Short answer
A romance scammer builds trust online — often over weeks — and then needs money: a medical bill, a ticket, a visa, legal fees, or a cryptocurrency investment they offer to help you start. The FTC’s rule is simple: never send money or gifts to someone you haven’t met in person, and never mix online dating and investment advice. In the investment version, known as “pig butchering”, a fake trading site shows invented gains that tempt you to deposit more. Stop contact, run a reverse image search on the profile photos and talk to someone you trust. If you paid, contact your bank, payment service or crypto exchange now, report it — in the US to ReportFraud.ftc.gov and ic3.gov — and tell the app or site where you met.
Warning signs
| What they do | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Move you off the dating app quickly | Email, phone or a messaging app takes the chat out of the platform’s view and its scam warnings |
| Declare strong feelings early and message many times a day | Fast intimacy builds trust before you can check anything |
| Live or work far away — overseas, on an oil rig, in the military | It explains why they can never meet you in person |
| Need money for medical bills, travel, a visa or legal fees | Anyone you haven’t met who asks for money is a scammer, whatever the story |
| Offer to teach you crypto investing | The FTC calls dating plus investment advice a scam every time |
| Want payment by wire, gift card, payment app or crypto | These are hard to reverse; crypto payments typically can’t be reversed at all |
| Create urgency | Pressure stops you from talking to anyone who might see the scam |
How a “pig butchering” investment scam works
- Contact. A stranger — or someone reconnecting with you — gets in touch on social media, a dating app or a messaging app. The FBI advises verifying any investment offer that comes this way.
- Grooming. Weeks of friendly or romantic conversation, with hints of success from trading cryptocurrency.
- The platform. You are guided to an investing app or website — often with an address that imitates a real crypto exchange or is slightly misspelled.
- Fake profits. The account shows growing gains, which encourage bigger deposits.
- The trap. When you try to withdraw, new “fees” or “taxes” appear. They are part of the scam: the money is not there, and paying more only adds to the loss.
Check before you trust
- Reverse image search the profile photos, as the FTC suggests — stolen photos often belong to a real person with another name. See how to find where photos are used.
- Search the name or claimed job with the word “scammer”; others may have reported the same story.
- Talk to a friend or family member, especially if they are worried about the relationship.
- Never install an investing app or open a trading site sent by an online contact. Type the address of a known exchange yourself, and remember that only scammers guarantee profits or big returns.
If you have already sent money
- Stop paying. No “fee”, “tax” or “unlock payment” will release the balance.
- Contact the company you paid through straight away — your bank, the payment app, the gift card company or the crypto exchange — and ask for the payment to be stopped or reversed.
- Keep everything: profile links, chats, phone numbers, website addresses, wallet addresses, amounts, dates and transaction IDs.
- Report it. In the US to ReportFraud.ftc.gov and the FBI’s IC3, saying how the contact began and how you paid. Elsewhere, see where to report online fraud by country.
- Report the profile to the dating app or social network where you met, so it can be removed.
Watch out for the second scam
Victims are often contacted again by people posing as lawyers, police or “fund recovery” companies who promise to get the money back for an upfront fee. That is another scam — see recovery scams. If the scammer had intimate photos or videos and now threatens to share them, read sextortion: what to do. And if your own photos were used to build a fake profile, they can be reported and removed.
Frequently asked questions
They have never asked me for money. Can it still be a scam?
Yes. Many scams ask for nothing at first, then introduce an “investment opportunity” or an emergency. Advice to invest in crypto from someone you met online is the same request in disguise.
Can I get my cryptocurrency back?
Usually only if the recipient sends it back: the FTC says crypto payments typically can’t be reversed. Report it to the exchange you used and to the authorities quickly, with the transaction details.
How can I check whether a profile is fake?
Run a reverse image search on the photos, search the name and claimed job with the word “scammer”, and be wary of anyone who always has a reason not to meet in person.
Where do I report a romance scam?
In the US to ReportFraud.ftc.gov and ic3.gov, and to the app or site where you met. In other countries, report it to your police or national fraud service and to your bank.
Sources: FTC — what to know about romance scams, FTC — what to know about cryptocurrency and scams, FBI IC3 — cryptocurrency investment schemes (“pig butchering”), FTC — ReportFraud.ftc.gov, FBI — Internet Crime Complaint Center