Every fall, the same window that lets people improve their Medicare coverage also opens a season for stealing their money. Medicare’s annual enrollment period runs October 15 to December 7, and scammers time their calls, texts, and door knocks to the confusion it creates, posing as Medicare or as helpful plan agents to pry loose the one identifier that unlocks a person’s benefits. The losses are not small: Americans 60 and older reported $2.4 billion in fraud losses in 2024, and phone contact carries the highest median loss of any method. The single most useful fact heading into the season is also the simplest — Medicare does not cold-call to sell a plan or to ask for a number.
Why the money follows the enrollment calendar
The surge is deliberate. During open enrollment, legitimate plan advertising floods phones and mailboxes, which gives an impersonator cover to blend in with the noise. Health-related scams climb during this stretch precisely because time pressure and plan confusion make people more likely to answer questions they would normally brush off. A caller who sounds official and mentions a deadline is exploiting the calendar, not offering help.
What the caller is usually after is a Medicare number, which functions like a key to a person’s medical benefits and identity. With it, a fraudster can bill Medicare for equipment or services the victim never received, a pattern the Federal Trade Commission flags in its open-enrollment scam warnings, draining the program and sometimes leaving the beneficiary with denied claims or bogus charges to untangle. Because a Medicare number is tied to Social Security-linked records, handing it over can also open the door to broader identity theft, not just a single fraudulent claim.
The financial damage compounds when a scammer combines the number with a payment. Some pitches ask for a fee to “activate” a new card, enroll in a plan, or avoid losing coverage, often demanding it by gift card, wire, or payment app — the same untraceable channels that appear in nearly every successful scam. Once that money moves, it is rarely recoverable, which is what turns a two-minute phone call into a permanent loss.
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The rules a real contact never breaks
Medicare’s own conduct sets a clean baseline for spotting a fake. The agency will not call, text, or email people out of the blue to sell a plan or to request a Medicare number or payment, a boundary the FTC spells out in its guidance on Medicare impersonators. Any unsolicited contact that asks for that number, pushes a plan, or demands money is operating outside the rules that govern how Medicare and licensed agents are allowed to reach out.
The prohibition extends to the plan-selling tactics that show up most during enrollment season. Rules that govern Medicare marketing bar agents from making uninvited sales calls or showing up unannounced at a home to pitch a plan, so a stranger doing either is already breaking the rules before a word about coverage is spoken. Legitimate help comes from contacts a person initiates — calling the number on the back of a card, using the official Medicare line, or working with a chosen agent — not from whoever dials first.
Caller ID offers no protection, because the number on the screen can be faked to read “Medicare” or a local exchange. The safer habit is to treat the incoming channel itself as unverifiable: hang up on the unsolicited call, ignore the text link, and reach Medicare through a number looked up independently. That single reversal — never trusting the party that made contact — closes off the method behind the largest share of these losses.
Protecting the number and clawing back losses
Guarding the Medicare number is the practical core of prevention. It deserves the same caution as a Social Security or bank number: shared only with trusted providers, never read aloud to an unsolicited caller, and checked against Medicare statements for services that never happened. Reviewing those statements is often how a quiet, ongoing billing fraud is caught before it grows.
When something does slip through, reporting it quickly matters for both the individual and the program. Suspected fraud can be reported through Medicare’s fraud and abuse channels and to the FTC, and flagging a compromised Medicare number early can limit how much a scammer bills before the account is watched. Money already sent by gift card or wire is hard to recover, but a fast report can stop the next fraudulent charge and help investigators trace the operation.
The throughline of the season is that the scam’s power depends on urgency the enrollment calendar manufactures. A real coverage decision can always wait for a call the beneficiary places, to a number the beneficiary chose. The pitch that cannot wait — the one demanding a number or a payment before a deadline — is the tell, and treating every unsolicited fall contact that way is what keeps the enrollment window a chance to improve coverage instead of an opening to lose money.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed against primary sources by The Money Overview editorial team.
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