FTC Romance-Scam Losses Hit $1.3 Billion Across Five Years Then Social Media Made the Problem Worse
WASHINGTON — In February 2022 the Federal Trade Commission said consumers had reported $547 million lost to romance scams in 2021 alone, a record, and about $1.3 billion across the prior five years. The median loss was brutal because the pitch is not a stolen credit card. It is a relationship. Scammers build a person, a crisis, and a wire instruction. Older targets paid the most. The FTC’s Consumer Sentinel is a complaint database, not a recovery desk. Most of that money does not come home.
The FTC press release is still the baseline. What happened next is worse. In 2025 Americans reported $2.1 billion lost to scams that started on social media, according to an FTC Data Spotlight released April 27, 2026 — more than any other contact method, and about eight times the 2020 figure. Romance was a large slice of that. Nearly 60 percent of people who reported losing money to a romance scam in 2025 said it started on a social platform. Separate Sentinel tables put 2025 romance losses in the same $1.3 billion neighborhood as the five-year total that looked shocking in 2021.
The AEGIS Alliance will say the obvious: the apps are the hunting ground, the wire is the kill, and the platforms take a cut of the attention that makes the hunt possible. Related: the $21 million grandparent scam, the phantom-hacker bank drain, and more Crime News.
