Romance Scams Statistics 2026: Losses, Trends, and Sources

Romance Scams Statistics 2026

Last updated: May 2026

Romance scams at a glance: the 2026 numbers

• $1.48 billion in romance scam losses reported to the FTC in 2025 — a 22% year-over-year increase.[¹]
• $20.9 billion in total internet crime losses reported to the FBI’s IC3 in 2025, with romance and confidence fraud among the top damage categories.[²]
• $2,020 — average reported loss per romance scam victim in 2025 (FTC).[¹]
• ~60% of people who lost money to a romance scam in 2025 said it started on a social media platform; $298 million of those losses originated there.[³]
• ~$47 lost to romance scams every second of 2025, based on reported FTC figures alone. Adjusted for the FTC’s own estimate that only about 5% of fraud victims report, the true rate is closer to $940 per second.
• $7.7 billion in total fraud losses reported by Americans aged 60 and older to the FBI in 2025 — a 60% jump from 2024.[²]
• 19× — the growth in reported U.S. romance scam losses from 2016 ($76M) to 2025 (~$1.48B).
• <1% — recovery rate when funds were sent as cryptocurrency.[⁴]
• ~$11 million Americans aged 50+ had encountered a romance approach that ended in a money or crypto request, according to an AARP survey published in February 2026.[⁵]

U.S. consumers reported losing approximately $1.48 billion to romance scams in 2025, a 22% increase over 2024 and roughly 19 times the losses reported in 2016. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center separately recorded $20.9 billion in total internet crime losses in 2025 — with romance and confidence fraud among the top damage categories, alongside investment, cryptocurrency, and tech-support scams. Across both datasets, one fact is unambiguous: romance scams are now among the fastest-growing and most financially destructive fraud categories tracked by the U.S. government.

This report compiles the most current published statistics on romance scams from federal regulators (FTC, FBI, CFTC), consumer organizations (AARP), and peer-reviewed survey data. Every figure is dated and attributed at the point it appears. Because most romance scam victims never report, every number below should be read as a floor — reported losses, not true losses. We address the underreporting gap explicitly in Section 3.

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1. Total losses: how much do romance scams cost?

In 2025, U.S. consumers reported losing approximately $1.48 billion to romance scams to the Federal Trade Commission, according to the FTC’s own consumer alert published in May 2026.[¹] That figure is a 22% increase over 2024 reported losses and is consistent with the FTC’s earlier nine-month update, which logged $1.16 billion in reported romance scam losses across 55,604 reports between January and September 2025.

The romance scam figure sits within a larger record year for fraud. The Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network logged $15.9 billion in total reported fraud losses in 2025 across approximately 3 million complaints — up from $12.5 billion in 2024. Imposter scams (the FTC category that includes romance scams) accounted for $3.5 billion across more than 1 million reports, a roughly 20% year-over-year increase.

Separately, the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report recorded $20.9 billion in total internet crime losses across all categories, with romance and confidence fraud listed among the top damage categories alongside investment, cryptocurrency, and tech support scams.[²]

What that works out to per second, minute, and day

Translated into a rate, the $1.48 billion in reported romance scam losses in 2025 equals roughly:

• $4.06 million per day lost to romance scams in 2025
• $169,000 per hour
• $2,816 per minute
• $47 per second

These are FTC-reported losses only. As Section 3 shows, true losses are likely far higher.

2. A decade of romance scam losses: year-over-year growth

The trajectory of FTC-reported romance scam losses across the last decade is one of the steepest growth curves in U.S. consumer fraud data.

Year	Reported losses (FTC)	Median loss per victim	Reports
2016	$76 million	—	—
2017	$87 million	—	—
2018	$143 million	—	—
2019	$201 million	—	~25,000+
2020	$304 million	—	—
2021	$547 million	$2,400	—
2022	$1.3 billion	$4,400	~70,000
2023	$1.14 billion	$2,000	64,003
2024	~$1.21 billion	—	—
2025	~$1.48 billion	$2,020 (mean)	~733,000 estimated[†]

Source: FTC Consumer Sentinel Network annual data, 2016–2025; FTC Data Spotlights; FTC consumer alerts published May 2026. †The 2025 report count is estimated from the FTC’s published $1.48B / $2,020-mean figure; the FTC’s full 2025 Consumer Sentinel Data Book will be the definitive source.

Reported U.S. romance scam losses grew approximately 19-fold between 2016 and 2025. The single largest year-over-year acceleration in absolute dollars was 2021 → 2022 ($547M → ~$1.3B), driven by the shift toward cryptocurrency payments. Growth has continued at double-digit percentages each year since.

