Fraud and Scam Prevention Playbook

Fraud and scams are a national security and consumer protection crisis in America, affecting tens of millions of Americans and costing the U.S. economy billions of dollars each year.

By the Numbers
– $16.6 billion – Internet crime losses reported in 2024.^[1]
– $12.5 billion – Consumer fraud losses reported in 2024, a 25% annual increase from the previous year.^[2]
– 73% – U.S. adults who have experienced some kind of online scam or attack, common across age groups. Most U.S. adults get scam calls, texts and emails at least weekly.^[3]
– One in five – Americans who have lost money to an online scam or attack.^[4]

Banks are making unprecedented investments in security features and consumer education campaigns. Yet fraud continues to rise to alarming levels because most fraud threats originate outside the banking system, with insufficient proactive prevention by the social media and telecom platforms where fraud and scams originate. Another reason for the persistence of this problem is that these illicit activities are largely conducted in overseas scam centers out of reach of U.S. law enforcement. In 2024 alone, Americans lost $10 billion to Southeast Asia-based scam operations, a 66% increase over the prior year.^[5]

A full-scale solution to fraud requires collaboration among government and industries, and more proactive prevention from the platforms where fraud takes root. Policymakers should expand accountability across sectors, modernize regulatory requirements and enable real-time information sharing to support a cross-industry solution to this critical challenge.

BPI’s Five Policy Solutions to Stop Fraud at the Source

Social media and technology platforms should verify advertisers to stop scams before they originate and quickly take them down once fraud is reported.
The Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission should require telecom, social media and messaging app companies to monitor their networks and proactively notify victims.
Banks should be given a safe harbor to intervene when necessary to protect customers.
Congress and regulators should encourage and empower telecom providers, social media, messaging platforms and financial institutions to share data and information related to fraud and scams by creating a safe harbor to mitigate legal uncertainty about liability and antitrust concerns.
The U.S. government should establish a National Anti-Scam Strategy to prioritize prevention strategies and align accountability.

Fraud vs. Scams: What’s the Difference?

Fraud and scams have the same devastating effect on consumers, businesses and communities. But what’s the difference between these two terms?

Unauthorized fraud is when a customer’s financial account is used without their authorization. Examples of this type of fraud include credit cards being stolen or accounts being exploited online.
Authorized payment scams occur with a customer’s authorization, but under false pretenses. For example, a customer may send money to someone falsely advertising a bike on Facebook Marketplace.

The Federal Trade Commission outlines common red flags that indicate a scam.^[6]

Scammers may impersonate a trusted organization, such as a government agency or bank.
They may say there’s an emergency or a problem with your account.
They may pressure you to act immediately.
They tell you to pay in a specific way, such as with crypto or specific payment apps.

Scammers use social engineering tactics, such as impersonating trusted institutions like banks or government agencies, and exploit technology – for example, spoofing a bank’s phone number. Social media is a common thread in many scams, with fraudulent advertisements and fake profiles enabling scammers to reach more victims. Common types of scams include:

Spoofing. Scammers falsify the information transmitted to your caller ID display to disguise their identity. It may appear that an incoming call is coming from a local number, or from a trusted company or a government agency.
Robocalls. Robocalls are automated and/or autodialed calls to a phone, usually without the receiver’s permission.
Fake Ads. Fraudulent ads on social media help scammers target more victims by pretending to market a product or service. A recent Reuters investigation showed that 10% of Meta’s 2024 revenue was projected to come from ads for scams and banned goods. Meta shows its customers 15 billion scam ads per day, according to that investigation.^[7]
Check Fraud. Check fraud can take many forms, including check washing, when fraudsters steal checks from the mail, then use chemicals to erase the payee and amount while leaving the signature intact. They rewrite the check for a much higher amount to themselves. Checks are the payment method most often subjected to fraud, with 63% of respondents to an Association for Financial Professionals survey reporting that their organizations faced check fraud in 2024.^[8]
Romance Scams. Scams often involve social manipulation. Romance scams target victims through dating sites or apps and trick them into sending money.^[9] Consumers reported $1.14 billion in losses due to romance scams, according to 2023 FTC data.^[10]

Where Fraud and Scams Originate: The Role of Telecom, Tech and Social Media

Most fraud cases and scams originate on social media, communications and messaging platforms. Over two-thirds (68%) of U.S. adults get scam phone calls at least weekly.^[11] One major bank linked nearly 50% of recent fraud complaints to social media.^[12] When a consumer receives a text or call that appears to come from a reputable business, one logically assumes that they are talking to that business, not an overseas scammer.

