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January 21st, 2026
Valentine’s day is about showing your love for that special someone in your life. On Valentine’s day, people show their love through gift-giving. In fact, Americans spent $21.9 billion on valentines day activities in 2021 alone. unfortunately, Romance scammers use this holiday to capitalize on people’s loneliness. They do this in elaborate romance scams that can cost victims thousands of dollars and an immeasurable amount of heartache. In this article, we’ll discuss how to spot and avoid valentines day scams online.
Romance Scams Reaching Epidemic Proportions
It’s a common misconception that romance scams are an issue that mainly affects the elderly. Although they are a group that seems to be particularly susceptible to falling prey to these scams, a growing number of young adults are falling victim to romance fraud as well. Young adults have been the fastest-growing group of victims to call prey to romance scams. Between the years 2017 and 2020, romance scams among young adults surged by 156%.
Romance scams are responsible for people losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year, and the problem is growing. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Romance scams take more money from the average victim than any other scam. The median amount lost in romance scams is $2,500. That is 10 times higher than the average amount lost for any other scam.
While many older victims of romance scams meet their scammer on platforms like Facebook, Plenty of Fish, and even online games like Words With Friends, many young adults meet their scammers on swipe-based dating apps like Tinder or Bumble.
What is a Romance Scam
A romance scam is when someone steals someone else’s images online and uses them to initiate a conversation on social media. The scammers then create a relationship with their victims by following a specific format that scammers have developed over the years.
The scammer tactics start with love bombing. Love bombing is a manipulation tactic that starts with the manipulator confessing their love for their victims after only talking to you for a very short time. They then shower them with affection and affirmations of love on a daily basis. This is the first step in these scams because for many people, having an attractive person confess their love for them is extremely flattering, and it leaves them susceptible to the next part of the scam.
The Story Phase
In the next stage of the scam. scammers come up with elaborate and exciting stories to go along with the pictures they’ve stolen. These stories are usually centered around their professions. Romance scammers will usually claim to be a few things. A soldier in the military, an oil rig worker, a peace corps doctor, or an engineer working abroad.
Scammers choose these identities because they provide excuses for why they can’t meet up with their victims or get on a video call with them. Their whole goal is to hide behind the images they’ve stolen and the identity they’ve created so their victims can never find out the truth. That the person they’ve fallen in love with impersonating someone using their images.
If you or someone you know is talking to someone who seems to be following this pattern, run a reverse image search on their images to find out if the person is real.
Asking for money
Scammers ask for money in a couple of predictable ways. All of these ways center around an emergency they claim to be going through. The stories that these scammers come up with very widely. But ultimately, their reasons for asking for money tend to be the same.
The emergency that the scammer will claim to be experiencing vary widely and differs based on the persona they’ve created. If you are talking to an oil rig scammer, they may tell you that there was an explosion on the oil rig and they lost all of their equipment. It is not uncommon for them to photoshop pictures of their persona in the hospital to pull on your heartstrings.
At this stage in the scam, many victims will send large amounts of money. This is because the scammer has been approaching the situation strategically from the very begging. They’ve been love bombing their victims and have likely even proposed marriage at some point. Many victims empathize with their internet fiancé’s artificial sense of desperation, so they send the money.
This is the strategy that scammers have used to make over $304 million in 2020 alone. These scams peak around valentines day as people looked to find people to find a romantic connection through online dating.
Romance Scams By State
Romance scams have a larger impact on certain areas of the country. Some states are much more affected by these scams than others. Here is the breakdown of scams by the state in 2020:
Signs You Are Being Romance Scammed This Valentine’s day
Because romance scammers tend to follow a similar format, there are a few signs you can look for to tell if you’re dealing with a romance scammer this Valentine’s day:
They refuse to video chat with you. If you’ve met someone online and they refuse to video chat with you, it is a huge red flag.
They Seem to get attached just a little too fast. If you meet someone online and they fall in love with you in an unreasonable amount of time, it’s time to be suspicious of their intentions.
They ask you for gift cards. Someone asking you for money is one of the biggest red flags there is. But if they ask you for money in the form of gift cards, you can be almost certain that the person you’re talking to is a romance scammer.
What To Do If You Think you’ve Encountered a Romance Scammer
Getting Scammed on Valentine’s day is no fun. If you think that you or anyone you know is involved in a romance scam, run a reverse image search on the person to find out the truth. A reverse image search can help you find out if the person stole their photos from someone else. Run your first image search today!
