Billions of Scam Phone Calls to U.S. Consumers Are Mostly Pushing Car Warranties

• It's amazing to contemplate, but scammers are responsible for making at least a billion phone calls per month—and maybe far more. One study says it is more like 100 billion so far this year. That's billion with a B.

• The most common scam type attempted to get people to purchase fake vehicle warranties. Health care and Social Security were the second- and third-most common topics.

• After the FCC sent cease-and-desist letters last month, the number of vehicle warranty scam calls dropped by 60 percent. But don’t expect this relief to last.

Last month, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) told phone companies in the U.S. to knock it off with the auto warranty scam calls. In a related action, the state of Ohio has filed suit against a small group of people, as first reported by Fortune, claiming they are the force behind a massive operation making robocalls about vehicle warranties.

Despite this kind of government action, scammers aren’t going to quietly stop now, as a new report covering the most common types of scam calls and emerging scam trends showed.

The National Consumer Law Center says "more than a billion" scam calls go out every month to U.S. consumers and that there were more than 50 billion in 2021. But a company called First Orion, which provides scam protection solutions, thinks the number could be far higher. First Orion recently issued its "2022 Mid-Year Phone Scam Report," which estimates that U.S. consumers were on the receiving end of 101 billion scam calls during just the first half of 2022. First Orion projects that this resulted in over 80 million successful scam attempts and cumulative financial losses of up to $40 billion.

According to a customer survey done together with the report, First Orion found that 53 percent of people said they received more scam calls in 2022 than they did in 2021. Young people were hit hardest, First Orion said, with two-thirds of 18-to-34-year-olds surveyed reporting some sort of financial loss because of a scam call.

The most popular type of scam call was about vehicle warranties, followed by health-care and Social Security issues. According to Kent Welch, chief data officer at First Orion, this lines up with historical trends.