Recent in-depth reporting from The Economist^[13] and the Wall Street Journal^[14] depicted the complexity of these global criminal enterprises. These “fraud farms” serve as call-center style operations, often based in Southeast Asia, that rely on workers (sometimes trafficked) to send scam texts, impersonate banks and run investment frauds. Criminals also hijack real social media accounts, deploy deepfake videos, run fake ads to steal funds and data and leverage these channels to train and recruit new scammers at an industrial scale.

By the Numbers
– 36% –Number of 2024 fraud reports involving a contact method originated via phone or text, leading to $1.5 billion in losses.^[15]
– $1.9 billion in fraud losses, or 15% of all reported losses, originated on social media.^[16]
– Six-in-ten or more – U.S. adults who say online scams are a major problem in text messages and phone calls, emails and social media.^[17]
– 68% – U.S. adults who get scam phone calls at least weekly.^[18]
– 63% – U.S. adults who get scam emails at least weekly.^[19]
– 61% – U.S. adults who get scam text messages at least weekly.^[20]
– One-third – Adults who get scam messages on social media at least weekly.^[21]
– Nearly 50% – Proportion of fraud complaints that one major bank received in the second half of 2024 that were linked to social media.^[22]
– 15 billion – Number of scam ads one social media network shows daily to its users.^[23]
– 10% – Projected portion of one social media network’s 2024 revenue from ads for scams and banned goods.^[24]

Misaligned Incentives

To effectively combat scams, tech and communication platforms must prioritize customer protection. They are in a strong position to prevent abuse, but their incentives often work against proactive action. Telecoms profit from every text sent and account maintained, even those used for scams. While some take down reported numbers, it’s unclear how thoroughly they investigate broader fraud networks. In some cases, carriers sell services to banks to trace scam texts – monetizing the problem rather than preventing it.

Social media platforms earn ad revenue from scam content, and are paid for each ad and click, whether the ad is fraudulent or not. For example, in an ongoing legal case, Meta is accused of allowing over 230,000 scam ads featuring Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest’s likeness to run across its platforms. A recent report by Reuters also found that Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, totaling an average of 15 billion likely-fraudulent ads per day.

Removal of fake sites is often slow. One bank developed technology to identify these sites and alerted Google to take them down. Based on these alerts, Google took down 3,094 of these fraudulent websites in 2024. However, removal can take 45 days or more as digital advertising companies remain hesitant to remove ads without the bank filing a trademark violation, which can delay the process and allow scams to continue. Meanwhile, consumers continue to be victimized until the digital advertiser takes down the ad.

These companies have the capability, but not the financial incentive, to prevent fraud at the source.

Five Policy Solutions

For decades, laws like the Bank Secrecy Act have helped prevent criminals from exploiting the U.S. financial system. But fraudsters targeting consumers directly via social media, messaging and spoofed calls face far less scrutiny, as these channels remain far less regulated despite their role in facilitating fraud and scams. To protect consumers’ financial security, these industries must be incentivized to detect and prevent scam activity.

BPI recommends a comprehensive set of actions that would enhance security and prioritize prevention, especially from platforms where scams and fraud proliferate.

1. Social media and technology platforms should verify advertisers to stop scams before they originate and quickly take them down once fraud is reported.^{^[25]}

Social media companies should adopt “Know Your Merchant” standards, verifying the identity of merchants or brands posting ads on their platforms before those ads go live. The UK, Australia and Taiwan have successfully implemented such ad verification measures.

Social media platforms currently profit from fraudulent ads because illicit actors pay to post their advertisements on those platforms. This can create an incentive to delay or avoid stronger protections. When fraudulent ads or marketplace listings are posted and social media platforms are alerted by banks or consumers to their fraudulent nature, the platforms should work expeditiously to take them down, within a timeline determined by regulators. They should also be required to proactively detect and dismantle scam-recruiting and training sites posted on their platforms.

2. The FCC and FTC should require telecom, social media and messaging app companies to monitor their networks and proactively notify victims.

These industries should be required to authenticate calls and messages to address spam, remove scam ads and impersonated profiles and alert consumers to suspicious activity.

Telecommunication companies, in particular, should share known scam numbers and message content and enable consumers to report scam messages as opposed to just flagging spam. These actions will help ensure that prevention starts where scams originate; prevention cannot occur after consumers have already been victimized and lost money. As part of this process, the banking regulators should work directly with the FCC and the FTC to establish consistent, enforceable obligations for the telecom and social media sectors.

3. Banks should be given a safe harbor to intervene when necessary to protect customers.

Banks recognize that consumers value quick access to their money, and regulators can and should strike the appropriate balance between anti-fraud due diligence and timely funds availability.

