The Federal Trade Commission has launched a new website designed to make it easier for victims of potential fraud to file a report with the federal authorities.
The new site, ReportFraud.ftc.gov, prompts those reporting a scam with “next steps” that offer specific guidance based on the nature of the scam.
Romance scams were by far the most costly to older Americans, causing nearly $84 million in financial losses last year. These scams usually begin with a social media contact and eventually lead to a deceitful request for money.
FAQs on the website include:
- What can I report?
Report anything you think may be a fraud, scam, or bad business practice. For ideas of what you might report to the FTC, check out consumer.ftc.gov for more information and advice, or take a look at the FTC’s latest cases at ftc.gov.
- I’m not sure if it’s a scam or fraud — should I still report it?
Yes, please report it. Whether you think it’s a scam, you know it is, or you’re not happy about a business practice, tell the FTC. The FTC and its law enforcement partners enforce a variety of laws. Your report makes a difference and can help law enforcers spot problems. Learn more about scams and how the FTC works to stop them at consumer.ftc.gov.
- Can I file a report if I don’t live in the U.S.?
If you live outside the U.S. or want to report an international scam, you can use econsumer.gov to file your report. It will then be included in the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel database. Econsumer.gov is a partnership of more than 35 consumer protection agencies around the world and helps identify trends and prevent international scams. It’s available in English, Spanish, French, German, Korean, Japanese, Polish, and Turkish.
The FTC also collects data related to various aspects of its mission and work and shares that data in different formats and at different levels of frequency. Explore Data links to visualizations, reports, API endpoints, and datasets.
Explore Data lets you dig into consumer data on fraud, identity theft, unwanted calls, and other consumer problems based on reports from the public to the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network database and complaints to FTC about unwanted calls. Our interactive dashboards let you spot trends and find out about top reports in your state and around the country. You can also dig into data about refunds the FTC got for people in FTC law enforcement cases, and see where that money went.
