Romance Scam Statistics [2026]

Americans reported $1.14 billion in romance scam losses to the FTC in 2023 — the highest of any imposter scam category. Add pig butchering investment fraud and cross-border losses run into the tens of billions. This post compiles romance scam statistics across the US, Canada, and UK: losses, demographics, platforms, and the 2019–2024 trend line. See the fraud research hub.

What is a romance scam — and what is pig butchering?

A romance scam is a confidence fraud in which a criminal builds a false emotional relationship with a victim — typically over dating apps, social media, or messaging platforms — then fabricates a crisis to extract money or financial account access. The scheme relies on trust established over weeks or months before any financial request is made. Per the FBI IC3 2024, it is classified as “confidence fraud/romance” in federal crime reporting and is consistently one of the highest-loss categories by dollar value.

Pig butchering (shā zhū pán — literally “fattening a pig before slaughter” in Chinese) is a variant in which scammers build a relationship first, then steer victims onto a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platform. The emotional grooming phase is the setup; the fabricated investment platform is where the money is extracted. The scheme emerged between 2019 and 2022, driven by criminal syndicates operating scam compounds in Southeast Asia. Per FinCEN Alert FIN-2023-Alert005 (2023), pig butchering differs from classic romance scam in that a fabricated investment platform layer is added on top of the emotional grooming phase — the victim loses money not through a crisis fabrication but through a fake investment that appears to be working.

The key operational characteristics of pig butchering, per FinCEN and FBI taxonomies, are:

• A grooming phase conducted through legitimate platforms (dating apps, LinkedIn, WhatsApp) during which no money is requested
• Introduction of a “successful” cryptocurrency investment platform or trading app that is entirely controlled by the perpetrators
• Early simulated returns displayed on the platform to encourage progressively larger deposits
• A fabricated “tax,” “fee,” or “regulatory hold” that blocks the victim from withdrawing funds once the position reaches its target size
• Disappearance of the platform and all contact once the extraction is complete

How much money is lost to romance scams — the global scale

The reported figures across jurisdictions understate the actual scale because reporting rates are consistently low — but even reported totals are substantial.

In the US, the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network 2024 recorded $1.14 billion in romance scam losses in 2023 across 64,003 reports, with a median individual loss of $2,000 — the highest median reported loss of any imposter scam category that year. The prior year was even higher: in 2022, nearly 70,000 Americans reported romance scams with losses of $1.3 billion and a median individual loss of $4,400, more than six times the reported losses from 2017, per FTC 2023.

The FBI IC3 publishes a parallel dataset under the “confidence fraud/romance” category. In 2023, IC3 recorded $652.5 million in romance and confidence fraud losses across all ages. Adults over 60 accounted for $350 million of that total — more than half of all reported losses in this category — from 6,470 elder complaints.

In Canada, the CAFC’s 2024 Annual Statistical Report recorded CAD $58.4 million in romance fraud losses from just over 1,000 reported victims, making romance scams the third-highest loss category after investment fraud (CAD $310.6 million) and spear phishing (CAD $67.3 million). Because CAFC estimates only 5–10% of victims report, true annual Canadian romance fraud losses likely exceed CAD $580 million. For context on the broader fraud landscape in Canada, see our overview of the most common scams in Canada, and the senior-targeted breakdown in elder fraud statistics.

In the UK, Action Fraud / NFIB data shows romance fraud victims reported losing £88 million in 2022 from 8,083 reports — an average loss of approximately £11,000 per victim, roughly equivalent to CAD $150 million at the time.

Who gets targeted: age and gender demographics across jurisdictions

Age cohort: older adults carry the highest losses

The age distribution of romance scam losses shows a stark and consistent pattern across jurisdictions: older adults report fewer incidents than middle-aged adults but sustain the highest per-incident losses.

FTC data from 2022 provides the most granular US age-loss breakdown available. Median reported romance scam losses by age cohort for 2021:

The pattern is unambiguous: median per-incident losses increase twelve-fold from the youngest to the oldest cohort. This is not because older adults are more frequently targeted — it is because when they are targeted, scammers invest more time in grooming and the victims tend to have more assets to lose.

More recent data from the FBI IC3 Elder Fraud Reports shows the scale of the 60+ problem in dollar terms. In 2023, adults over 60 filed 6,470 romance/confidence scam complaints with losses exceeding $350 million — representing 54% of all US reported romance scam losses despite older adults being a minority of the total internet-using population. By 2024, that figure for the 60+ age group climbed to $389 million from 7,626 reports.

