Two numbers, both straight from the FBI's annual internet-crime reports. In 2024, Minnesotans age 60 and older reported $52.3 million in fraud losses. In 2025: $111.4 million. That is a 113 percent increase in a single year — and those are only the losses people reported. The FTC, modeling how few victims ever come forward, estimates the true national cost of fraud to older Americans in 2024 at somewhere between $10 billion and $81 billion.
I've sat across the table from fraud victims for twenty years. The money is only half the injury. The other half is the shame that keeps people from telling their own children — which is exactly what the scammers count on. So let's put the whole playbook in the open, with the government's own numbers attached.
How the money actually leaves
Nationally, complainants 60 and older reported $7.7 billion in losses to the FBI in 2025, up 59 percent. The biggest bucket by far is investment scams — $3.5 billion, nearly tripled in two years — followed by tech-support scams ($1 billion), romance scams ($584 million), and government impersonation ($413 million, up 47 percent per the FTC, led by crooks posing as the Social Security Administration and the FTC itself).
The FTC's data spotlight on big-dollar imposter scams reads like a script, because it is one. The call opens with one of three lies: someone is using your accounts, your identity is being used in crimes, or there's a security problem with your computer. Then comes the ask: move your money somewhere "safe." For victims over 60 who lost $10,000 or more, a third were directed to pay in cryptocurrency — mostly by feeding cash into Bitcoin ATMs — and in the very largest cases, roughly one in five reports involved buying gold bars and handing them to a courier. Federal prosecutors in Missouri indicted three men this February over exactly that scheme: at least $5.4 million in elderly victims' savings, collected in 65 pickups.
Say it plainly, because the government's own guidance says it plainly: no real agency will ever tell you to move money to protect it, buy gift cards, deposit cash into a crypto ATM, or hand gold to a courier. Ever. Anyone who does is a thief.
Minnesota just did something about it — and the story is instructive
Crypto ATMs — the kiosks in gas stations and convenience stores — became the cash register of elder fraud. The FBI logged more than 13,400 kiosk-related complaints nationally in 2025, over $388 million lost, more than half from people over 50. Minnesota's share: 222 complaints and about $4.1 million.
Here's the part worth studying. In 2024, Minnesota tried the moderate fix: a regulation (Minn. Stat. § 53B.75) requiring fraud warnings on the machines, a $2,000 daily limit for new customers, and refunds for defrauded newcomers. The state's own enforcement data then showed how it worked out: 120 complaints, nearly $1 million lost, and victims who did get refunds recovered an average of 16 cents on the dollar. The state's top cop at the BCA told legislators the machines were "a disproportionate and escalating threat" and that existing regulation had "proven insufficient."
So in May 2026, a bipartisan Legislature — 57–10 in the Senate, 122–12 in the House — banned the machines outright, and Gov. Walz signed it. Minnesota became the third state in the nation to do it, after Tennessee and Indiana. The kiosks went dark August 1 and must be physically gone by New Year's Eve. That is what accountability looks like when it works: try a fix, measure it honestly, admit it failed, act. More of that, please — everywhere in government.
The playbook that provably works
Elder fraud is one of the few crime categories with prevention tools whose results are measured. Three stand out:
Trained bank tellers. AARP's BankSafe study put 1,800 trained employees in about 500 branches for six months: they stopped nearly $1 million in fraudulent transactions, and trained employees saved an average of $865 apiece versus $70 for the untrained. Every Minnesota bank and credit union should run this training; ask yours if it has.
Transaction holds. Minnesota's Safe Seniors Financial Protection Act (Minn. Stat. ch. 45A) lets financial professionals pause a suspicious disbursement for 15 business days when they suspect a customer 65 or older is being exploited — extendable while authorities look. FINRA Rule 2165 does the same at brokerages nationally. A fifteen-day pause is often the difference between a close call and a life's savings in Kuala Lumpur.
Fast reporting. Speed matters more than embarrassment. The FBI's Financial Fraud Kill Chain reached $65 million of seniors' losses in 2025 and managed to freeze half of it — but only for victims who reported quickly at ic3.gov. Minnesota's Attorney General also takes these cases seriously — the office charged a Chippewa County man last December with felony exploitation for draining more than $90,000 from his own elderly mother — and its consumer line is (651) 296-3353.
What we can do
If you're a senior: put the phone down and call a number you look up — never one the caller gives you. If you're an adult child: have the conversation now, before the call comes, and agree on a family rule that no one moves money on the same day anyone asks for it. If you're a banker, broker, or teller: you are the last line of defense, and the data says training you works better than anything else we've tried. And if you've been hit: report it the same day, to ic3.gov and the AG's office — the only money ever recovered belongs to people who spoke up fast.
Minnesota's seniors built this state. A hundred eleven million dollars a year says the least we owe them is a government — and a family dinner table — that treats their protection like the emergency it is.
Sources
FBI IC3 2025 Internet Crime Report (released Apr. 2026) and 2024 Internet Crime Report — national and Minnesota tables (the one-year doubling is computed from the two reports' state pages); FTC, Protecting Older Consumers 2024–2025 (Dec. 1, 2025), including the $10.1–$81.5 billion underreporting-adjusted estimate; FTC Data Spotlight, "False alarm, real scam" (Aug. 2025); FBI IC3 PSA on cryptocurrency-kiosk complaints by state (May 15, 2026); Minn. Stat. § 53B.75 and Minn. Stat. ch. 45A, verified at revisor.mn.gov; Star Tribune (May 7, 2026) and MPR News (July 28, 2026) on the kiosk ban, including MN Commerce complaint and recovery figures and the BCA superintendent's letter; MN Senate vote (Apr. 9, 2026) per League of Minnesota Cities; MN House vote (Apr. 23, 2026) per House Session Daily; FINRA Rule 2165; AARP BankSafe research report (2019); DOJ E.D. Mo. gold-bar indictment (Feb. 4, 2026); MN AG press releases (Dec. 9, 2025; Jan. 23, 2025) and Seniors Guide to Fighting Fraud.
Reported-loss figures are floors, not totals; estimates beyond reported data are attributed to the agency that modeled them. Corrections: campaign@madgettformn.com.