Americans Lost $18 Billion to Cyberscams Last Year. They Got Back a Fraction.

Americans reported losing nearly $18 billion to cyberfraud last year — more than $2 million every hour — and U.S. agencies have returned only a fraction of it, according to a congressional report released Tuesday.

The Joint Economic Committee investigation, led by ranking Democrats Sen. Maggie Hassan and Rep. Don Beyer, found the U.S. government isn't doing enough to fight the surge in cyberscams, and that partnerships with the private sector remain fragmented and voluntary. The government doesn't even keep a unified accounting of how much money has been seized from overseas scam compounds, or how much has gone back to victims.

"Transnational criminal organizations run massive compounds that exploit U.S. technology, including AI, to carry out scams against Americans with devastating consequences," Hassan said in an email. "The scale of this exponentially growing challenge requires Congress, the Administration, and the private sector to all strengthen their efforts."

The report builds on a yearlong investigation into the global scam industry by The Associated Press and FRONTLINE, which the AP obtained before release. It calls for greater collaboration across agencies, support for victims, and deeper private sector engagement.

How much money is actually coming back?

The numbers, laid out agency by agency, show how hard it is for victims to recover funds even as seizures quicken:

• The FBI told the committee it returned $336 million to scam victims in 2025.
• The Federal Trade Commission reported returning $1.83 billion to fraud victims in fiscal year 2025 — but couldn't determine how much of that was lost to overseas scam compounds.
• The Secret Service returned more than $770 million in seized assets to fraud victims across fiscal years 2024 and 2025, though that money came from a range of fraud schemes.
• The State Department said foreign law enforcement agencies it supports seized proceeds "in the low hundreds of millions of dollars," then told Congress to ask the Justice, Homeland Security and Treasury departments for details.

Add it all up, and it's a sliver of the $18 billion in reported losses. Many victims don't report the crime at all.

The takeaway in plain words: seizures are accelerating, but recoveries aren't keeping pace with losses.

What happened to the Bangladesh program?

The report flags a second gap. As criminal scam networks expand into more countries, State Department cutbacks eliminated at least one anti-scam program in Bangladesh that had been training local law enforcement to conduct cyberfraud investigations.

A report last month by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, funded by the European Union, identified Bangladesh as an emerging hub for global scam operations.

The State Department pushed back. It said 60 employees in the U.S. and Asia dedicate significant time to fighting overseas scam compounds, and that it "has the tools it needs to combat the threat internationally."

Why doesn't the U.S. make companies liable?

The report urged Congress to pass pending legislation mandating a unified federal strategy to combat scams and establish a central location for victims to report losses and seek help. The White House has also pushed for greater federal coordination.

But the sharper fault line runs through the private sector. Several Justice Department officials told Congress that private companies should focus more on scam prevention — yet regulators and lawmakers have created no clear incentives for them to do so.

Unlike the 27-nation EU, the United Kingdom, Australia and Singapore, the United States has stopped short of holding technology, telecommunications or financial services companies potentially liable if they fail to do enough to protect consumers from scams.

Kate Griffin, a director at the Aspen Institute's financial security program, said there has been important progress, but the U.S. still lacks "durable, sustainable scam prevention."

"We don't see that showing up yet in reduced victimization," she said. "And that's what really needs to happen."

The story stems from an ongoing collaboration between the Associated Press and FRONTLINE that includes the documentary "Scammed." For businesses and banks, the report's message is blunt: unless Congress mandates liability or coordination, the burden of prevention stays exactly where it is — voluntary, fragmented, and falling short of an $18 billion problem.