The United States government’s response to escalating cyberscams is fragmented, leaving victims with limited options to recover lost funds, according to an investigation conducted by Democrats on Congress’s Joint Economic Committee (JEC).

The investigation, led by Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Rep. Don Beyer of Virginia, found that federal agencies do not have a consolidated or comprehensive record of how much money has been lost to cyberfraud, how much has been seized from overseas scam compounds, or how much has been returned to victims.

The report, published Tuesday, also concludes that the government does not “incentivize” private sector actors—such as financial institutions and social media companies—to “proactively detect and address abuse of the services that they provide while also protecting user privacy.”Online scam operations are not new, and neither is the knowledge that the issue is escalating. The FBI released an April report showing that Americans lost nearly $18 billion in 2025, amounting to more than $2 million an hour. Overall reported internet-crime losses—a broader category—reached $20.9 billion, up 26% from 2024 and roughly triple the 2021 total.

While the problem grows worse, the response to these crimes has not scaled along with it. The Congressional investigation demonstrates that only a fraction of the money lost to scams is recovered. It also points to the fact that the government fails to fully report on its existing repatriation measures.

The FBI told the committee that it returned $336 million to scam victims in 2025, and the Secret Service returned more than $770 million in seized assets to fraud victims in fiscal years 2024 and 2025—though that money had come from a range of fraud schemes, not just cyber threats.

Suzanne Sando, a fraud analyst at Javelin Strategy & Research, points out that “fragmentation” in the reporting system—including the differing time periods and fraud categories demonstrated above—complicates the government’s ability to grasp the full extent of the problem.

“Many of the groups and entities that scam victims report their losses to operate on disparate systems,” Sando says. “The fragmented nature of these reporting entities means there’s a lack of true accounting of losses—which also means that our grasp of overall scam losses is likely less than the truth of the situation.”

The Congressional report calls on the federal government to enact new legislation to address the rising issue, including the ReportScams. Gov Act, a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Hassan and Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott “to mandate a unified federal strategy to combat scams and establish a central location for Americans to find information and assistance regarding scams.”A more coordinated reporting system could help researchers and advocates better assess the scale of the problem. Another benefit would be helping the public stay informed about potential schemes, allowing advocacy groups to develop preventive strategies and educational materials for at-risk populations, like senior citizens and minors.

According to the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report, Americans ages 60 and older reported losses of about $7.7 billion, a 60% increase from 2024. They reported the highest total losses of any age group, the report showed.

Individuals under 18 reported nearly $13 million in losses across 13,168 internet-crime complaints in 2025, according to the same report.

But the true extent of the losses is hard to estimate, experts say. Cyberscams are underreported because victims feel embarrassed, fear judgment, and believe recovery will be impossible.

The last point is salient, because a stronger and more coordinated response—reaching some of the benchmarks outlined this week by members of the JEC—could give victims the confidence to report crimes in a timely manner, in turn making enforcement efforts more effective.

The report calls for legislation that would “hold accountable” countries that “enable or permit” scam compound operations, and advance federal cooperation with private sector entities like the financial institutions and social media companies at the center of these scams.

Experts note that this is a growing issue whose risk is only increasing as technology improves.

In alignment with the Congressional assessment, they tell TIME that a strategic, coordinated, and well-resourced response will be necessary if the government hopes to better protect Americans and help them recover funds lost to scams.

Online scams are on the rise Data from the FBI and Congress show that transnational criminal organizations run massive compounds—and their reach is skyrocketing. According to Sando, the growing use of artificial intelligence has been partly responsible.

Specifically, she calls out the prevalence of abuse on social media and the increasing sophistication of deepfakes—images, voices, or videos that make people appear to say or do things they did not.

“Criminals use social media to build trust through ongoing conversations and relationships, and AI has become a major part of criminals’ ability to manipulate situations and exploit victims,” she says. “Through AI, criminals can create more convincing and polished messages, fake social media profiles, and deepfake voices and videos with less time and effort.”

