Romance scams cost Americans $929 million last year, the FBI says, and older hearts paid most

By Celeste Varga

WASHINGTON — Cuffing season, the stretch of autumn when the weather cools and the urge to couple up warms, has an unwelcome tagalong: the stranger who falls for you fast, lives somewhere very far away and, sooner or later, needs a wire transfer.

Americans told the FBI they lost $929.3 million to confidence and romance scams in 2025, according to the bureau’s 2025 Internet Crime Report, compiled by its Internet Crime Complaint Center, known as IC3. That is up 38% from $672 million in 2024. Complaints rose 29%, to 23,159 from 17,910. The typical heartbreak is expensive: reported losses averaged about $40,100 per complaint.

The FBI’s definition is broader than a dating-app con. It covers any scheme in which a victim “believes they are in a relationship (family, friendly, or romantic)” and is tricked into sending money, personal and financial information or items of value. The category also includes the so-called grandparent scheme and, in the report’s phrase, any scheme in which the perpetrator “preys on the targeted individual’s ‘heartstrings.'”

Older hearts, bigger losses

The losses fall hardest on older Americans. People 60 and over filed 10,188 of the romance complaints, about 44%, but reported $584 million in losses, about 63% of the total. Their complaints were up 34% from 2024, and their losses rose 50%. The average reported loss for someone 60 or older was about $57,300.

Younger people are not immune; they simply lose less. Complainants in their 20s filed 1,886 romance complaints and reported $25.1 million in losses. Those in their 50s filed 3,745 and reported $131.4 million.

The age groups do not add up to the national total because not every complainant reports an age.

The new suitors: crypto and chatbots

Two technologies show up repeatedly in the report. The FBI counted 5,925 romance complaints with a cryptocurrency connection, accounting for $394.8 million in losses, or about 42% of the category’s total. The pattern is familiar to investigators: the relationship comes first, and then an “investment opportunity” follows.

Artificial intelligence is also becoming part of the act. The report says scammers are “creating fake profiles and scripts produced by AI chat generators to make speech more believable,” and it puts 2025 romance losses with a likely AI connection at more than $19 million. In a related scheme, voice-cloning software is used to imitate a relative in distress, and victims reported more than $5 million in losses to those “distress” scams last year.

In other words, the person who writes flawless sonnets at 3 a.m. and can never quite manage a video call deserves a second look.

Close to home

The IC3 does not break out romance fraud by state, but its state tables show how much money people in the region reported losing to internet crime of all kinds in 2025. Virginians filed 25,314 complaints and reported $476.1 million in losses, the 10th-highest total in the country. Marylanders filed 19,430 complaints and reported $390.2 million. District residents filed 3,113 complaints and reported $97.4 million.

Romance fraud was the fifth-costliest category nationally in 2025, behind investment fraud, business email compromise, tech and customer support scams, and personal data breaches. Across all categories, losses reported to IC3 topped $20.8 billion.

The fine print

Federal Trade Commission data, provided to The Inquisitor by the agency, show a larger national toll: the FTC received 70,588 romance-scam reports in 2025, with $1.5 billion in reported losses. By a calculation based on that FTC data, consumers in the District, Maryland and Virginia reported $65,303,823 in romance-scam losses across 2,493 reports: $507,515 in 89 reports from the District, $27,280,186 in 912 reports from Maryland and $37,516,122 in 1,492 reports from Virginia. The FTC’s Consumer Sentinel database includes reports from other contributors, among them the FBI, so the two agencies’ figures overlap.

A spokesperson for the FBI’s Washington Field Office said romance scams are among the most common fraud schemes. The office advised people not to share personal details with someone they have met only online, to be wary of a new contact who tries to isolate them or asks for photos, to resist pressure to act quickly and never to send cash or cryptocurrency to someone they have not met, and to report suspected scams at ic3.gov. The FBI’s National Press Office pointed to the IC3’s 2025 state reports.

These figures reflect only what victims chose to report, and the FBI’s numbers count complaints, not confirmed crimes. Embarrassment is a powerful reason to stay quiet, which suggests the true toll of misplaced affection is higher. The bureau urges anyone who believes they have been targeted to file at ic3.gov. The Federal Trade Commission takes reports at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.

The old rules still apply. Romance can be swift, but money requests should be slow, and a new love who asks for gift cards, wire transfers or cryptocurrency has told you everything you need to know.

The Inquisitor asked the FBI’s National Press Office, the FBI Washington Field Office, the Federal Trade Commission, AARP and the D.C. Office of the Attorney General about the figures and about local trends. The FBI Washington Field Office and the FBI National Press Office responded, and the FTC provided data on background; their answers are included above. AARP and the D.C. Office of the Attorney General had not responded. This story will be updated with any other responses.

Photo: A person holding a smartphone. Mictlancihuatl / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.