The 20 Area Codes Scam Callers Use Most: 2026 FTC Data

Scam callers do not pick their numbers at random. They pick area codes, and the ones they pick most are not the ones you would expect.

We looked at every phone number in our records against FTC Do Not Call complaint data, grouped by the area code the call came from. New York, Los Angeles and Houston are not in the top twenty. Tampa, rural West Virginia and western Kentucky are.

The 20 area codes with the most reported scam calls

What the list does not contain

No 212 or 917, New York City. No 213 or 310, Los Angeles. No 312, central Chicago. No 713, Houston. No 415, San Francisco.

Between them those area codes cover a large share of the American population, and none of them reaches the top twenty.

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What does appear is a run of mid-size and rural regions. West Virginia's single statewide area code sits third. Western Kentucky is fourth. Northeast Texas is fifth. Eastern Tennessee, central Virginia, northern Arizona and northern Illinois are all in the list.

Why smaller area codes lead

Two things explain most of it.

Familiarity is the whole point. The technique known as neighbour spoofing works by showing a number that looks local to the person being called. In a large metro area a local number is ordinary and carries no weight. In a smaller region, a local prefix stands out as familiar, and answering rates go up.

Number availability. Blocks of numbers in high demand metro area codes are heavily used and more actively monitored. Less saturated area codes offer more unused numbers to rotate through, and rotation is essential once a number starts getting blocked.

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The Florida entries are the exception in one sense and the rule in another. Tampa's 813 leads the whole list, and 321, 850 and 904 also appear, which puts four Florida area codes in the top twenty. Florida also reports more scam call complaints than any other state.

How to read the two columns

They measure different things and the gap between them is informative.

Numbers reported is how many separate phone numbers in that area code have at least one complaint against them. A high figure means many different numbers in rotation.

Complaints is the total number of consumer complaints logged against all of them.

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Tampa's 813 has 1,411 numbers and 3,008 complaints, about 2.1 complaints per number. West Virginia's 304 has 1,210 numbers and 2,424 complaints, almost exactly 2.0. Brevard's 321 is different: 680 numbers but 2,495 complaints, which is 3.7 per number. Fewer numbers, each used far more heavily.

Method

Figures come from FTC Do Not Call complaint records combined with reports submitted by readers, covering the numbers held in our database as of September 2026.

Numbers are grouped by the area code of the phone number the complaint was made about, not by where the person receiving the call lives. A complaint against an 813 number may have come from a consumer anywhere in the country.

Toll free prefixes were excluded, specifically 800, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877 and 888. These are not tied to any geographic area, so including them would say nothing about regions. They do appear heavily in the underlying data.

Two limits are worth stating. A displayed area code is not proof of where a caller is, because caller ID can be set to any number. And complaint data reflects the people who report, so regions with higher reporting rates will appear higher regardless of actual call volume.

Using this data

These figures are free to cite with attribution to The Scam Exposed. Journalists and researchers who want the full breakdown by state, by month or by complaint category can request it at info@thescamexposed.com and we will send it as a spreadsheet at no cost.

To check a specific number against these records, use the lookup on our home page. It is free and takes about ten seconds.