3. The underreporting problem: true losses are much higher

Every number on this page is a floor, not a ceiling. The most consistent finding across federal regulators, academic researchers, and consumer organizations is that the majority of romance scam victims never report — and in many cases tell no one at all.

• The FTC has cited research finding that only about 4.8% of mass-market fraud victims report to a BBB or government entity — a figure widely paraphrased as “roughly 5% of victims report.”
• An AARP Fraud Watch Network survey found that 40% of romance scam victims told nobody — not law enforcement, not friends, not family. Shame and embarrassment were the most-cited reason (68%), followed by a belief that nothing could be done (52%).[⁵]
• Canada’s Anti-Fraud Centre estimates that 5% to 10% of victims report, in line with U.S. figures.
• The FBI’s IC3 acknowledges that its complaint figures represent only “a small fraction” of actual cybercrime.

Applying the FTC’s own ~5% reporting rate to the 2025 reported figure gives a defensible upper-bound estimate of true U.S. romance scam losses:

$1.48 billion reported ÷ 0.05 reporting rate ≈ $29.6 billion in estimated true U.S. losses for 2025.

This is not a separate measurement — it is the FTC’s own reporting-rate estimate applied to its own reported-loss figure. It belongs in any honest read of the scale of the problem. Translated to a rate, the same approach yields approximately $940 in true U.S. romance scam losses every second of 2025.

4. Romance scam statistics by age and demographics

Age: older adults bear disproportionate dollar losses

Adults aged 60 and older are not the majority of romance scam victims by report count, but they consistently account for the majority of dollar losses — because per-victim losses among older adults are typically much higher.

• FBI IC3 (2024): 7,626 reports from victims aged 60+, with reported losses of approximately $389 million — a sharp rise from 6,470 reports / $350+ million in 2023, when the 60+ cohort accounted for roughly 54% of all U.S. romance scam dollar losses despite being a minority of internet users.
• FBI IC3 (2025): Americans aged 60 and older reported approximately $7.7 billion in total fraud losses across all categories — a roughly 60% increase from 2024. (This figure spans all fraud, not romance scams alone, but the FBI has flagged romance/confidence and investment fraud as primary contributors.)[²]
• FTC (2024 reported in 2025): Adults 60+ reported losing $2.4 billion to a variety of scams, up from approximately $600 million in 2020. Older adults were nearly twice as likely as younger adults to report a six-figure fraud loss.
• FTC (2025): Americans aged 50 and older reported $4.3 billion in total fraud losses, compared with $2.3 billion among those under 50.

Exposure rate: 1 in 10 Americans aged 50+ has encountered a romance scam approach

An AARP Fraud Watch Network survey published in February 2026 found that approximately 1 in 10 U.S. adults aged 50 and older — an estimated 11 million Americans — had encountered a romance approach online that ended in a request for money or encouragement to invest in cryptocurrency.[⁵] The risk was sharply differentiated by age band:

• Adults aged 50–64: approximately 13% had encountered such an approach.
• Adults aged 65 and older: approximately 5%.

The 50–64 cohort is therefore more than twice as likely as the 65+ cohort to be approached — counter to the widespread assumption that romance scams target the elderly first. The pattern is consistent with the larger digital footprint and continued professional/social use of online platforms in that age band.

Gender: the gap has narrowed sharply

The popular narrative of romance scam victims as predominantly female is no longer supported by current multi-jurisdiction data:

• UK Action Fraud (2020–2024): reported a near-equal 51% female / 49% male split among romance fraud victims.
• Pew Research Center (U.S. dating app users): 72% of male dating app users said they believed they had encountered a catfish or scammer, compared with a lower rate among female users — suggesting men may be at least as exposed to romance scam approaches, even if reporting and dollar-loss patterns differ.

Across U.S. report data, women have historically reported a greater share of romance scam complaints by count, while average losses per victim do not differ substantially by gender once payment method and platform are controlled for.

5. Pig butchering and crypto romance scam statistics

The most financially destructive variant of romance fraud is the hybrid known as pig butchering — a romance or friendship con that ends in a fake cryptocurrency or investment platform.

• Investment fraud losses tracked by the FBI’s IC3 rose from $3.31 billion (2022) to $5.8 billion (2024) — a large share driven by pig-butchering schemes.[⁴]
• In 2023, cryptocurrency was the single largest payment category for romance scams, accounting for $652 million in reported losses to the FTC — more than any other payment type.
• The median individual loss when a romance scam was paid in cryptocurrency was $10,079, according to the FTC’s most recent payment-method breakdown — compared with $700 when paid in gift cards.

