trusted, defrauded people of the most money through the third quarter of 2021, with the majority of that cash involving romantic come-ons. The largest number of reported cases in 2020 involved scammers pretending to be government officials. In 2021, most reports were business scams. But by the end of that year, investment-related fraud took over and accounted for almost half of all categorized fraud losses in 2024’s reports.
Older people are commonly imagined to be the main victims of online scams, but the data show that they are not the only population affected.
Ever since World War II, the US has been the global leader in science and technology—and benefited immensely from it. Research fuels American innovation and the economy in turn. Scientists around the world want to study in the US and collaborate with American scientists to produce more of that research. These international collaborations play a critical role in American soft power and diplomacy. The products Americans can buy, the drugs they have access to, the diseases they’re at risk of catching—are all directly related to the strength of American research and its connections to the world’s scientists.
That scientific leadership is now being dismantled, according to more than 10 federal workers who spoke to MIT Technology Review, as the Trump administration—spearheaded by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—slashes personnel, programs, and agencies. Meanwhile, the president himself has gone after relationships with US allies.
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