Estimated read time: 13 minutes | Category: Scam Alerts | Last updated: June 2025
The Most Profitable Fraud Nobody Talks About
It begins with a message. Sometimes it arrives on a dating app. Sometimes on Facebook or Instagram. Sometimes it is a wrong number text — “Hi, is this Sarah?” — from someone who quickly apologises, introduces themselves, and begins a conversation.
The person on the other end is attentive, warm, and extraordinarily interested in you. They remember everything you tell them. They message good morning and goodnight. They talk about their dreams and their loneliness. They seem to understand you better than people who have known you for years. The connection feels real — more real, perhaps, than any you have experienced in a long time.
Then, weeks or months later, they need money. Just this once. An emergency. A business deal that will pay back tenfold. Medical bills. A flight home. Customs fees on a package. And because the relationship feels so real, because the emotional investment has been so carefully cultivated, many people pay.
And then they pay again. And again. Until the money is gone, the person vanishes, and the victim — often isolated from their support network, often ashamed, often in financial ruin — is left to understand what happened to them.
Romance scams cost victims over $1.3 billion in the United States alone in 2022. The real figure, accounting for unreported cases, is estimated to be several times higher. The average victim loses more than $10,000. Some lose their life savings, their homes, their retirement funds. And the scammers — operating primarily from organised criminal networks in West Africa, Southeast Asia, and Eastern Europe — face almost no legal consequences.
Here is exactly how it works.
What We Know For Certain
- [FACT] The US Federal Trade Commission reported that romance scams cost American victims $1.3 billion in 2022 — making them the highest loss category of any consumer fraud tracked by the FTC.
- [FACT] The median individual loss from a romance scam in 2022 was $4,400 — but losses frequently reach tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for victims who are targeted over extended periods.
- [FACT] Romance scams are frequently perpetrated by organised criminal operations — not lone individuals — using teams of workers who manage multiple fake personas simultaneously from call centre-style facilities.
- [FACT] A significant and growing proportion of romance scams now involve cryptocurrency requests — often through a variant called “pig butchering” in which the victim is guided to invest in a fake crypto platform.
- [FACT] Romance scam victims span all demographics — all ages, genders, income levels, and education levels — though older adults and recently bereaved or divorced individuals are disproportionately targeted.
- [FACT] The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) consistently ranks romance scams among the top categories of internet crime by total financial loss.
- [FACT] Recovery of funds lost to romance scams is extremely rare — most transfers are made via wire transfer, cryptocurrency, or gift cards, all of which are difficult or impossible to reverse.
The Anatomy of a Romance Scam — Stage by Stage
Stage 1 — The First Contact
[FACT] Romance scammers make first contact through multiple channels — dating apps including Tinder, Hinge, and Match, social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram, WhatsApp wrong-number messages, and LinkedIn. The wrong-number approach has become increasingly common — a message appears to go to the wrong person, the scammer apologises, a conversation begins naturally, and the victim never feels they sought out the relationship.
[FACT] The profile used is typically stolen from a real person’s social media — usually someone attractive, with a lifestyle suggesting wealth and adventure. Military officers, doctors working abroad, engineers on oil rigs, and successful business people are common personas. The stolen photos give the fake profile an authentic social media footprint that makes reverse image searching more difficult.
Stage 2 — Love Bombing
[FACT] The early phase of a romance scam is characterised by what psychologists call love bombing — an overwhelming flood of attention, affection, and apparent intimacy delivered at extraordinary speed. The scammer messages constantly. They remember every detail the victim shares. They express deep feelings very quickly. They often claim an immediate, powerful connection — “I’ve never felt this way before,” “I feel like I’ve known you forever.”
[ANALYSIS] Love bombing is psychologically effective because it exploits normal human responses to feeling seen, understood, and desired. The intensity of the attention creates a powerful emotional bond before the victim has had time to develop healthy scepticism. By the time warning signs appear, the emotional investment is already significant.
Stage 3 — Building the Relationship
[FACT] Over weeks or months, the scammer builds an increasingly detailed and intimate relationship. They share fabricated personal details — childhood memories, family stories, professional achievements, personal struggles — that create the texture of a real person. They ask detailed questions about the victim’s life, family, finances, and emotional history. They are consistently unavailable to meet in person or video call, citing their location abroad, technical difficulties, or work demands.
[FACT] This phase often includes a transition to WhatsApp or Telegram — moving the conversation off the dating platform or social media site and onto an encrypted channel that is harder for platforms to monitor and easier for the scammer to control.
