Romance Baiting Scams

Online dating apps have quietly become one of the most profitable hunting grounds for organised fraud, enabling a sprawling ecosystem of romance scams, ‘pig butchering’ crypto swindles, sextortion, identity theft, money laundering and even human trafficking, all piggybacking on the natural desire for love and connection. Far from a niche threat, global losses from romance style scams now exceed an estimated US-$1.3 billion a year and are climbing fast, with authorities warning that 2026 will see a further surge in both volume and sophistication driven by AI and deepfake technologies.