There’s a reason they say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.
Nevada just hit the jackpot in a new survey crowning it America’s most deceitful state — after experts tallied up fraud cases, romance swindles, identity theft, bogus doctor’s notes, fake IDs and even Google searches for notorious cheating site Ashley Madison.
Almost 1 in 5 Nevada residents admits to frequent fibbing, according to researchers at online tarot reading site Tarotoo, who found the Silver State also has the second-highest rate of romance scams.
In February, the feds nabbed a serial Vegas vixen in a scheme the FBI described as a “romance scam on steroids,” in which Aurora Phelps, 43, was accused of using dating apps to seduce, incapacitate, steal the identities and empty the bank accounts of men in their 60s and 70s.
The three-year spree was linked to three deaths, authorities said.
While falsehoods flew in Nevada, other states took the cake in individual categories.
Florida topped the charts for fraud, with 2,179 reports per 100,000 people, and identity theft, with 528 per 100,000.
In July, a Florida woman was swindled out of $15,000 of her retirement savings after scammers used artificial intelligence to clone her daughter’s voice in a telephone scam to convince the victim her loved one was in trouble.
Arizona, meanwhile, had the most romance scams reported, with an eye-watering $53.7 million lost to love swindlers in 2024.
The Empire State was in the middle of the pack, ranking 26th for deceitfulness out of 50 states.
The most common frauds in New York were imposter scams, with a staggering 36,926 reports in 2024, followed by online shopping and negative review fraud, with 20,228 reports.
