More Than a Quarter of Americans Reported Being Scammed Within a Year

Survey research reports that 28% of Americans say they were scammed within the preceding year, with an average loss of $730.

Scam losses are extremely skewed. Most are small — a few dollars on a fake listing, a subscription that will not cancel. A small number are catastrophic: retirement savings, house deposits, sums that end a person’s financial life.

A $730 average across that shape describes nobody. It is too large for the typical victim and unrecognisably small to the people whose experience actually matters. The median and the tail are the two numbers worth having, and neither is published.

This desk made the same objection to the $3.54 million retail average at 25-0808 and the $6.08 million financial average at 25-0616. It is the same statistical error in a different sector, and it is more consequential here because the tail contains individuals rather than companies.

28% in a single year means being scammed is not an unusual event. It is a routine feature of participating in a digital economy, experienced by more than a quarter of the population annually.

Set that against the framing this industry uses — vigilance, awareness training, spotting the signs. At better than one in four per year, the burden being placed on individual attentiveness is not one any population could carry.

Self-reported, self-selected, with "scammed" undefined and left to the respondent. Someone who bought a disappointing product and someone who lost their savings can both answer yes.

It is filed because the prevalence signal survives even generous doubt about the definition, and because the average is worth recording precisely as an example of what not to quote.