■ July 2, 2021, 6:00 AM

What 4.8 Million Scams Look Like

Here are all the ways to get defrauded, according to the U.S. government.

By Minh-Anh Nguyen

The Federal Trade Commission’s Sentinel database tracks fraud reports from U.S. consumers, including romance impostors, work-from-home scammers, and shady e-commerce sellers. This is a breakdown of all the agency's 2020 reports.

Reports appear in multiple categories in some cases. Categories with fewer than 5,000 reports, categories added or retired in 2020, miscellaneous unspecified reports, and other identity theft were omitted.

Data: U.S. Federal Trade Commission

There were 4.8 million reports in 2020, a 43% increase from 2019.

Nearly a third, 29%, of reports were for some type of identity theft, with forgery of government documents being the most common type.

Among the categories, impostor scams—in which, for instance, someone poses as a potential romantic partner and asks for money—e-commerce scams, and credit reporting scams were common.

The biggest increase in fraud was for forged government benefits applications, such as unemployment insurance, which was up nearly 30-fold in 2020 compared with 2019.

Data: U.S. Federal Trade Commission

More On Bloomberg