Elder Financial Exploitation Reports by State: 276,982 Bank Reports in 2025, Up 347% in Five Years

Disclaimer: General educational research only — not legal, tax or financial advice. Suspicious activity reports are suspicions, not proven crimes. If you think an older adult is being exploited, contact your local Adult Protective Services agency or law enforcement, and talk to an elder law or estate planning attorney in your state.

Estate Planning Data & Research → Elder Financial Exploitation Reports by State

Banks, money transmitters, brokerages and other financial institutions filed 276,982 suspicious activity reports (SARs) flagged as elder financial exploitation in 2025, according to our analysis of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s (FinCEN) public SAR Stats database. That’s 41.4% more than in 2024 (195,844) and 4.5 times the 62,014 filed in 2020. Filings haven’t slowed: 239,831 came in from January through August 2026, which puts 2026 on pace for roughly 360,000.

A SAR is a confidential report a financial institution sends to the federal government when it suspects a transaction involves a crime. Since 2013, FinCEN has asked filers to tick a specific box when they suspect an older customer is being exploited, whether by a stranger running a scam or by a relative, caregiver or agent who has access to the money. Because SAR Stats can be filtered by state, it’s one of the few federal data sets that shows where these suspicions are piling up. Relative to the number of residents 65 and older, the national rate was 42.9 reports per 10,000 in 2025, and the state rates range from 10.9 in Vermont to 404.0 in South Dakota.

For families, every one of these reports is about money that was meant to pay for someone’s care or to pass to their heirs. The documents in an estate plan decide who can legally act on an older person’s accounts, and who can’t. This page shows the numbers for every state and explains what to put in place.

Not sure which document fits your family? Our guide to trust vs. will explains when a will is enough and when a living trust adds protection.

Key findings

• 276,982 elder financial exploitation SARs in 2025, up 41.4% from 2024 and 346.6% from 2020. Reports have risen every year since 2020: 160,394 in 2023 and 195,844 in 2024.
• 2026 is running even higher. FinCEN received 239,831 reports from January through August 2026. At that pace, the full year would come to about 360,000.
• 42.9 reports per 10,000 residents 65 and older nationally in 2025. The middle state (North Dakota and Iowa) was at 30.9.
• Highest rates: South Dakota (404.0 per 10,000 residents 65+), Delaware (207.0), Rhode Island (162.3), California (117.3) and Utah (108.7). South Dakota, Delaware, Rhode Island and Utah are home to large card issuers and national banks, and FinCEN assigns a report to the filer’s headquarters state when the place the activity happened isn’t recorded, so their rates are inflated. California’s rate is not a headquarters effect on the same scale: it had 80,938 reports, the most of any state, up 83.8% in one year.
• Lowest rates: Vermont (10.9), Louisiana (18.0), Kentucky (18.1), Michigan (18.5), and Maine and New Hampshire (both 19.0).
• Banks file about half. Depository institutions filed 137,713 of the 2025 reports (49.7%) and money services businesses such as money transmitters and check cashers filed 45,898 (16.6%). Securities and futures firms filed 12,788. “Other” filers, a category that grew from 9,712 in 2020 to 79,849 in 2025, filed most of the rest.
• Only four states had fewer reports in 2025 than in 2024: West Virginia (−27.1%), Washington (−3.1%), North Carolina (−1.6%) and Indiana (−0.9%).

Elder financial exploitation reports by state, 2025

Ranked by reports per 10,000 residents 65 and older. State is where the suspicious activity occurred, or the filer’s headquarters state when that isn’t recorded.

What a SAR is, and what this count does and doesn’t show

A financial institution has to file a SAR when it suspects a transaction of $5,000 or more (for banks) or $2,000 or more (for money services businesses) involves money from a crime, is designed to evade reporting rules, or has no apparent lawful purpose. Institutions can file below those amounts, and many do for suspected elder abuse. The report goes to FinCEN, not to the customer, and banks are legally barred from telling the customer it was filed.

