A total of £92m has been lost through dating scams in the space of a year, new Action Fraud figures have revealed.

The UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cyber crime is urging family members of online daters to help protect their relatives from becoming a victim of romance fraud.

Daters who strike up online relationships between Christmas and Valentines Day tend to be the most susceptible to romance fraud, with a spike of 901 reports recorded by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) in March last year.

Despite a peak of romance fraud reports and losses of £8.7m reported in March 2021, the financial spike came two months later in May 2021 where losses of £14.6m were reported.

In the period between November 2020 and October 2021, 8,863 cases of romance fraud were reported to NFIB, up from 6,968 reports in the 2020 calendar year, to total £92m lost to fraud. However this is not likely to be an accurate picture, as romance fraud is a crime victims are less likely to report.

Temporary Detective Chief Superintendent Matt Bradford, from the City of London Police, said:“Typically, romance fraudsters will spend weeks gaining their victims’ trust, feeding them fabricated stories about who they are and their lives – and initially make no suggestion of any desire to ask for any money, so the victim may believe their new love interest is genuine.

“But weeks, or sometimes months later, these criminals will ask for money for a variety of emotive reasons and as the emotional relationship has already been formed, victims often transfer money without a second thought.

“We’re calling on family members who think their relatives may be dating online to help make them aware of the warning signs that they could be falling victim to fraud, particularly if the person dating online is not particularly tech savvy.”

Criminals often use a range of stories to get victims to transfer them money without it raising suspicion. According to Action Fraud, the stories are often believable, to a certain extent, and something that the victim would find hard to say no to because of their emotional attachment.

Commenting, interactive investor personal finance campaigner, Myron Jobson, added: “Romance fraud is particularly dastardly because they pull at the heartstrings of those seeking companionship or romantic partners on dating apps and websites with the sole goal of obtaining access to their financial or personal identifying information.

“The scourge of romance fraud has been made worse by increased isolation brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic which has resulted in more people looking for love online.

“When using dating app, you should always be conscious of the information you disclose. Never send money, login information to your accounts or any other sensitive information relating to your finances.

“Don’t give fraudsters the opportunity to break your heart and your bank account. If you’ve come across a scammer on a dating app, report their profile to the company as soon as possible.”

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