Earlier this year a French woman hit the headlines when it emerged she’d been conned to the tune of €830,000 (around £700,000) by a scammer impersonating Brad Pitt.
The 53-year-old interior designer confessed that she’d been duped into believing she was in a relationship with the Hollywood A-lister for 18 months.
Romance fraud – where someone is persuaded to give money to a person they’ve never met but believe they’re in a relationship with – has soared by 49% for 55-64 year-olds.
According to data published in 2024 by Lloyds Bank, the scam is mostly perpetrated online. It’s aimed at people on dating sites, social media and even gaming platforms.
Fraudsters target those looking for love, investing time in gaining their trust, before eventually convincing them to send money.
While those aged under 65 are the most susceptible to the fraud, the same study found those aged 65-74 lost the most money – an average of £13,123 to the criminals.
What’s on this page:
What is a romance scam?
UK Finance’s Fraud and Cybercrime Lead, Paul Maskall, has studied how fraudsters create an emotional bond with their victims before asking them for money.
“People don’t ‘fall for’ this kind of scam, they are emotionally manipulated into it.
When you have strong feelings for someone, it is much harder to spot the red flags that something is not right and [the scam] being online gives your intuition less to go on,” Maskall says.
“Once they have established their victim’s trust, the criminal will then claim to be experiencing a problem, such as an issue with a visa, health [problems] or flight tickets and ask for money to help.
“They appeal to people’s human decency. After all, if you love someone, you want to help and look after them. For those who may be lonely or isolated, this emotional manipulation can be particularly effective.”
The criminals don’t usually ask for money straight away: instead they spend time communicating and building trust. Even then, they may initially only ask for a small amount of money, which then leads to increasing demands.
How dangerous are dating and romance scams?
UK Finance’s Take Five To Stop Fraud campaign was created to protect people from scams such as these.
In the first six months of 2024, it found that victims lost as much as £14.5m in romance scams, making an average of 11 payments to the scammer during their ‘relationship’.
Lisa Webb, Consumer Law Expert for Which?, said: “Data shows over-55s are more likely to [be a] victim of romance fraud.
Which? has previously uncovered romance scammers posing as widowers on social media to attempt to befriend and groom potential victims.”
Metro Bank’s Head of Fraud & Investigations, Baz Thompson, recalls one 73-year-old customer who lost many thousands to a woman he’d built a relationship with over email and telephone.
“The first payment request was for a few hundred pounds – he was happy to help as she seemed in genuine need. By the time he started to get suspicious, he had made over 80 payments in less than six months and had lost nearly £57,000.”
The bank was able to help him recover £31,000, but he lost the rest.
What to do if you’re worried someone else is a victim of a romance scam
If you’re worried someone you know is a victim of romance fraud, you can call police on 101. You can also contact Crimestoppers anonymously. Crimestoppers also has lots of useful information about how to spot the signs, and examples of common types of romance scams.
Someone may be particularly vulnerable to romance scams if they are lonely, widowed or recently bereaved, or have suffered from a recent break up, or are suffering from depression.
You or your loved one can also get advice from Victim Support.
How to stay safe from romance scams
Take Five To Stop Fraud has these tips to help you stay safe:
- Be suspicious of any requests for money from someone you’ve never met in person, particularly if you have only recently met online.
- Profile photos may not be genuine, so make sure to do your research first. You can use Google to do “a reverse image search” – save the image and then upload it into a Google image search – you should quickly see if the picture has been used elsewhere, perhaps under another name.
- Stay on the dating site’s messaging service (rather than communicating directly by email, Whatsapp or text message) until you’re confident the person is who they say they are, as these sites do at least have some moderation and reporting processes in place to protect daters and remove scammers (although you still shouldn’t rely on these completely).
- If you do arrange face-to-face contact, ensure that meetings take place in bright and public spaces, and somebody else knows where you’re going.
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