Stage 4 — The Crisis or Opportunity
[FACT] At a point when the emotional bond has been thoroughly established, the scammer introduces a financial element. This takes one of two primary forms:
The Crisis: A sudden emergency — a medical bill, a legal problem, a business deal gone wrong, a package held in customs requiring release fees. The request is presented as temporary and embarrassing — the scammer is ashamed to ask, assures repayment, and frames the request as proof of the victim’s love and trust. Initial amounts are modest to establish the pattern of payment.
The Opportunity: The pig butchering variant. The scammer mentions they have been making significant returns through cryptocurrency investments. They offer to show the victim how to do the same. They guide the victim to a fake trading platform — professionally designed, showing impressive fake returns — and encourage increasing investment. The platform shows growing profits that the victim cannot actually withdraw. Eventually a final fee is demanded to release the funds, which do not exist.
Stage 5 — Escalation and Isolation
[FACT] Once the first financial transfer is made, the scammer escalates. New crises emerge. The opportunity requires more investment. The victim is simultaneously isolated from support networks — family and friends who might question the relationship are described as jealous or unsupportive. The scammer positions themselves as the victim’s primary emotional support, making it psychologically harder to question the relationship.
[FACT] When victims express doubt or try to end the relationship, scammers deploy additional manipulation tactics — expressions of hurt and love, threats of self-harm, production of fabricated “evidence” of their identity or the investment’s legitimacy, accusations that the victim is being paranoid or untrusting.
Stage 6 — The Disappearance
[FACT] When the victim runs out of money, begins to resist, or becomes too suspicious to continue, the scammer disappears. The profile goes dark. Messages stop. The fake investment platform becomes inaccessible. The victim is left with financial losses, an emotional wound, and the slow realisation that everything they experienced was manufactured.
Pig Butchering — The Fastest Growing Romance Scam
[FACT] Pig butchering — named after the practice of fattening a pig before slaughter — is a sophisticated romance scam variant originating primarily from criminal operations in Southeast Asia, particularly Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. It combines romance scam tactics with fake cryptocurrency investment fraud.
[FACT] The scam typically begins with a wrong-number message or social media contact. The romantic relationship is built over weeks or months. The scammer then introduces cryptocurrency investment as a shared interest or opportunity — guiding the victim to a fake trading platform that shows realistic-looking gains.
[FACT] The platforms are professionally designed — often identical to legitimate exchanges in appearance, with fake customer service, fake transaction histories, and fake profit displays. Victims can make small withdrawals initially to build confidence. As investment amounts grow, withdrawal becomes impossible — blocked by manufactured fees, taxes, or technical problems that require additional payment to resolve.
[FACT] Global losses to pig butchering scams were estimated at $75 billion between 2019 and 2023 according to research published in Nature Human Behaviour. Individual losses frequently reach hundreds of thousands of dollars.
[FACT] A significant proportion of the people operating pig butchering scams are themselves victims — trafficked individuals from across Asia who have been sold to criminal operations and forced to work as scammers under threat of violence. This adds a layer of human trafficking to what is already one of the most damaging fraud categories in the world.
The Red Flags — How to Spot a Romance Scam
A consistent inability to meet in person or conduct a live, unscripted video call is one of the strongest indicators of a romance scam. Scammers cite location abroad, poor internet connection, camera problems, or work demands. If someone you have been communicating with for weeks or months has never been able to video call you live and spontaneously — not a recorded or filtered call — treat this as a serious warning sign. Ask for a live video call at short notice. A real person can do this. A scammer using stolen photos cannot.
Love bombing — intense affection, declarations of deep feeling, and talk of a future together within days or weeks of first contact — is a manipulation tactic, not a sign of genuine connection. Real relationships develop gradually. If someone you have never met in person is expressing profound love or describing you as their soulmate within weeks, slow down.
Right-click any profile photo and select “Search image” or use Google Images or TinEye to reverse image search it. If the photo belongs to a different person — a model, a military officer, a doctor — the profile is fake. Scammers steal photos from real people’s social media accounts. A reverse image search takes thirty seconds and can save thousands of pounds.
Any request for financial transfer from someone you have not met in person should be treated as a scam regardless of the reason given. Legitimate romantic partners do not ask people they have never met to wire money, buy gift cards, or send cryptocurrency. No real emergency — no medical bill, customs fee, business problem, or travel cost — requires a stranger to send money before you have ever been in the same room. This is the clearest and most reliable indicator of a scam.
Scammers actively work to isolate victims from support networks. If your online contact suggests your friends or family are jealous, unsupportive, or would not understand your connection — or if you find yourself hiding the relationship from people who care about you — this is a significant warning sign. Healthy relationships can withstand external input. Scam relationships depend on isolation.
