The Billion-Dollar Retirement Scam Seniors Should Be Aware Of

The Federal Bureau of Investigations' Los Angeles bureau is warning seniors of a sophisticated phantom hacker attack aimed at swiping funds from their victims' financial accounts. According to the FBI's public service announcement, which was repeated on X in July 2025, the hack is a three-phase attack that involves criminals posing as someone from tech support, a financial institution, and a government agency to gain trust from their victims as well as access to their computers and bank accounts.

The FBI received 19,000 complaints involving such a scam between January and June 2023, with nearly 50% of victims being over the age of 60 and 66% of the total losses (more than $542 million) being from people 60-plus years of age (as appraised by the FBI back in September 2023). By 2024, the hacker scam bilked at least $1 billion from victims in the United States, Fox News reported, citing the FBI. Victims rarely recover their funds, though Pete Nicoletti, chief information security officer for Check Point Software Technologies, told Fox News they stand a better chance of some sort of clawback the faster they contact the authorities.

The way the scam works, per the FBI, is someone posing as a customer service rep or tech worker from a real company reaches out to potential victims through phone calls, texts, emails or even pop-up computer windows that tell victims to call a specific number. Once the number is called, a scammer instructs the victim to download a fake antivirus program that grants the fraudster computer access. After running a false scan, perpetrators claim the victims' computers are being hacked and instruct them to check their financial accounts to see if there are any unauthorized charges. This gives the criminals intel on those accounts. Victims are then told to expect a call from their banks or brokerages.

The victims are then called by people purporting to be from their financial institution with instructions to transfer their funds to another account falsely affiliated with the Federal Reserve or another government agency. Sometimes, victims are even contacted by someone purporting to be from the government who tells them they need to transfer their money to a purported safe account with an alias. If the victim gets suspicious, the hackers send an email or letter with an official looking letterhead. Rather than being safe, the victims transfer their funds to accounts controlled by the criminals who also tell their victims not to tell anybody why they are transferring their money.

The FBI advises anyone hit by such a scam to contact their local field office and the agency's Internet Crime Complaint Center. Prevention is the best measure, which includes not clicking unsolicited e-mails or texts or downloading software at a stranger's request. Also, the U.S. government will not request you to send money to foreign accounts via wire transfer, crypto, or prepaid gift cards, the FBI added.

The phantom hacker scam is just the tip of the criminal iceberg. Americans lost a terrifying amount of money, about $47 billion, from scams and identify fraud in 2024 (according to Javelin Strategy & Research). There are also AI-powered financial scams involving business email scams, biometric system hacks, and even deepfake celebrity campaigns. The type of scam that may cause victims more financial losses than any other are phishing attacks aimed at stealing victims' identities. Pete Nicoletti of Check Point told Fox News that "families should have dinnertime discussions" about securing themselves against such cyberattacks, adding that internet hustlers are even using AI to seek out details seniors post on Facebook, such as being a Chevrolet Corvette enthusiast, which can be used for future scams.