Senators to introduce bill centralizing federal anti-scam efforts

Scam victims in the United States often have to guess which federal office can help, then repeat their story as losses keep climbing. Sens. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Rick Scott of Florida introduced the ReportScams.gov Act Monday to create a centralized reporting website and a new Federal Scams Action Plan, a bid to make fraud easier to report and easier for federal agencies to confront.

The proposal lands in a system the Government Accountability Office said is badly fragmented. GAO found at least 13 federal agencies involved in anti-scam work, but none of the agencies it spoke with knew of a government-wide strategy, and it said the FBI should lead a coordinated effort. GAO also warned that federal complaint data are too scattered to produce a single government-wide estimate of scam losses or even a common definition of a scam, which makes it harder to move from warnings to enforcement.

The scale of the problem explains the push for a central hub. The FTC said consumers reported losing more than $12.5 billion to fraud in 2024, a 25 percent jump from 2023, and investment scams accounted for $5.7 billion of those losses. In its older-adult report, the FTC said adults 60 and older reported $2.4 billion in losses in 2024, while the broader annual cost of fraud to older adults could be as high as $81.5 billion.

Congress has already seen a wave of related measures. In December 2025, Rep. Gabe Amo and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand introduced the National Strategy for Combating Scams Act, which would establish a federal working group led by the FBI to coordinate more than a dozen agencies. In February 2026, Sens. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Bernie Moreno of Ohio introduced the SCAM Act to crack down on fraudulent online ads, and the American Bankers Association backed that effort as a critical step forward. If the new Senate push advances, the central question will be whether Washington can finally turn scattered complaints into faster warnings, stronger enforcement and a clearer path back for victims.