If a romantic contact introduces cryptocurrency investment — particularly through a platform you have not heard of, which they guide you to directly — this is almost certainly pig butchering. Legitimate investment opportunities are not introduced by romantic contacts online. Any platform that shows impressive returns but makes withdrawal difficult or impossible is fraudulent. Do not invest additional money to “unlock” withdrawals — the money does not exist and the additional payment will also be stolen.
The Psychology — Why It Works on Anyone
Romance scams work on intelligent, educated, financially sophisticated people. This is not a scam that only catches the naive or the desperate. Understanding why requires understanding the psychology involved.
[FACT] Loneliness is one of the most powerful human vulnerabilities. After divorce, bereavement, or prolonged isolation — all of which increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic — the human need for connection is acute. Romance scammers are expert at identifying and exploiting this need.
[FACT] The gradual escalation of the scam — small emotional investments leading to larger ones, small financial requests leading to larger ones — exploits the psychological phenomenon of sunk cost bias. Having already invested emotionally and financially in a relationship, victims find it increasingly difficult to accept that the investment was based on lies. Each new payment feels like it might be the last one needed to protect what has been built.
[ANALYSIS] Victims are frequently manipulated into a state where acknowledging the scam means acknowledging that the entire relationship — every conversation, every expression of care, every shared confidence — was manufactured. The emotional pain of that realisation can be as great as the financial loss. Scammers understand this and use it deliberately. The relationship itself becomes a form of collateral.
What to Do If You Have Been Targeted
If you believe you are currently in contact with a romance scammer:
- Stop all financial transfers immediately — do not send any further money regardless of the reason given
- Do not pay any “release fees” or “taxes” on a cryptocurrency investment platform — this money will also be stolen
- Keep all evidence — screenshots of conversations, profile photos, usernames, payment receipts
- Tell someone you trust — isolation is the scammer’s tool; reconnecting with your support network is essential
- Report to your national fraud authority:
- USA: FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov and FBI IC3 at ic3.gov
- UK: Action Fraud at actionfraud.police.uk
- Australia: Scamwatch at scamwatch.gov.au
- Canada: Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at antifraudcentre.ca
- Contact your bank immediately if you made a wire transfer — some banks can recall transfers within a short window
- Do not contact recovery services that promise to recover your funds for an upfront fee — these are secondary scams targeting romance scam victims
[FACT] Recovery of funds is rare but not impossible — particularly for recent bank wire transfers. Cryptocurrency transfers are almost never recoverable. The sooner you report, the better the chance of any recovery.
If Someone You Know Is Being Scammed
Recognising that a friend or family member is being romance scammed — and knowing how to help — is genuinely difficult. Victims are often deeply emotionally invested and resistant to outside input.
- Do not attack the relationship directly — telling someone their partner is fake will make them defensive and may deepen their attachment
- Ask questions rather than make statements — “Have you ever done a video call?” is less confrontational than “That person doesn’t exist”
- Share information about romance scams generally — articles like this one, FTC or Action Fraud resources — without directly accusing
- Stay connected — scammers work through isolation; maintaining the relationship with the victim is the most important thing you can do
- Suggest they speak to their bank — banks have fraud teams trained to discuss this sensitively
- Be patient — recognition that a scam has occurred often comes gradually, not all at once
Conclusion
Romance scams are not a niche fraud affecting a small number of vulnerable people. They are the highest-grossing consumer fraud in the world, operated by sophisticated criminal organisations, using well-tested psychological techniques that work across all demographics.
They work because they exploit something real — the human need for connection, for love, for feeling understood. The emotion the victim experiences is genuine, even when everything the scammer does is manufactured. That is what makes the aftermath so devastating, and what makes the stigma around falling victim so unfair.
Anyone can be targeted. Anyone can be manipulated if the circumstances are right. The protection is not being smarter or more cautious in a general sense — it is knowing specifically what the scripts look like, what the red flags are, and what the pattern of escalation feels like before it reaches the financial stage.
The first message looks like any other message. The difference is knowing what to look for in the ones that follow.
Written and reviewed by the MysteryVerse editorial team. Statistics sourced from the US Federal Trade Commission Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2022, the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center 2022 Annual Report, and research on pig butchering scams published in Nature Human Behaviour (2023).
If you have been targeted by a romance scam, you are not alone and you are not stupid. These are sophisticated criminal operations run by professional fraudsters. Please report to your national fraud authority using the links above.
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