The pivot to cryptocurrency reshapes the recovery picture: the FBI’s Recovery Asset Team has no mechanism to recover crypto payments, and the documented recovery rate for crypto-paid romance fraud is under 1%.[⁴] Pig butchering is now treated as a distinct category by U.S. regulators; the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has dedicated guidance on it.

6. AI and deepfake romance scams statistics

Generative AI began materially affecting the romance scam landscape in 2024 and accelerated in 2025. The FBI has begun separately tracking the AI-enabled subset:

• In 2025, the FBI reported that victims lost over $19 million to catfish-style scams with a likely AI connection — fake profiles generated by AI image synthesis, AI-scripted conversations, and voice-cloned audio.
• That $19 million figure is almost certainly an undercount of AI-enabled losses. AI attribution is difficult after the fact: a synthetic face becomes indistinguishable from a stolen photo once stored and forwarded, and AI-scripted conversations are not always detectable in transcripts.
• The CPPA, FTC, and IC3 have all flagged AI-generated identities as a 2026 enforcement and consumer-education priority.

The practical implication captured in the data: the two traditional verification tests (reverse-image search and a single video call) no longer reliably distinguish a real person from a synthetic one. Detection patterns have shifted from identity verification toward behavioral pattern analysis. See our companion guide to romance scams and how to stay safe in 2026 for the operational defenses.

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7. Romance scam payment methods and median losses

The payment method used in a romance scam is one of the single largest predictors of how much a victim loses. The FTC’s most recent payment-method breakdown shows order-of-magnitude differences in median losses:

Payment method	Median loss per victim (FTC)	Notable context
Cryptocurrency	$10,079	Single largest payment category by total dollars in 2023 ($652M); <1% recovery rate
Bank transfer or wire	$10,000	~10% recovery rate if reported within 48 hours
Gift cards	$700	Most-common payment method by report count
Payment apps (Zelle, Venmo, Cash App)	$650	Fastest-growing payment category; recovery limited

Source: FTC Consumer Sentinel Network payment-method data (2022, most recent payment-method breakdown published).

The crypto premium — a median loss roughly 14 times that of a gift-card payment — reflects two structural factors. First, crypto-paid scams are typically pig-butchering or fake-investment variants in which the victim is induced to “invest” rather than send a one-time gift, which raises the per-incident amount. Second, irreversibility removes a natural ceiling: a gift-card scam ends when the gift card runs out; a crypto scam can continue until the victim’s accounts are depleted.

8. Where romance scams start: platform origin statistics

Romance scams now begin more often on social media than on dating apps.

• Nearly 60% of people who reported losing money to a romance scam in 2025 said it started on a social media platform, according to the FTC.[³]
• $298 million of romance scam losses in 2025 originated on social media — making romance the second-largest social-media scam category by dollar value behind investment scams.
• Total social media scam losses reached $2.1 billion in 2025 — approximately eight times the 2020 figure — making social media the costliest single contact method tracked by the FTC.
• 52% of American dating app users believe they have encountered a scammer or catfish on a dating app, according to Pew Research Center; the figure rises to 62% among recent dating-app users and 72% among male dating-app users.

Common entry points include unsolicited friend requests, replies to public posts and Stories, comments on photos, and “wrong-number” text messages that escalate into conversation. Once contact is established, scammers frequently move communication to private messaging apps — typically WhatsApp, Telegram, or Google Chat — where platform-level reporting tools no longer apply.

9. Recovery rates: how often do victims get money back?

Once money has moved, the odds of recovery are low and highly dependent on the payment method and reporting speed:

• The FBI’s Recovery Asset Team has reported successful recovery in approximately 4% of romance fraud cases overall.[⁴]
• Wire-transfer recovery rates reach roughly 10% when the fraud is reported within 48 hours, leveraging the FBI’s Financial Fraud Kill Chain.
• Cryptocurrency recovery is under 1% — effectively nil, because the FBI’s recovery mechanism does not extend to crypto rails.
• The window matters: the FBI’s Kill Chain is most effective within 72 hours, and rapidly approaches zero effectiveness past that.

The combined picture — high per-victim losses, low recovery rates, and crypto dominating the highest-loss segment — explains why prevention has become the dominant policy focus rather than recovery.

10. International romance scam statistics

While this report focuses on U.S. data because U.S. regulators publish the most granular figures, international data confirms a global trend.

• United Kingdom: UK Action Fraud recorded 4,087 romance scam cases in 2024 (75% of which originated online), rising to 10,784 reports in 2025 — a 164% year-over-year increase in report volume.
• Canada: The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) estimates that only 5–10% of victims report, consistent with U.S. estimates; reported losses run in the tens to low-hundreds of millions of Canadian dollars annually.
• Australia: Scamwatch historically logs hundreds of dating-and-romance scam reports per year per major platform, with annual losses in the tens of millions of Australian dollars.

