The Scam Report
What 367 real scam stories tell us.
We read 397 scam stories people shared on Reddit, measured 355,738 fake web addresses from a public feed, and took apart the 153 scams in The Scam Test. Here is what keeps coming up.
- 367real scam attempts, read one by one
- $4.9Mlost in the stories that said how much
- 355,738fake web addresses measured
- 153scams taken apart, screen by screen
01Who it happens to
It hits harder when it's someone you love.
Most people wrote about a scam aimed at themselves. But when the story was about a parent or grandparent, it was far more likely to end with the money gone.
44% of the stories about an older relative were romance scams: someone they had only met online, who kept needing money.
Some of the gap may be about who posts: a family often writes in once the money is already gone. Even so, it shows where the losses land.
02Where it starts
The phone still rings first.
Of the stories that said how it started, 34% began with a phone call: more than twice the next way in. Not a link or an email, but a real person talking you into it, live.
03Which ones finish the job
Some scams get paid far more often.
Most of these stories end without a loss. But not every kind of scam is equal: investment or crypto scams ended in a loss 62% of the time. Account takeovers, the most common kind, ended in a loss only 16% of the time.
Share of stories of each kind that ended with money lost. Kinds with fewer than 8 stories are left out.
04The money
The bigger the loss, the harder it is to undo.
Look at how the money left. Almost every loss over $10,000 went out in a way that is very hard to get back: crypto, a wire transfer, gift cards or cash.
The kind of scam behind the most losses over $10,000: romance scams, 10 of the 26.
The dots count only stories that said both how much was lost and how it was paid.
05Who stops it
When a scam gets stopped, it's usually by you.
Of the 193 stories where someone spotted or stopped the scam, 84% say the person caught it themselves. A bank or a family member stepped in far less often. In the moment, it's usually just you and the screen.
- 84% They caught it themselves
- 6% Family or a friend
- 6% Their bank
- 4% Someone else
- 1% A store clerk
06Anatomy of a fake address
What a fake web address looks like.
We measured 355,738 addresses from a public feed of crypto scam sites. They follow a pattern you can learn to see.
An example built from the most common parts
- 6.9% contain the word “claim”, the most common lure
- OpenSea is the crypto brand copied most, in 2,545 addresses
- 42% string words together with hyphens
- .xyz is the top ending after .com, on 9.8% of them
The endings they use
The names they borrow
07What scams want
Every scam wants something.
We sorted the 153 scams in The Scam Test by what they ask you for. Half of them want money or your card outright. Most of the rest want a way to it: a password, a code, your wallet.
How they hook you
08What gives it away
Check what it wants first.
Every scam in the test has three things to check. The one that gives it away most often isn't where it comes from. It's what it asks you for.
- 56%What it wants from you85 of 153 scams
- 32%Where it really comes from49 of 153 scams
- 12%How it hooks you19 of 153 scams
09The bigger picture
And that's only what gets reported.
- $20.9 billionreported lost to internet crime in the US in 2025FBI IC3 2025 report
- $7.2 billionof it to crypto investment scams, the biggest single lossFBI IC3 2025 report
- Nearly 30%of people who lost money to a scam in 2025 said it started on social mediaFTC, April 2026
- $704 millionreported lost to fraud in Canada in 2025, a recordCanadian Anti-Fraud Centre
Think you'd spot them?
Ten screens. Some are scams, some are real. Just answer Yes or No.
How we did this
- The stories: 397 posts from r/Scams with a full story, each read by an AI reader that filled in the same form (a few very long ones only up to their first 3,000 characters): who it happened to, where it started, what kind of scam, how they paid, what was lost, who stopped it. Only what the story said, never a guess. 367 described a real scam attempt; the rest were questions or warnings and are left out.
- Not a random sample: these are stories people chose to share, so they lean toward the dramatic and the recent. Read the numbers as patterns in shared stories, not national rates. Groups with fewer than 8 stories are never shown.
- The addresses: 355,738 crypto scam sites from ScamSniffer's public feed.
- The test's scams: every one of the 153 sorted by hand by what it wants and how it hooks you.
- Official figures: FBI, FTC and Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reports, linked above. Reported losses only: most fraud is never reported.