For decades, Americans choosing where to retire have weighed familiar questions: Which states have lower taxes? Where are homes still affordable? What is the weather like? How close is the nearest grandchild?
Increasingly, another question is drawing attention: How safe is it to grow older there?
A new analysis from CareScout suggests that retirement security extends beyond investment portfolios and healthcare costs. Using seven measures—including elder fraud, violent crime, property crime, police staffing, fall-related deaths, traffic fatalities involving older drivers and hospital capacity—the report ranks the safest and most challenging states for retirement in 2026.
While the overall rankings are worth a look, one finding stands out: Fraud targeting older Americans continues to climb, making financial crime one of the defining risks facing retirees.
Fraud Has Become A Retirement Planning Issue
Retirement has traditionally focused on the basics, like saving enough money, managing investments and stretching a retirement nest egg over a longer lifespan. But keeping that money has become increasingly difficult.
According to CareScout’s analysis, reported property crimes involving adults age 60 and older increased from 473.7 incidents per 100,000 seniors in 2015 to 769.8 in 2025. Violent crime against older adults also rose, increasing from 23.3 to 91.4 incidents per 100,000 seniors over the same period.
The FBI reported that it received more than 201,000 fraud complaints from victims age 60 and older in 2025 alone. The agency’s Internet Crime Complaint Center says that represents a 37% increase over losses reported in 2024, with the average loss for victims over the age of 60 exceeding $38,000—more than 12,000 elderly victims lost over $100,000. Those complaints involved schemes ranging from investment and romance scams to fake technical support schemes, government impersonation scams, and criminals posing as family members in distress.
Those numbers almost certainly understate the problem. Many victims never report being scammed. Some do not realize they have been defrauded until months later. Others don’t speak up because they are embarrassed or worried family members will question whether they can continue managing their own finances.
Today, fraud is no longer simply a consumer protection issue. It is also becoming part of retirement planning.
Some States Present Greater Fraud Risks
CareScout found significant differences among states when it comes to reported fraud against older residents.
Arizona ranked worst in the country, reporting 501.2 fraud complaints per 100,000 seniors. The District of Columbia followed at 312.9 per 100,000.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, Mississippi recorded the lowest reported elder fraud rate at 131.8 complaints per 100,000 seniors, followed by Maine at 163.0.
Fraud wasn’t the only issue for Arizona, which finished last overall. The state also ranked near the bottom for hospital bed availability, with just 10.9 beds per 1,000 Medicare enrollees, helping push it to the bottom of the rankings despite landing closer to the middle nationally for violent crime against older adults.
New Jersey Comes Out On Top
New Jersey ranked as the safest state for retirement overall. The Garden State performed well in several categories, including having one of the nation’s lowest rates of fatal falls among older adults, relatively few fatal crashes involving senior drivers, a strong police presence and comparatively low rates of fraud and crime affecting seniors.
Five of the top ten states overall were located in the northeast: New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut and my own state of Pennsylvania. Researchers attributed those rankings to a combination of lower elder fraud rates, greater hospital capacity, and lower rates of crime targeting older adults.
Western states occupied much of the bottom of the list. Along with Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon and Colorado rounded out the five lowest-ranked states, although each struggled for different reasons—from high property crime rates to fewer law enforcement officers or higher rates of fatal falls.
Safety Is Only One Part Of The Equation
While the CareScout report offers a useful way to think about risk, it’s not intended to be a definitive list. That’s because retirement decisions are rarely based on one metric or even one category.
Forbes’ Best Places To Retire In 2026 list, for example, evaluated nearly 1,000 locations on a broader range of considerations, including housing costs, state taxes, healthcare access, air quality, serious crime, climate risk and whether a community supports an active lifestyle.
On that list, affordability was a major component. Of the 25 places selected, 21 had median home prices at or below the then national median of $409,000 and seven were under $300,000. And there were some tradeoffs. Pittsburgh, for example, offered a median home price well below the national median, excellent access to primary care doctors and a favorable retiree tax climate, but it also had a serious crime rate above the national average. And Greenville, South Carolina, offered comparatively affordable housing, good medical access and an agreeable climate, but also carried an above-average serious crime rate.