The elder financial exploitation box covers two different problems. One is fraud by strangers: romance scams, tech-support and government-impostor scams, and “move your money to protect it” schemes. The other is theft by someone the person trusts: a relative, a caregiver, a new friend, or an agent under a power of attorney. In a review of reports filed from June 2022 to June 2023, FinCEN found that about 80% involved scams by strangers and about 20% involved theft by someone the victim knew, and that adult children were named most often in those theft cases. That review is covered on our power-of-attorney abuse watch.

Keep three limits in mind when reading the state numbers:

• A report measures detection, not crime. A state’s count rises when banks there train staff to spot exploitation, use better software, or file more often to protect themselves. A rising count can mean more exploitation, more vigilance, or both.
• State means where the activity happened, or else where the filer is headquartered. SAR Stats places each report in the state where the suspicious activity occurred. When the filer doesn’t record a location, the report is counted in the filer’s own state. That inflates states that host national card issuers and online banks, especially South Dakota, Delaware, Utah and Rhode Island.
• One report can count in more than one state. A SAR that lists activity in several states appears in each of them. The 50 states and D.C. add up to 316,296 reports for 2025, more than the national total of 276,982. Use the national figure for the U.S. total, and the state figures to compare states.

What this means for your will, trust and power of attorney

Exploitation usually happens while the person is still alive, often during the years when memory or judgment is slipping and someone else has started helping with the bills. That’s why the documents that protect an older adult’s money are mostly the ones that work during life, not just the will.

• Choose a financial power of attorney agent carefully, and build in checks. A durable power of attorney lets a trusted person handle accounts if you can’t. It’s also the most common tool in theft by family. Many state laws based on the Uniform Power of Attorney Act let you require your agent to keep records, report to a second person, or get approval before making gifts or changing beneficiaries. You can name co-agents or a successor, and you can limit gifting powers. Without a power of attorney, a family may need a court guardianship or conservatorship to step in, which is slower and public.
• A revocable living trust adds a successor trustee who can step in without court. If you become incapacitated, the successor trustee takes over trust accounts under the terms you wrote, owes fiduciary duties to the beneficiaries, and can be required to give accountings. Naming a professional or co-trustee adds another set of eyes. A trust only protects assets that have actually been retitled into it.
• Name a trusted contact person at each bank and brokerage. Brokerage firms must ask for one under Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Rule 4512, and many banks now offer the same. The firm can contact that person if it suspects exploitation or can’t reach you. The trusted contact can’t make transactions.
• Keep beneficiary designations and the will in sync, and review them after big life changes. One common sign of exploitation is a sudden change to a will, a payable-on-death designation, or a new joint owner on an account. Keeping copies of your current documents with your attorney or executor makes such changes easier to spot and challenge.
• Write down who should not have control. If there’s a family member you don’t want handling your money, your documents can say so. Leaving someone out of a power of attorney and trust is often more protective than relying on family to sort it out later.

If a parent has already lost money, an executor or trustee may be able to pursue recovery after death, and in some states a person found to have financially abused a vulnerable adult can be barred from inheriting from them. Those rules vary by state; talk to an attorney promptly.

Related research: the VA fiduciary program by the numbers covers misuse of VA benefits by fiduciaries: VA conducted 690 misuse investigations and removed and replaced 677 fiduciaries in fiscal 2025, among 102,875 beneficiaries in the program (VA data).