The manipulation tactics at the heart of these schemes have been consistent, Sando says, but criminals now have improved tools that allow them to quickly build credibility and “commit scams at scale.”Jake Braun, the executive director of the Cyber Policy Initiative at the University of Chicago, tells TIME that highly vulnerable populations are more exposed than ever before.

“You've got these, you know, super at-risk populations who just weren't online before, and now they are, and so the bad guys are taking advantage of that,” he says. “The idea that a kid had an iPhone and was on Facebook just wasn’t a reality until a few years ago.”At the same time, technology gives individuals ready access to funding streams. “They've all got Apple Pay on their phones,” Braun points out.

He explains that many of these scams are run by organized criminal networks operating in Southeast Asia, where scam compounds often use trafficked workers forced to defraud people online. Why is it so difficult to recover lost funds?

It can be difficult to recover stolen funds because the issue is diffuse and widespread—spanning multiple countries, financial institutions, and criminal enterprises—and it is being addressed by a small group of law enforcement agencies that lack centralized coordination.

Braun says investigations are complicated because they affect “millions of victims across dozens of countries” and include large numbers of cases with relatively small individual losses.

“It's just incredibly complicated,” he says. “Nobody's robbing a bank and stealing $300 million. It's $1,000 bucks from somebody's grandma here, and it's $500 bucks [there], that collectively is billions and billions. That's a really hard problem to get after.”Braun, who also served in the White House with former President Joe Biden as the acting Principal Deputy National Cyber Director, says that there are just a hundred or so top law enforcement officials working on the issue.

“So they're going to focus on big fish, and try and take down big rings, but that just means that they just don't have the bandwidth to go track down hundreds or thousands of dollars that are stolen from individual people because they're trying to take down groups that are collectively stealing billions,” he explains.

When reporting investigations and recovery efforts are “siloed” into different agencies, there are two immediate consequences: The process is more confusing for the victim to navigate, and it makes it difficult for government entities to coordinate quickly on an investigation and take action.

The U.S. State Department told those involved with the JEC investigation that it has 60 employees in the U.S. and Asia who dedicate significant time to fighting overseas scam compounds and said that it “has the tools it needs to combat the threat internationally.”TIME reached out to the State Department for comment. What obstacles stand in the way of providing better protections for Americans?

Sando says that within the private sector, there is “a lack of clear ownership and responsibility,” making it difficult to provide more protection.

“Scams can span multiple platforms,” she says. “Preventing and detecting scams to protect consumers requires a coordinated group effort across multiple industries—including financial services, telcos, and social media.”

In a perfect world, Sando continues, the government would coordinate these efforts and set clear standards for private institutions. She describes its ideal role as “facilitating relevant information-sharing, tracking consistent scam attempts and losses, [reporting] recovery rates for victims, and [adding] measures that are working to reduce the effectiveness of scams.”Social media companies, in particular, need to be incentivized to address “fraudulent ads and impersonation profiles/accounts,” she says.

Braun agrees, saying that holding the companies accountable is one of the most tangible ways that governments could more aggressively address these scams before they ever happen.

“They know everything about every click that's made on their platform,” Braun says. “This problem wouldn't exist if those platforms didn't exist.”Braun says meaningful discussions around prevention are often buried in conversations about how to address losses in the U.S.

“We should really think through the [cyber] grants we give to state and local governments from FEMA, [and having them include] a component where they're doing education for these at-risk communities: seniors, minors, migrants,” Braun says. “We’re focused on going after the ‘bad guys,’ when maybe we need to be focused on thinking about: ‘How do you specifically protect minors in this space? How do you specifically protect senior citizens?’”He believes that these considerations must be part of any comprehensive solution to bring down the rate of cyberscams in the U.S.

Once the government has a better understanding of how specific communities are impacted by these scams, he says, it can start to “tailor” solutions to help protect each vulnerable group.