National Slam the Scam Day Is March 5 — Here’s What You Need to Know

March 1, 2026 · 5 min read

This Thursday, March 5, the Social Security Administration is hosting its 7th Annual National Slam the Scam Day — a nationwide push to help Americans recognize and fight back against government imposter scams. It falls during National Consumer Protection Week (March 1–7), and the timing couldn’t be more urgent.

In 2025, the FTC received over 330,000 complaints of government imposter scams — a 25% jump from 2024. Social Security remains the most impersonated federal agency in the country, and losses run into the hundreds of millions of dollars every year. We cover the specific tactics in our post on Medicare and Social Security scams.

How the scam works

Government imposter scams follow a predictable playbook. Someone contacts you — by phone, text, email, or even mail — claiming to be from Social Security, the IRS, Medicare, or law enforcement. (IRS impersonation scams spike even harder during filing season — see our breakdown of tax season scams targeting seniors.) They tell you there’s an urgent problem with your account, your benefits, or your identity.

Then comes the pressure: act now or face arrest, lose your benefits, or have your bank account frozen.

According to reporting from Florida — the second-highest state for elder fraud — 41% of these scams start with a phone call. Another 15% begin with online ads or pop-ups. The scammers ask for payment in ways that are nearly impossible to reverse: cryptocurrency (33%), bank wire transfers (20%), or cash and gold bars (16%).

SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano put it plainly: “National Slam the Scam Day is a vitally important effort in confronting the fraudsters who viciously target America’s seniors and most vulnerable.”

Three things Social Security will never do

The SSA has been clear about what legitimate contact looks like — and what it doesn’t:

• They will never threaten you. No government agency will tell you that you’ll be arrested, deported, or lose benefits unless you pay immediately.
• They will never pressure you to act right now. Real government processes don’t have a five-minute deadline. If someone is rushing you, that’s the scam talking.
• They will never ask for payment by gift card, cryptocurrency, or wire transfer. The U.S. government does not accept Bitcoin. If someone says otherwise, hang up.

The numbers are staggering

These aren’t small-time crimes. In Florida alone, seniors over 60 lost more than $335 million across 9,000+ reported cases in a single year. And that’s just what gets reported — an estimated 63% of victims aged 55 and older never tell anyone.

Nationally, government imposter fraud costs Americans hundreds of millions of dollars a year, and the trend is accelerating. Scammers are getting better at spoofing caller IDs, creating official-looking emails, and using AI to generate convincing voicemails and text messages.

What to do if you’re contacted

If you get a call, text, or email claiming to be from Social Security or another government agency:

1. Hang up or ignore it. Don’t engage. Don’t click links. Don’t open attachments.
2. Verify independently. If you think there might be a real issue, call the agency directly using the number on their official website — not the number that just contacted you. For Social Security, that’s 1-800-772-1213.
3. Never share personal information. Your Social Security number, Medicare number, bank details, and passwords should never be given out over the phone or by text to someone who contacted you.
4. Report it. File a report with the SSA Office of Inspector General for Social Security scams, or the FTC for other scams. You can also call the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI.

Why most protection tools miss this kind of scam

If your parent has LifeLock or Aura, that’s great — but those services are designed to monitor credit and alert you after your identity has been misused. They won’t stop your mom from giving her bank account number to someone on the phone who says her Social Security benefits are about to be suspended. By the time the alert fires, the money is gone.

Call blockers like Nomorobo help filter robocalls, but government imposter scammers increasingly spoof legitimate-looking numbers — including real SSA office numbers. A blocked robocall doesn’t help when the call that gets through sounds like it’s from Washington.

The gap in most scam protection is the moment between “this feels wrong” and “I already paid.” That window is usually a few minutes. No credit monitoring service operates there.

What actually works: a check before you act

The most effective thing you can do for a parent or grandparent is give them someone to check with before they respond. (We wrote a full guide on how to protect your parents from scams if you want practical next steps.) That could be you — but you’re not always available at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday when the scam call comes in.

That’s the problem Antigrift is built for. If your parent gets a threatening voicemail from “Social Security,” they forward it to our number and get an instant analysis — is this real, or is it a scam? If they get a text with a suspicious link claiming their benefits are at risk, they screenshot it and text it to us. No app to download, no login to remember. Just a phone number on a magnet on their fridge.

It also works for the scams that LifeLock and call blockers weren’t designed for: a suspicious piece of mail that looks like an official notice, an email claiming to be from Medicare, or a voicemail cloned with AI to sound like a family member in trouble.

None of this replaces good habits — hanging up, verifying independently, reporting to the OIG. But scammers design their attacks to short-circuit good habits. Having a second opinion available in seconds is often the difference between catching the scam and losing thousands.