Global estimates of true romance scam losses, accounting for underreporting across jurisdictions, place the figure in the multiple-billions of U.S. dollars annually, with several published industry estimates clustering around $6 billion. These are estimates, not measurements, and carry significant uncertainty.

11. The industrial-scale shift

A structural change in the romance scam industry over 2023–2025, documented by U.S. law enforcement, threat-intelligence firms, and journalists, is the consolidation of romance fraud into industrial-scale operations:

• Romance scams are now widely described by U.S. and international law enforcement as the fastest-growing fraud category globally.
• The FBI’s per-victim loss range is generally cited at $10,000–$50,000, with a long tail extending into total life savings.
• Documented operations run with CRM systems, scripted playbooks, shift work, quotas, and quality-assurance review — closer to enterprise sales departments than to individual fraudsters.
• A substantial share of operations are run out of scam compounds in Southeast Asia (notably Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and the Philippines), often using trafficked or coerced labor.

This industrial structure is a major reason both growth rates and per-victim losses have accelerated even as public awareness has risen.

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Methodology

This report compiles published statistics from primary U.S. government sources and major consumer-protection organizations. The primary datasets used are:

• Federal Trade Commission Consumer Sentinel Network — the U.S. federal aggregator of consumer fraud reports, drawing from the FTC, AARP Fraud Watch Network, the Better Business Bureau, and state attorneys general. Cited figures are from FTC press releases, Data Spotlights, the Consumer Sentinel Data Book series (2016–2024), and the FTC consumer alerts published April and May 2026 covering 2025 data.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) — Annual Internet Crime Reports for 2024 and 2025.
• Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) — investment-fraud and pig-butchering statistics.
• AARP Fraud Watch Network — public surveys on victim exposure and reporting behavior, including the February 2026 survey on adults 50+.
• UK Action Fraud, Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, Australian Scamwatch — international comparator data.
• Pew Research Center — U.S. survey data on dating-app user perceptions.

Every figure is cited with its source and year at the point it appears. Year-over-year comparisons use figures from the same dataset within the same series wherever possible.

The “true losses” estimate in Section 3 applies the FTC’s own published reporting-rate estimate (approximately 4.8% of mass-market fraud victims report) to the FTC’s reported 2025 romance scam losses. It is presented as a defensible upper-bound estimate, not a measured value, and the underlying assumption is stated explicitly.

This report is informational and does not constitute legal, financial, or investigative advice.

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Frequently asked questions

How much money was lost to romance scams in 2025?

U.S. consumers reported losing approximately $1.48 billion to romance scams to the FTC in 2025, a 22% increase over 2024. Because most victims do not report, true U.S. losses are likely several times higher — applying the FTC’s own ~5% reporting estimate suggests true losses approaching $30 billion.

What is the average loss to a romance scam?

The average reported loss per romance scam victim in 2025 was $2,020, according to the FTC. The median loss varies sharply by payment method: roughly $700 for gift-card payments versus over $10,000 for cryptocurrency.

Who is most likely to be targeted by a romance scam?

Adults aged 50–64 are the most likely to be approached, with approximately 13% reporting they had encountered a romance scam approach according to an AARP February 2026 survey. Adults 60 and older account for the majority of dollar losses despite being a minority of internet users.

Are romance scams growing?

Yes. Reported U.S. romance scam losses grew approximately 19-fold between 2016 ($76 million) and 2025 ($1.48 billion). Year-over-year growth in 2025 was 22%, and the FBI and FTC both describe romance scams as among the fastest-growing fraud categories.

What is pig butchering?

Pig butchering is a hybrid romance-and-investment scam that ends with the victim depositing money into a fake cryptocurrency or trading platform. The FBI tracked $5.8 billion in investment fraud losses in 2024, a large share of it pig-butchering driven, and cryptocurrency has become the single largest payment category in romance scams by dollar value.

What percentage of romance scam victims report?

Research cited by the FTC estimates that only about 4.8% — roughly 5% — of mass-market fraud victims report to a government agency or the BBB. An AARP survey found 40% of romance scam victims told nobody at all, with shame the most-cited reason.

How often do romance scam victims recover their money?

The FBI’s Recovery Asset Team has reported successful recovery in approximately 4% of romance fraud cases overall. Wire transfers recovered within 48 hours have a higher rate (~10%); cryptocurrency recovery is under 1%.

Where do most romance scams start?

In 2025, nearly 60% of people who lost money to a romance scam said it started on a social media platform, according to the FTC — more than dating apps. Social media scams of all kinds totaled $2.1 billion in 2025, eight times the 2020 figure.

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