Methodology

• Source. FinCEN SAR Stats (https://sarstats.fincen.gov/), the public statistics database of suspicious activity reports filed under the Bank Secrecy Act. We pulled counts for the suspicious activity type “Elder Financial Exploitation,” for all industry types, by year (2020–2026) and by state. The data was last updated by FinCEN on August 31, 2026; 2026 covers January through August.
• Counts. SAR Stats counts the number of reports that list the activity type. A report can list more than one activity type and more than one state. We used FinCEN’s national total for the U.S. figure rather than adding up the states.
• Rates. Reports per 10,000 residents 65 and older, using the U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2025 state population estimates (July 1, 2025). Not every exploitation victim is 65 or older, and not every SAR involves a resident of the state, so the rate is a comparison tool, not a victimization rate.
• Industry shares. National 2025 counts by filer industry type from SAR Stats.
• Pace estimate. The 2026 full-year pace is the January–August count multiplied by 12/8 and is an estimate.
• Excluded. Puerto Rico, other territories, military mail addresses and reports with an unknown state are not in the state table but are in FinCEN’s national total.

Frequently asked questions

Which state has the most elder financial exploitation reports?

California had the most in 2025, with 80,938, followed by North Carolina (21,147) and Texas (20,871). Relative to the population 65 and older, South Dakota ranked highest at 404.0 per 10,000, but that rate is driven by reports from national card issuers headquartered there.

Is elder financial exploitation getting worse?

Reports have more than quadrupled since 2020, and 2026 is on pace to set another record. Part of that rise reflects more scams aimed at older adults, especially online and cryptocurrency schemes, and part reflects banks getting better at spotting and reporting them. The SAR count can’t separate the two.

Can a bank stop a transaction it thinks is exploitation?

In many states, yes, for a limited time. A growing number of states let banks and brokers delay a suspicious disbursement and notify Adult Protective Services or a trusted contact. FINRA Rule 2165 lets brokerage firms place a temporary hold on disbursements from a customer’s account when they suspect exploitation. The rules differ by state and type of institution.

Does a power of attorney make exploitation more likely?

It can, if the wrong person is named or the document gives broad gifting powers with no oversight. But having no power of attorney isn’t safer: it can leave a family needing a court-appointed guardian, and it leaves the door open to whoever gets access first. The fix is choosing carefully, limiting gifting, and requiring accountings.

Will a living trust protect my parents from scams?

A trust doesn’t stop a person from being tricked into sending money from accounts they still control. It helps most when a parent’s capacity is declining: a co-trustee or successor trustee can take over management under the trust’s terms, and the trustee has legal duties to the beneficiaries. Combine it with a trusted contact person, account alerts and a carefully chosen power of attorney.

How do I report suspected elder financial exploitation?

Contact your local Adult Protective Services agency, or law enforcement if someone is in immediate danger. You can also call the Eldercare Locator at 1-800-677-1116 to find local help, report fraud to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and report internet scams to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.

Sources

Data

• Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), SAR Stats, suspicious activity type “Elder Financial Exploitation,” all industries, by year and state, data updated August 31, 2026: https://sarstats.fincen.gov/
• U.S. Census Bureau, Vintage 2025 state population estimates by age (SC-EST2025-ALLDATA6): https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/popest/2020s-state-detail.html
• FinCEN, Financial Trend Analysis: Elder Financial Exploitation, June 2022–June 2023 (April 2024): https://www.fincen.gov/sites/default/files/shared/FTA_Elder_Financial_Exploitation_508Final.pdf

Rules

• 31 CFR 1020.320, reports by banks of suspicious transactions: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-X/part-1020/subpart-C/section-1020.320
• 31 CFR 1022.320, reports by money services businesses of suspicious transactions: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-X/part-1022/subpart-C/section-1022.320
• FINRA Rule 2165 (financial exploitation of specified adults): https://www.finra.org/rules-guidance/rulebooks/finra-rules/2165
• FINRA Rule 4512 (customer account information, trusted contact person): https://www.finra.org/rules-guidance/rulebooks/finra-rules/4512
• Eldercare Locator (U.S. Administration for Community Living): https://eldercare.acl.gov/

Cite this data

You’re welcome to reuse the table with a link back to this page. FinCEN SAR Stats data is public domain.

Published October 26, 2026 by Family Estate Guide. Data vintage: FinCEN SAR Stats, updated August 31, 2026; Census Vintage 2025 population estimates. Editorial standards.