The Justice Department's Civil Division released its eighth annual report to Congress on Wednesday, setting out a year of work against the fraud and abuse aimed at older Americans. In the twelve months from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026, the department pursued nearly 350 criminal and civil enforcement actions, naming 712 defendants charged with stealing, or alleged to have stolen, $4,841,305,931 from 711,353 victims.
Almost all of it was criminal work: about 96 percent of the cases were criminal in nature. And nearly half of it came from abroad — 45 percent of the cases involved international schemes, the transnational rings that run scams into the United States from overseas and aim them at older people's savings.
The report, required each year under the Elder Abuse Prevention and Prosecution Act, is the yearly accounting of the department's Elder Justice Initiative, the office that coordinates federal enforcement, training and victim support against elder abuse, neglect and financial exploitation. Its cases cover fraud and abuse that targeted older adults directly or hit them disproportionately, and its brief runs from prosecuting financial scams to coordinating action against care homes that give their residents grossly substandard care.
Enforcement was only part of the year. The department also ran nearly 1,200 public awareness and training events, reaching over 62 million Americans, and helped organize the Never Ever Campaign, a public-private education effort warning people about government and business imposter scams — the calls and messages from criminals pretending to be officials or companies — which reached over 95 million people.
For victims, organizations funded under the Victims of Crime Act allocated $52 million to elder abuse victim services, and the department says it was able to return millions of dollars to older victims, or freeze millions, through a variety of programs. It gives no single figure for the money recovered. On the professional side, a new online training it backed — a toolkit for law enforcement officers and emergency medical crews called to long-term care facilities — drew over 700 professionals in its first month.
The numbers have climbed from the department's previous annual report, which counted more than 280 enforcement actions against more than 600 defendants accused over more than $2 billion taken, or attempted to be taken, from over one million older Americans. This year brought more actions, more defendants and a far larger accused haul, against a smaller counted number of victims — a picture of bigger cases against bigger operations.
What those figures mean in ordinary terms is retirement money: the savings older Americans spent a working life building are the target, and the department's case is that prosecution, prevention and victim support together are how that money is defended. Anyone who believes they or a family member has been hit by elder fraud can call the National Elder Fraud Hotline at 833-FRAUD-11 — 833-372-8311.
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