When love hurts: Romance scams – now AI powered – are on the rise

For many years, scammers have been exploiting dating apps and messaging platforms to target victims looking for companionship. Romance scams affect people of all ages and backgrounds, but older individuals, former military personnel and those seeking financial arrangements are among the most vulnerable.

In November last year, Meta said it had identified and removed more than two million accounts in 2024 connected to romance scams.

Many were conducted from Southeast Asia, especially in Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines.

Love hurts

Scammers deploy various tactics, from impersonating service members using stolen photos to orchestrating fake “sugar mummy and daddy” schemes, luring victims into fraudulent financial transactions.

Others entice victims into adult video chats that require paid registrations, generating illicit profits in the process.

More recently, scammers are thought to be leveraging generative AI to refine their messages, making their deception more convincing than ever.

Grammar and spelling are no longer a barrier for scammers who are harnessing the power of AI to craft sophisticated, emotionally compelling messages and profiles on dating apps in a variety of languages that make their scams more believable and harder to detect.

The most dangerous form of romance scam today is ‘romance baiting,’ previously known as ‘pig butchering’ — a translation of the Chinese phrase “Shāzhūpán”  used to describe a type of financial scam.

In these long-term cons, scammers establish fake relationships to build trust before convincing their victims to invest in bogus cryptocurrency or stock platforms. This method has now overtaken other romance scams in terms of prevalence and financial impact.

Romance scams: Life savings lost

People have lost their life savings to romance scams, and it’s heartbreaking. In January, a French woman revealed she had been tricked out of GBP700,000 after falling for a scammer who convinced her they were the famous actor, Brad Pitt.

The sad reality of these schemes is that the victims are often blamed for falling for the scammers’ con. In truth, these scams are highly manipulative and exploit vulnerabilities that anyone could fall for.

Now, recovering stolen funds is notoriously difficult, particularly when cryptocurrency is involved. Historically, scammers would steal money from traditional finance (tradFi), such as banks and credit unions. However, tradFi has better recourse for recovering stolen funds, whereas cryptocurrency is decentralised, making it much harder to claw back a victim’s money.

To make matters worse, other scammers swoop in by targeting victims, posing as recovery agents who promise to retrieve lost funds — for a fee.

Protect your heart and your money

The best defence against these romance-baiting scams is scepticism. If someone you’ve never met in person asks for money, whether for a sudden emergency, a business opportunity, or an investment, consider it a major red flag.

If you believe you’ve been scammed, report the crime to your local law enforcement and cybercrime authorities immediately.

The writer is a senior staff research engineer at Tenable.

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