Gramps may not be the doddering old fool the grandkids think he is — especially when it comes to scammers.
Millennials, in fact, are more likely to fall victim to online and phone-based scams than the 70-plus set, a recent survey.
According to data recently released by the Federal Trade Commission, 40 percent of US millennials — those aged 20-29 — who reported being a victim of a fraud last year said it also cost them money.
For fraud victims over 70, only 18 percent admitted to losing money.
The older the mark, however, the bigger the amount ripped off.
The median loss was $1,092 for those over 80 and $621 for those 70-79, the FTC said.
For care-free (and often cash-light) Americans in their 20s, the median loss was only $400.
The FTC based its compilations for 2017 on 2.7 million consumer reports submitted directly to the agency or indirectly filed with law enforcement and organizations like the Council of Better Business Bureaus.
While submissions were down 10 percent last year, money lost to fraud increased 7 percent to $905 million, the FTC said.
Phony debt collections remained the No. 1 consumer complaint (23 percent of the total), followed by identity theft (14 percent) and imposter scams (13 percent).
The FTC defines imposter scams as someone pretending to be a government official, tech support representative, a loved one in trouble or someone else in order to get consumers to give the scammer money.
Although they ranked third in complaint volume, imposter scams cost FTC-complaining consumers more money — $328 million — than any other type of fraud.
Scammers mostly worked the phones, which were instrumental in 70 percent of the complaints. But their efforts yielded an illicit gain in only 9 percent of reported cases.
Wire transfers served as the preferred payment mechanism for fraudsters, accounting for nearly half of complaints submitted to the FTC that identified a form of payment.