Business 6 min read By Callum Montgomery
Georgia Attorney General Calls for New Strategy as US Scam Losses Hit $16bn
Chris Carr says scams are a distinct criminal enterprise from traditional fraud and require prevention-focused consumer protection, as FTC data shows losses rose 25% in 2025.
American consumers reported losing nearly $16 billion to fraud and scams in 2025, a 25 per cent increase on the previous year, according to Federal Trade Commission figures cited by Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr. Writing in a commentary piece, Carr argues that the scale of the losses — which include wiped-out retirement savings, upended family finances and damaged small businesses — demands a fundamental rethink of how consumer protection is organised.
Carr's central argument is that scams are not simply another form of fraud. Traditional fraud, he writes, involves criminals making unauthorised transactions using stolen credentials or compromised accounts, and can often be addressed by securing a transaction. Scams present a different problem: criminals increasingly pose as trusted businesses, financial institutions, government agencies or even family members to manipulate victims into sending money willingly. By the time a payment is made, the victim genuinely believes the transaction is legitimate.
The numbers bear out the shift. In 2025 alone, Americans reported losing $3.5 billion to imposter scams — nearly triple the total from five years earlier. Many of these schemes begin on social media, through text messages, spoofed phone calls, dating websites, fake investment opportunities and phishing emails. In Georgia, Carr says his office has seen cryptocurrency investment scams, government impersonation schemes, romance scams and business email compromise attacks grow in sophistication, creating devastating losses for households and firms.
For too long, Carr argues, public debate has focused on the final stage of a scam, by which point a victim may have been manipulated over days, weeks or even months. The real opportunities to intervene exist throughout the process: when deceptive advertisements appear online, when scam text messages are sent, when criminals impersonate trusted institutions, when suspicious accounts surface, and when funds can still be intercepted before reaching criminal organisations. A strategy focused on only one stage, he warns, will always fall short.
No single organisation or sector can solve the problem alone, according to Carr. Attorneys general, federal agencies, technology companies, telecommunications providers, financial institutions, payment companies, merchants, consumer advocates and law enforcement each see a different part of the criminal enterprise. Combining their knowledge and resources, he argues, is the only way to protect consumers before losses occur.
Work is already under way across the public and private sectors. Businesses are investing in artificial intelligence, stronger authentication, behavioural analytics, fraud detection and transaction monitoring to identify suspicious activity earlier and disrupt criminal activity before consumers suffer losses. Law enforcement agencies are expanding partnerships and their capacity to investigate sophisticated criminal organisations. But Carr cautions that criminals are adapting just as quickly, making continued innovation, investment and collaboration essential.
Consumer education sits at the centre of Georgia's approach. Carr's office has visited seniors, retirement groups, churches and industry associations to share information on the latest scams and how to avoid them. It has also created three educational guides aimed at older adults, small businesses and military families to help them protect their finances and prevent cyber threats. Consumers who know what to look for, Carr writes, have a far better chance of ignoring a scam phone call, text or email.
Beyond education, Carr calls for faster sharing of threat intelligence between the public and private sectors so emerging scam tactics can be disrupted sooner. He also argues that law enforcement needs the resources to identify, investigate and prosecute the sophisticated criminal organisations behind the schemes. Georgia's White Collar and Cyber Crime Unit is partnering with local, state and federal officers to disrupt business email compromise schemes and is leading crypto scam investigations, but Carr says more work is needed to support state and local cybercrime units.
For generations, consumer protection has focused on holding criminals accountable after harm occurs. That work remains essential, Carr writes, but the next generation of consumer protection must also focus on preventing harm before it happens. Today's scams are coordinated, multi-stage criminal enterprises that exploit an interconnected digital economy and the human inclination to trust. Success, he concludes, will not be measured only by how much money is recovered after a scam, but by how many people never become victims in the first place.
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