An AARP Fraud Watch Network survey published in February 2026 adds exposure-rate data for the 50+ cohort: approximately 1 in 10 US 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. Adults aged 50–64 faced this risk at more than twice the rate of those 65 and older (13% vs. 5%).

Gender: a picture more complex than the stereotype

The narrative that romance scam victims are predominantly female is not supported by recent multi-jurisdiction data. The picture has changed significantly since the early 2010s, when FBI and FTC datasets consistently showed women as the majority of complainants.

UK Action Fraud data covering 2020–2024 shows a near-equal split across five years: 51% of romance fraud reporters identified as female, 49% as male. Separately, Barclays Bank’s 2024 UK survey data found men made up 60% of romance scam reports by volume — though women reported higher median losses (£8,900 vs £3,500 for men), indicating that while men may now be targeted and report more frequently, women who are victimised tend to lose more per incident.

The most important dataset contrast is between report volume and loss value: men appear to report more incidents while women sustain higher individual losses. The AARP 2026 survey also documents a higher absolute financial loss among older women — consistent with the FTC’s finding that women 60 and older have the highest median losses in the US when age and gender are crossed.

Where romance scam victims are being targeted: platform breakdown

Per the FTC’s February 2023 Data Spotlight covering 2022 data:

• Social media (Facebook, Instagram) — 40% of romance scam loss reports described initial contact via social media, making it the dominant initial contact vector by a wide margin
• Dating websites and apps — 19% of victims said contact began on a dedicated dating platform; despite being the expected vector, dating apps account for less than half the share of social media
• Messaging apps (WhatsApp, Google Chat, Telegram) — after initial contact, scammers typically moved conversations immediately to messaging apps; these are not initial contact platforms but are the operational layer where grooming and financial requests occur
• LinkedIn and professional networks — FinCEN Alert FIN-2023-Alert005 identifies LinkedIn as a significant initial-contact vector specifically for pig butchering targeting high-value victims; perpetrators present as successful professionals before pivoting to investment recommendations
• Cryptocurrency exchanges (fabricated) — pig butchering adds a fifth-layer infrastructure: after grooming, victims are directed to clone websites mimicking real crypto exchanges; the fabricated platforms show falsified returns and allow small initial withdrawals to build confidence before accounts are locked on a “tax” or “fee” pretext

The payment method data is striking. By 2022, cryptocurrency had become the single highest-loss payment method for US romance scams. Victims who paid via cryptocurrency reported a median individual loss of $10,079 — compared to $700 for gift card payments. Cryptocurrency and bank wire transfers together accounted for more than 60% of all reported romance scam losses in 2022, per FTC 2023.

How losses compare over time: 2019–2024 trend data

US romance scam reported losses grew from $201 million in 2019 to a peak of $1.3 billion in 2022 — a 546% increase in three years — then moderated to $1.14 billion in 2023 and approximately $823 million in 2024, according to FTC Consumer Sentinel data published through 2025. Canadian figures from the CAFC followed a parallel trajectory.

Note: the apparent 2022–2024 US decline in romance scam losses does not represent reduced criminal activity. The FBI’s investment fraud category — where pig butchering losses are primarily recorded — rose continuously over the same period: $3.31 billion (2022), $4.57 billion (2023), and $5.8 billion (2024), per FBI IC3 Annual Reports. The total loss picture worsened each year; the classification shifted.

The rise of pig butchering: from dating app to fake crypto platform

Pig butchering represents the industrialisation of romance fraud. Where classic romance scams rely on individual operators running a small number of victims, pig butchering is conducted at scale by criminal enterprises with structured operational workflows, dedicated technical teams building fake exchange platforms, and trafficked labour in scam compounds.

FinCEN’s September 2023 Alert (FIN-2023-Alert005) documented the scale of the shift: fraud involving cryptocurrency — including pig butchering — increased 183% from 2021 to 2022 alone, reaching $2.57 billion in reported losses in 2022, based on US financial institution Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) filings. Following the alert, FinCEN received over 8,600 SAR filings referencing pig butchering specifically.

US investment fraud losses — the primary FBI category under which pig butchering losses are recorded — rose from $3.31 billion in 2022 to $4.57 billion in 2023 (a 38% increase year-over-year), then to $5.8 billion in 2024, per the FBI IC3 2025. In 2023, the FBI received more than 40,000 complaints tied to cryptocurrency investment schemes, the vast majority of which exhibit pig butchering operational characteristics.

