One-Third of Financial Fraud Victims Did Not Contact Law Enforcement, per CFP Board

Financial crime is rampant, as 62% of people reported that they personally confronted financial fraud in the past three years or knew someone who had, according to a survey recently released by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc. Losses from financial cybercrime have doubled from 2022 to 2025, totaling $20.8 billion last year, according to the FBI’s latest Internet Crime Report.

The types of fraud most often encountered by the CFP Board’s respondents were phishing (deceptive email) or “smishing” (deceptive texts), reported by 62% of respondents; impostor scams (51%); and investment fraud (20%). The data mirrored the FBI report, which identified the costliest forms of financial cybercrime in 2025 as online investment scams ($8.6 billion in losses), business email compromises ($3 billion) and fake tech or customer support ($2.1 billion).

“Potential scams often pressure people to act urgently and maintain secrecy, demanding payment in cryptocurrency, payment apps or gift cards. Being asked to pay to receive a prize or inheritance is another telltale sign of fraud,” said David Zuckerman, principal at Zuckerman Capital Management LLC and CFP Board ambassador, in an email to PLANADVISER. “Perpetrators of fraud also impersonate government agencies and banks, often claiming an account has a problem they can fix.”

Respondents aged 45 and younger were more than twice as likely to encounter fraud on social media than those older than 45—32% versus 15%.

More than half of respondents (54%) did not engage with the attempted fraud, and those who did (24%) often had smaller individual losses.

Nearly half of fraud victims surveyed (48%) had losses of less than $500, and only 18% reported losses greater than $2,500. As a result, 31% of surveyed fraud victims said they had not reported the incident to authorities because they did not think the amount was “large enough to matter.”

Staying Silent

Within the first 24 hours of falling victim to financial fraud, 42% of surveyed victims said they knew they were impacted. Another 25% learned within a week, and nearly one-quarter (24%) took more than a month to know, including 6% who learned more than six months after the incident.

One-quarter of surveyed victims said they did not contact law enforcement because they felt embarrassed or ashamed. The most-cited reason (38%) for not reporting the fraud was not knowing who to contact, 19% said they did not know how to contact, and 19% said they did not know they would receive help. One-tenth of respondents who stayed silent had fallen victim to a friend or family member.

Experts say financial advisers can recognize which clients may be vulnerable to financial fraud, such as senior investors; quickly report crimes, often as they are underway; and, in some cases, stop fraudulent activity when it is still reversible.

“If someone has already fallen victim to fraud, it’s important to recognize that recovering the loss is sometimes possible,” said Zuckerman. “By not reporting fraud, a victim does exactly what the perpetrator hopes for. Victims of fraud should approach reporting the incident by considering how it could prevent a friend or family member from falling victim to the same scam.”

The CFP Board’s research team surveyed 1,218 U.S. respondents aged 25 through 64 from April 8 through 13.