On July 22, House Financial Services Committee Republicans, led by Chairman Rep. French Hill (R-AR), released a staff report titled “Fighting Back: A Policy Framework for Combating the Rise of Financial Fraud & Scams.” The report found that the FTC received over 3 million fraud reports and $15.9 billion in reported losses from Americans in 2025, a 27.5 percent increase over 2024, with the true loss likely closer to $200 billion once unreported incidents are counted. Investment scams accounted for $7.9 billion of the reported losses, roughly half the total, while imposter scams accounted for $3.5 billion, the next-largest category. The report attributed low reporting rates partly to the more than a dozen separate federal complaint portals that field fraud and scam reports, and found that no government entity is charged with coordinating federal fraud-prevention efforts, a fragmentation the report said undercuts existing initiatives. The report also distinguished unauthorized financial fraud from financial scams that occur with the customer’s authorization, but under false pretenses, noting that scam losses generally fall outside financial institutions’ statutory liability framework and typically fall on consumers.

The report recommended that the federal government establish coordinated interagency task forces, impose targeted sanctions against scam operators, harmonize data collection into a cohesive reporting framework, and prioritize investigating and prosecuting fraud and scam perpetrators, including through legislation letting state and local law enforcement access existing federal grant funding to combat elder fraud and other financial crimes. It also recommended that Congress and federal regulators, including the FCC and FTC, remove barriers to information-sharing among financial institutions and other industries, and specifically endorsed the Strengthening Transaction Oversight and Preventing (STOP) Payments Fraud Act of 2026, which would give financial institutions greater flexibility to hold funds when fraud is suspected, and the Bank Fraud Technology Advancement Act of 2026, which would fund a fraud-prevention technology pilot for community financial institutions. The report further recommended that Congress strengthen anti-money laundering and consumer-protection authorities over digital asset markets and that the federal government launch a unified, national public awareness campaign on fraud and scams.