$2.1 Billion Lost to Social Media Scams: Facebook #1
- Michael Routhier
- Apr 29
- 6 min read
Three days ago, the FTC dropped a report.
The FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, the US government's consumer protection agency, publishes data on fraud losses every year. I read every one. And this year's numbers stopped me cold.
In 2025, Americans lost $2.1 billion to scams that started on social media.
Not email. Not phone calls. Not text messages. Social media.
And of all the platforms scammers used to reach their victims, Facebook was number one. By a wide margin. In fact, Americans lost more money to Facebook scams alone than to all text and email scams combined.
Let that sit for a second.
The platform where you look at photos of your grandchildren. Where you follow your community groups. Where you check in on old friends. That platform is now the single most dangerous place to encounter a scammer in the United States and there's no reason to believe Canada looks meaningfully different.
The Numbers Are Worse Than They Sound
I want to walk through the data because I think the full picture is more alarming than any single headline captures.
$2.1 billion in reported losses in 2025.
That's an eightfold increase since 2020, when the figure was $261 million.
Not doubled. Not tripled. Eight times. In five years.
Nearly 1 in 3 scam victims, 30%, said the fraud started on social media.
Facebook: $794 million in losses.
WhatsApp: $425 million.
Instagram: $234 million.
All three of those platforms, by the way, are owned by the same company. Meta. The same company that was just hit with a lawsuit claiming it misled users about scam ads running on its platforms, ads that Meta was reportedly making billions from.
And here's the line in the FTC report that I want you to read twice; "Since most scams aren't reported to the government, the real losses are likely much higher."
Much higher than $2.1 billion. That's the floor, not the ceiling.
The Three Scams Doing the Most Damage
The FTC broke down exactly how this $2.1 billion disappeared. Three categories account for the overwhelming majority.
Investment scams - $1.1 billion.
This is the one that concerns me the most for our community. Here's how it works. Someone connects with you on Facebook, sometimes a stranger, sometimes someone who has hacked or impersonated a real contact. They build a relationship over days or weeks. Then they mention, almost casually, that they've been doing very well with a particular investment, cryptocurrency, usually, or a trading platform you've never heard of. They offer to show you how. The early returns look remarkable. You put in more. And then one day the platform goes dark and the person is gone.
I was talking with a woman in our community recently; a retired school principal, extremely smart, financially careful her entire life. She told me she'd almost fallen for exactly this. "They were patient," she said. "They weren't pushy. They just seemed like a real person who wanted to help."
That patience is the technique. These are professional operations. They are not amateurs.
Shopping scams, the most common type.
More than 40% of social media scam victims said it started with an ad. A product that looked real, priced just low enough to be appealing, linking to a website that looked completely legitimate. They ordered. They paid. Either nothing arrived, or something cheap and wrong arrived, and the "company" vanished.
You've seen these ads. We all have. The Facebook algorithm serves them to you based on your browsing history, your age, your interests. They are targeted specifically at what you're likely to want. Which makes them harder to dismiss than a random email.
Romance scams.
I know some of you will skip past this one. Please don't.
Romance scams on social media are one of the fastest-growing fraud categories targeting adults over 55. Someone connects with you; widowed, often, interesting profile, warm messages. It builds slowly. Weeks, sometimes months. Then a crisis. They need help. Just temporarily. They'll pay it back.
They never pay it back. Because they were never real.
The shame associated with romance scams keeps most victims from reporting them. Which means the $2.1 billion figure almost certainly dramatically undercounts what this category alone costs.
Why Facebook Specifically?
It's worth understanding why Facebook dominates these numbers, because it's not random.
Facebook has more users over 55 than any other social platform. Your demographic uses it more, trusts it more, and is more likely to engage with ads and messages from apparent strangers than younger users who've grown up more skeptical of online interaction.
The FTC noted it directly; "Social media creates easy access to billions of people from anywhere in the world, making a scammer's job easier at very little cost."
Scammers can target by age, location, interest, relationship status, and recent life events; all of it handed to them by a platform that makes its money selling access to your attention. And when a scam ad gets flagged and removed, another one goes up in minutes.
Meta has the technology to detect and stop much of this. They are choosing not to prioritize it. The lawsuit filed against them last week makes exactly that argument.
What to Watch For
I'm not going to give you a generic "be careful online" list. You deserve more specific than that.
Any investment opportunity that comes to you. If someone you don't know, or someone you know only online, mentions an investment opportunity, a trading platform, or a way to "make your money work harder," treat it as a scam until proven otherwise. Real investment opportunities do not arrive via Facebook Messenger.
Ads for products priced suspiciously low. Before you buy anything from a Facebook or Instagram ad, Google the company name plus the word "scam" or "review." Takes thirty seconds. Saves significant grief.
Anyone who builds a relationship before asking for anything. Patience is a technique. If someone new in your life, online only, someone you've never met in person, eventually steers a conversation toward money, crypto, or financial help, that is the scam becoming visible.
Urgency and secrecy. Any request that involves keeping it private from family, or acting before you've had time to think, those are pressure tactics designed to bypass your judgment. Your judgment is the protection. Don't let anyone rush you past it.
This Is a Canadian Story Too
I know the FTC report covers American losses. But scammers do not operate on one side of a border.
The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre reports nearly identical patterns in Canada; investment fraud, romance scams, and fake online shopping are consistently in the top categories year over year. The platforms are the same. The techniques are the same. The vulnerability is the same.
If you have been targeted by a scam that started on social media, report it. Even if you lost nothing. Even if you caught it in time.
Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre: 1-888-495-8501 or reportcyberandfraud.canada.ca
Every report matters. The data is only as good as what gets reported. And right now, the real number is almost certainly far higher than $2.1 billion.
The Part That Actually Angers Me
Marcus Aurelius wrote: "The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are."
So let's know this for what it is.
Meta is running a platform that generated $794 million in fraud losses in a single year, and they were simultaneously making billions from the ads driving those losses. That is not an oversight. That is a business model operating exactly as designed.
The people losing that money are real. They are retired teachers and nurses and engineers and grandparents. People who worked their whole lives, saved carefully, and trusted a platform that had every incentive to look the other way.
That is not bad luck. That is a system failing the people it was supposed to serve and facing no meaningful consequence for it.
The lawsuit filed against Meta last week is a start. But a lawsuit is slow. What moves faster is an informed public that stops trusting these platforms with the automatic deference they've been given, and that starts demanding better from the companies, and from the governments that are supposed to regulate them.
➡️ Been targeted by a social media scam? [Read: How to Report a Scam in Canada — The Complete Guide].
Has this happened to you, or to someone you know? A Facebook ad that turned out to be fake, an investment pitch that came through Messenger, a new "friend" who eventually needed money? I read every comment and I mean that. Because the more of these stories that get shared in this community, the harder it is for the next scam to catch the next person off guard. You don't have to name anyone. Just tell me what you saw.
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