Over the last three years, leadership at the Federal Trade Commission has prioritized high-profile cases to stay in the news and give the impression that they are helping consumers. However, this media-first strategy has meant ignoring the real, continuing harms perpetrated by scammers, grifters and swindlers who continuously devise ways to steal from vulnerable American consumers, especially the elderly and less financially sophisticated.
This misguided focus on “swinging for the fences” and courting flattering media attention has come at the expense of the FTC’s core mission to protect consumers.
Suppressing the schemes of cheats and fraudsters has long been one of the FTC’s primary missions. However, a quick review of the agency’s recent Annual Performance Report for 2023 shows this mission is not getting the attention it deserves, as a troubling trend of rising abuses ranging from identity theft to investment scams reveals.
Fraud, identity theft, and similar complaints to the FTC hit 5.4 million in 2023, up from 5.3 million in 2022 and 3.5 million in 2019. Reported fraud losses reached its highest level of $10 billion, $1 billion higher than in 2022. Investment scams alone cost consumers $4.6 billion in 2023, more than double that of 2021 when Lina Khan joined the FTC.
A catchall category of business-related abuses, including problems with credit bureaus, lenders and debt collectors, has also soared, becoming the second-biggest class of consumer complaints at 1.5 million in 2023. The biggest single category of complaints, identity theft schemes, which often target older Americans, resulted in $43 billion in losses in 2023 — a figure 13 percent higher than the previous year, according to AARP.
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Steve Pociask is president and CEO of the American Consumer Institute, a nonprofit education and research organization. For more information about the Institute, visit www.TheAmericanConsumer.org or follow us on X @ConsumerPal.