Arizona presents a particularly useful example of why the methodology matters. The state ranked last in the CareScout safety analysis, driven in part by its elder fraud rate and limited hospital capacity. Yet Green Valley, Arizona, a scenic unincorporated area, made up of 130 mostly age-restricted (i.e. retirement) developments in the foothills of the Santa Rita mountains, 20 miles south of Tucson, made the Forbes list, thanks to factors such as a median home price 31% below the national median, a very low serious crime rate, a good ratio of primary care physicians per capita and a good retiree tax climate. It’s summers are hot, but housing is so cheap that many residents keep a second home in a cooler clime.
Neither result is necessarily wrong. They’re simply answering different questions. CareScout focuses on which states appear safest for older adults based on a defined set of health and public safety measures, while Forbes weighs a wider mix of economic, lifestyle and risk factors at the local level.
Retirement Fraud Is More Sophisticated
Gone are the days when fraudulent messages came through fax machines and were filled with poor grammar. Today’s criminals are far more likely to contact victims through text messages, email, social media or messaging apps. Artificial intelligence has made phishing messages more convincing (and less mistake-prone), while voice-cloning technology can mimic family members in distress. Criminal organizations operating overseas can target thousands of Americans simultaneously.
And the speed of the fraud is also concerning. Investment scams or family emergency scams—those that convince victims to send money to criminals posing as loved ones in distress—can wipe out savings in an instant.
Unlike credit card fraud, which may be reversible, money wired to criminals or sent through cryptocurrency or gift cards is rarely recovered. Law enforcement officials often note that if funds aren’t clawed back within 24 hours, they’re likely gone forever. That’s why being diligent and reporting immediately are key.
Tax Consequences and Potential Federal Relief
The financial damage from a scam doesn’t always end when the money is gone. Pulling money out of a tax-favored account, like a 401(k) plan or IRA, typically carries tax consequences. That’s true even if there’s no money left to pay the tax because it all went to a scammer.
Last year, the IRS clarified that some scam victims may claim a theft loss deduction. Under current law, taxpayers whose losses arose from a transaction with a profit motive—such as many investment scams—may qualify. Victims of personal scams, including many romance and grandparent scams, generally do not. Even when a deduction is available, taxpayers who withdrew money from retirement accounts to satisfy a scam may still owe income tax—and, in some cases, an additional tax on early distributions.
State Tax Relief Is Far Less Uniform
Unlike the federal rules governing theft loss deductions, states generally do not have scam-specific tax relief provisions. Instead, most rely on existing "reasonable cause" standards that allow tax agencies to waive penalties on a case-by-case basis when taxpayers can show that circumstances beyond their control prevented timely filing or payment.
That means two taxpayers suffering nearly identical scams may receive different treatment depending on where they live.
States also tend to distinguish between different kinds of fraud. Nearly every state has procedures to assist victims of tax-related identity theft, including removing fraudulent assessments and correcting taxpayer accounts. But those protections typically do not extend to taxpayers whose money was stolen in investment scams, romance scams, or impersonation schemes.
Wisconsin appears to be the exception. Beginning with the 2024 tax year, Wisconsin allows eligible taxpayers to claim a state income tax deduction for certain taxable withdrawals lost through financial exploitation. The provision is particularly significant for victims who were manipulated into taking taxable distributions from retirement accounts: although the withdrawal remains taxable federally, Wisconsin allows qualifying taxpayers to deduct the amount in calculating Wisconsin taxable income.
Other states have considered similar ideas. In 2026, Maryland lawmakers introduced one proposal that would have allowed a deduction for certain retirement assets lost through theft or fraud and another that would have provided a credit for state income taxes and penalties attributable to retirement withdrawals caused by financial exploitation. Neither proposal became law.
Elsewhere, victims are generally left to rely on traditional penalty-abatement rules. Those provisions may help when theft or another circumstance beyond the taxpayer’s control caused a late filing or payment, but relief is discretionary. It also typically does not erase the underlying tax—and, in many states, interest continues to accrue.
What’s Next for Taxpayers
The National Taxpayer Advocate has already urged Congress to expand federal relief for scam victims, including restoring broader theft loss deductions (those were suspended under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and permanently eliminated under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) and waiving early withdrawal penalties in appropriate cases. So far, there’s been no real movement to make that happen. But as fraud becomes an increasingly common retirement risk, policymakers may also need to consider whether state tax systems should provide more explicit relief for taxpayers who lose their savings and are still left with the tax bill.