Online Dating Scams: How to Spot and Avoid Them

People reported $929 million in losses to romance and confidence scams to the FBI in 2025, up 38 percent from 2024 (source) [3]. The money is big; the playbook is small. Online dating scams follow patterns you can learn to spot in minutes. This guide covers the six scams you are most likely to meet, the tell for each one, the 2026 twists (AI photos, deepfake calls, crypto “opportunities”), and the habits that keep your money and your images safe while you look for someone real.

What Are Online Dating Scams?

Online dating scams are frauds in which someone uses a fake profile and a false identity on a dating app or social media to build trust with you, then uses that trust to take money, personal information, or intimate images [1]. In 2023, the FTC counted $1.14 billion in reported losses to romance scams, with a median loss of $2,000 per person (source) [5].

These scams work on sharp, capable people because the person running them is a professional. Scammers run a volume business, working dozens of targets at once with scripts, stolen or generated photos, and AI chat tools that write the profile and the messages for them. The FBI counted more than $19 million lost in 2025 to romance scams with a likely AI component [3]. Knowing the specific scam types is your first layer of defense.

The Most Common Online Dating Scams

Most online dating scams fall into six categories, each with a different goal and a recognizable tell. Here is the field guide:

Romance scams stay the costliest of the group. The FTC found the most reported lie is that the scammer, or someone close to them, is sick, hurt, or in jail and needs money now: 24 percent of reports in 2023 (source) [5]. Military deployment is their favorite cover story, because it explains months of distance and blocked video calls [4].

Two patterns aimed at our people deserve a name. The first is the investment pitch that borrows community trust: a “Black-owned” crypto fund, a group chat of “successful Black investors,” a chance to build generational wealth together. The FTC’s description fits whatever the wrapper: they promise big profits, say there is no risk, offer to teach you, and steer you to gift cards, payment apps, wire transfers, or crypto (source) [6]. The second is the payment method itself. The FTC’s Serving Communities of Color report found that reports from majority Black and Latino communities show people are more likely to pay scammers in ways with few or no fraud protections: cash, cryptocurrency, money orders, and debit cards (source) [7]. Anyone who insists on those methods, or who “sends” you money through a cash app and asks for part of it back, is telling you what they are.

How These Scams Typically Unfold

Nearly every dating scam follows the same arc: approach, bond, isolate, extract. The scammer opens with a polished profile and fast, flattering attention, then pushes the conversation off the app to text or a private messaging app within days [1]. Weeks of daily contact follow, designed to build a real emotional attachment. The Better Business Bureau calls this stage financial grooming: the relationship comes first, the ask comes later, and the ask starts small [8].

Only then does the extraction begin. A sudden crisis, an investment opportunity, or a threat appears, and the scammer names a hard-to-reverse payment method: wire transfer, gift cards, payment apps, or cryptocurrency [1]. The crypto version is the most expensive fraud in the country: $7.2 billion in reported losses in 2025, more than any other type, with scripts that often start on dating apps before moving to a messaging platform and a fake trading app that shows you fake profits (source) [3].

Warning Signs That Apply to Every Dating Scam

Whatever the scam type, the same core signals show up again and again. Treat any two of these together as a stop and verify moment:

• They rush the relationship: Declarations of love within days, pet names right away, talk of a future before you’ve met.
• They push you off the app: Fast requests to switch to text, email, or an encrypted messaging app.
• They can never meet or video chat: Deployment, an oil rig, bad connections, endless canceled plans [2, 4].
• Their story wobbles: Details about their job, family, or city shift between conversations.
• Their presence is too clean: Flawless photos, no tagged friends, no old posts, and replies that never answer the question you asked. AI can write the profile and the conversation [3].
• Money enters the chat: Any request for cash, crypto, gift cards, codes, or financial details from someone you haven’t met in person.
• They want it kept quiet: Pressure to keep the relationship from the friends and family who would spot the con.

How To Protect Yourself From Online Dating Scams

The strongest defense is one rule you never bend: never send money, gifts, codes, or financial information to someone you haven’t met in person [1]. Layer these habits on top:

1. Stay on the app: Messages on BLK go through Safe Message Filters, automated tools plus trained human agents who can act on harmful behavior. Scammers know that, which is why they push to move early. Treat the push itself as the red flag.
2. Reverse image search their photos: Stolen pictures surface under other names in seconds [2]. A clean result proves nothing, because AI-generated photos have no history. Look for warped hands, mismatched earrings, blurred background text, and a face that never appears with other people.
3. Video chat early, and make it unscripted: Ask for a call on the spot, then ask them to turn their head, pass a hand in front of their face, or hold up something you name. Real-time deepfakes glitch on movement. Refusal after a few excuses is your answer, and a smooth call alone is not full proof either.
4. Search their story: Their name and their job plus the word “scammer” turns up recycled scripts [1].
5. Guard your information: No address, workplace, routine, financial details, or intimate images with someone new.
6. Never “invest” with a match: Any love interest steering you toward crypto, forex, or a trading app is running the most expensive scam on this page [3, 6]. That includes the ones who say it is for the culture.
7. Bring in a friend: Show the conversation to someone you trust before things get serious. If you would be embarrassed to show it, that feeling is information.

What To Do if You’ve Been Targeted

If you spot a scam in progress, stop responding right away, take screenshots of the profile and the messages, and block and report the account from any profile page or messaging window so it can be removed [2]. If you sent money, call your bank, card issuer, or payment app and ask about reversing the transaction. Then report the fraud to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov and to the FBI at ic3.gov [1, 2]. Both are online forms: you do not have to walk into a police station for a report to count. If you would rather talk it through with a friend first, do that, then file.

Skip anyone who later promises to recover your lost money for an upfront fee. Recovery services that find you are a second scam aimed at the same people, and the FBI names them in its 2025 report [3]. And drop the shame. These operations run on volume and fool thousands of smart people a year; your report protects the next person.