The operational reality behind these numbers involves a labour force that is itself victimised. The UNODC’s Transnational Organized Crime Convergence Report (October 2024) estimates that at least 120,000 people were held in scam compounds in Myanmar and at least 100,000 in Cambodia as of 2023 — trafficked workers forced to execute pig butchering and other cyber-enabled fraud schemes under threat of violence. UNODC’s 2024 report estimated that Southeast Asia-based operations caused between $18 billion and $37 billion in losses targeting victims in East and Southeast Asia in 2023 alone.

Pig butchering scams are not operated from the same geography as older-generation romance fraud. The dominant operational centres are Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, and the Philippines — organised by criminal syndicates that use legitimate-seeming job advertisements to recruit workers, then confiscate their travel documents. This is not the advance-fee fraud model of earlier decades. The UNODC, FBI, FinCEN, and Europol all use the organised-crime-trafficking framing consistently in their current documentation.

Why romance scam losses are massively under-reported

The reported figures — $1.14 billion in the US, CAD $58.4 million in Canada — are counts of what victims chose to report to government agencies. The actual total is orders of magnitude higher.

Canada’s Anti-Fraud Centre consistently estimates that only 5–10% of fraud victims report their losses. Applied to the $58.4 million officially recorded from romance fraud in 2024, this implies actual Canadian romance fraud losses likely range between CAD $584 million and CAD $1.2 billion annually — ten to twenty times higher than reported figures.

In the US, the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel Network received 64,003 romance scam reports in 2023 against a US adult population of over 260 million. US law enforcement researchers estimate that as few as 1 in 15 to 1 in 20 romance scam victims report to any government agency, making Consumer Sentinel totals a substantial undercount, per FTC 2024.

The AARP’s February 2026 survey quantified the reporting gap directly: over half of romance scam victims (55%) never reported their losses to anyone. Of the minority who did report, only 26% contacted law enforcement and 23% contacted their bank — despite 90% of surveyed adults saying they would report if victimised. The gap between stated intent and actual behaviour is explained by shame, embarrassment, and the reluctance to disclose the nature of the relationship that preceded the fraud.

This reporting gap is not a minor statistical footnote. It means that every published dataset on romance scam losses — including the government statistics cited throughout this post — represents a small fraction of the true problem. The published figures are best understood as a floor, not an estimate of the ceiling.

What licensed investigators see: patterns from the field

As licensed private investigators operating across the Greater Toronto Area and broader Canada, we encounter romance scam cases primarily at the asset-tracing and evidence-gathering stage — after the financial loss has occurred and the victim has realised they were defrauded.

The pattern we see is consistent with the research: victims are often in the 50–70 age range, are frequently widowed or recently divorced, and made substantial transfers — sometimes CAD $50,000 to $200,000 or more — over a period of months. The grooming period in the cases we work is typically three to six months, during which the scammer establishes an emotionally compelling identity (often presenting as a successful professional working abroad) before any financial request is made. By the time a victim contacts us, some of the funds have already moved through multiple cryptocurrency wallets and exchange accounts, making recovery complex and time-sensitive.

What makes pig butchering cases particularly difficult is the dual-layer deception: the victim does not believe they were robbed. They believe they made a legitimate investment on a platform that was subsequently frozen. The emotional and cognitive dissonance is significant — many victims resist accepting that the relationship was fabricated even after the financial loss is confirmed. This affects both the reporting decision and the quality of the evidence they can provide.

For investigators, the key evidence elements are: device screenshots of the fake exchange platform (preserved before the site goes offline), complete transaction records from the victim’s legitimate cryptocurrency exchange accounts, and any communication logs from the grooming phase. Early contact with us matters because the fake platform domains typically disappear within weeks of the extraction. If you suspect a romance scam is in progress or have recently suffered a loss, our social media and internet investigations team can assist with preserving digital evidence before it is lost. Because most pig-butchering variants route victim losses through fake investment or insurance vehicles, our insurance and financial-claims investigations practice handles the parallel documentation and loss-tracing work. For people in the early stages of a new online relationship who want to verify a partner’s identity and background before any financial entanglement, our premarital background check service surfaces the discrepancies between claimed and actual identity that pig-butchering operators rely on remaining hidden. Licensed · Insured · Bonded.