Fraud Prevention

What’s the issue?

Everyday, criminals impersonate financial institutions via fake calls, texts, and emails to scam Americans out of up to $196 billion dollars per year. While check fraud is still prevalent, criminals increasingly combine psychological manipulation and social engineering with spoofed caller IDs, social media impersonation, and stolen personal information to target consumers.

Banks are investing millions in fraud prevention tools, such as chip cards, AI-powered fraud detection systems, and multi-factor authentication, but scammers continue to adapt, posing a serious threat to consumers and the broader economy. With consumer fraud losses up about 25% from 2023 to 2024, it’s clear that banks can’t win the fight against fraud alone. 

We’re starting to see others stepping up. In November 2025, the Justice Department launched an interagency Scam Center Strike Force to crack down on scam centers in Southeast Asia that defraud millions of Americans every year. While this is a meaningful step forward in the fight against fraud, there is more that Congress, government agencies, telecommunication companies, social media, tech companies, and other stakeholders can do alongside banks to develop a national strategy to stop criminals and protect consumers.

How can we more effectively fight fraud?

To win this fight, we need to treat the fraud threat like the national emergency it is. There are several proposals to combat fraud, but policymakers should prioritize the following initiatives:

  • National Coordination and Strategy. Establish a White House Office of Fraud and Scam Prevention and cross-agency working groups—composed of banks, regulatory agencies, and industry stakeholders—to develop a national strategy to prevent scams and fraud.
  • Regulation and Industry Accountability. Develop clear and consistent fraud-related regulations across all industries and have the FTC and FCC require all telecommunications and social media companies to block fake caller IDs and fake bank text messages and take down impersonation accounts.
  • Coordination with Law Enforcement. Congress should establish a dedicated grant program for state and local law enforcement agencies to combat financial crimes and respond to scams. Such funding would enable jurisdictions to establish Financial Crimes Intelligence Centers similar to the Texas model. Ground-level, state and local approaches that are rooted in community relationships and operational agility are often more effective at identifying and disrupting emerging crime trends than relying solely on federal interdictions. 

Fraud is a threat to all Americans, and without a whole of ecosystem approach that includes all components, consumers will continue to be scammed out of their hard-earned money. Congress, government agencies, telecommunication, social media, and tech companies, and their regulators have a major opportunity to partner with banks to develop and execute strategies to protect Americans by stopping fraud and strengthening scam prevention. While we work towards our goal of winning the fight against fraud, learn how to spot and stop scams by checking out BanksNeverAskThat.com and PracticeSafeChecks.com.