Banks operating in good faith to protect consumers should have a safe harbor from liability when they place holds on funds in this context. The bank regulatory framework should also modernize rules on checks and funds availability, such as Regulation CC, to avoid a rigid approach that undermines banks’ ability to fight fraud.

4. Congress and regulators should encourage and empower telecom providers, social media, messaging platforms and financial institutions to share data and information related to fraud and scams by creating a safe harbor to mitigate legal uncertainty about liability and antitrust concerns.

Fraud-related information sharing is too reactive, focusing on the cleanup after a consumer has lost funds rather than enabling the quick identification and disruption of fraudulent content and tactics between sectors. Congress and regulators should encourage proactive, real-time collaboration among telecom, messaging, social media and financial institutions by creating a safe harbor to address uncertainty regarding liability and antitrust concerns. These protections could draw on proven models, such as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which for over a decade has successfully enabled banks to share real-time threat intelligence with each other and government agencies.

5. The U.S. government should establish a National Anti-Scam Strategy to prioritize prevention strategies and align accountability.

A national strategy would elevate this critical issue to the highest federal level and help the United States develop a more cohesive approach. To unify efforts across the public and private sectors, the U.S. should create a White House office led by an official in charge of fraud and scam prevention. The interconnected nature of scams and fraud cutting across the jurisdictions of multiple agencies – for example, fraud that involves payments, social media and text messaging – necessitates a comprehensive, unified national response.

Policy Recommendations by Sector

Actions for Social Media and Technology Platforms

Social media companies should be required to have fraud and scam prevention programs in place to proactively remove scammers and criminals from their platforms. Actions that could be taken include:

Implementing robust identity verification and advertisement validity controls to prevent fraudulent accounts and ads from being created, as has been done in the UK, Australia and Taiwan.^[26]
Expediting the removal of impersonated profiles, fraudulent ads and scam marketplace listings when notified by banks and users.
Actively monitoring and removing known scam training sites that recruit criminals and teach them how to conduct scams.
Standardizing the process for financial institutions to report scam ads to be taken down.

Actions for Telecom Providers

Communications and messaging providers should also be obligated to implement programs that detect and prevent the use of their networks for consumer-targeted scams. Actions that could be taken include:

Ensuring all calls in the United States can be authenticated by both small and large carriers.
Alerting consumers in real time to unauthenticated calls and messages originating from outside the United States.
Alerting consumers when a call or message is suspected of being a scam, similar to Google Messages’ recently released capability.^[27]
Major carriers should enforce anti-fraud controls and requirements for Mobile Virtual Network Operators that lease networks from them.

Social media, telecom and messaging platforms should also enhance their sharing of critical information between institutions for fraud prevention and disruption. There has been ongoing dialogue between financial institutions, telecom and social media companies about sharing intelligence to combat scams. In the U.S., these efforts have primarily focused on enabling takedowns after financial institutions or retailers identify scam activity. In telecom, this has mostly occurred through bilateral agreements or incident response processes, which have proven insufficient to scale.

Many regulatory and legal hurdles stand in the way of sharing information between industries and organizations for fraud prevention purposes. The industries must work together to advocate for the removal of these barriers. Protecting customers from fraud demands earlier, proactive action from telecom, tech and social media companies to stop criminals from abusing their networks. It’s time for these companies to take responsibility for how their platforms are exploited.

Conclusion

In closing, the banking industry has made significant strides and raised public awareness to help shield Americans’ savings from fraud and scams, but lasting success is a shared responsibility. Fraud and scam prevention cannot rest on banks alone.

Encouraging progress is underway and recent private sector and government activities reflect broad recognition of the need for action:

Recent Efforts Underway
Sept. 18, 2025 – The House Financial Services Committee hosted a hearing, “Fraud in Focus: Exposing Financial Threats to American Families.”
Sept. 30, 2025 – Aspen Institute launched “National Strategy to Prevent Scams” developed by a coalition of more than 80 technology companies and consumer protection experts.
Oct. 7, 2025 – The FCC initiated a rulemaking to combat phone spoofing.
Nov. 12, 2025 – The U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia launched a Scam Center Strike Force to aggressively crack down on crypto-facilitated fraud and scams originating from Southeast Asia.
Feb. 4, 2026 – Senators Bernie Moreno (R-OH) and Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) introduce bipartisan “Safeguarding Consumers from Advertising Misconduct Act” (SCAM Act) aimed at tackling malvertising and bank impersonation on social media platforms.

These actions signal momentum. Policymakers must build on these efforts by expanding accountability and employing a whole-of-government response. Banks remain committed to advancing this work.