On this Plutopia episode, Mike Aaron — once a renewable-energy policy aide, now a “digital lifeguard” — explains how fast-evolving tech and social engineering are fueling scams and identity theft, citing FBI Internet Crime Center figures of $6.5B in reported 2024 losses (likely ~10× higher) and ~$160B across all cybercrimes, with average losses especially steep for seniors. He walks through common tactics (bank and FBI impostors, investment cons, romance “pig-butchering,” Coinbase login texts, gift-card shakedowns, AI voice cloning); argues that the crime wave is eroding social trust; and offers practical defenses: secure and monitor the primary email, use password managers and multi-factor auth, adopt passkeys as they mature, set code words/shibboleths, call back through official numbers, add friction for large payments, and lean on education and resources (e.g., AARP) to help individuals, families, and small businesses stay safe.

Mike Aaron:

In 2024, the IC3, the Internet Crime Complaint Center, part of the FBI who track this sort of stuff, reported losses of $6. 5 billion. Go back to the New York Times estimate that only about 10% of this gets reported: we’re talking $65 billion. That’s just investment scams. The actual total was $160 billion for all of the different online crimes — for the ransomware, the botnets, the malware, the extortion, the real estate, the identity theft, the credit card checkfront, all of them. $160 billion. Average loss for people over the age of 60 is $83,000 each.