DatingorDefrauding?, a social-media campaign urging skepticism toward investment solicitations from new online acquaintances or romantic interests, has been launched ahead of Valentine’s Day.
It’s part of a coordinated push by the Commodity and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and its Office of Customer Education and Outreach involving national and crossborder efforts to alert the public to relationship investment scams – schemes that authorities estimate drain roughly $10 billion per year from Americans.
A recurring red flag is a request to transfer crypto assets or other funds to invest through slick but fictitious trading websites.
The initiative brings together a wide coalition of regulators and enforcement bodies, including the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the SEC, and industry self-regulators such as FINRA. State authorities and other watchdogs are also participating. The CFTC is also working with the International Organization of Securities Commissions on a global awareness drive.
Officials say the Valentine’s Day window is no accident. Romance scams thrive on emotional vulnerability and the search for companionship, making this period especially attractive to fraudsters.
Six warning signs
The CFTC warns that relationship investment scams tend to unfold in a consistent way:
- The supposed romantic interest is unwilling to meet in person.
- Conversations quickly move away from dating and social platforms to encrypted messaging apps.
- The scammers present themselves, or someone close to them, as an unusually successful trader, often in crypto.
- They offer to help the victim invest or trade.
- As the relationship develops, urgency is introduced, with pressure to act quickly or keep the opportunity confidential.
- Victims are directed to unfamiliar websites, apps, or digital wallets to move funds.
The CFTC highlights that when these signs appear, the safest response is to disengage. Do not send funds or share personal information, save all messages and transaction records, and report the account to the platform and relevant authorities.
The agency also notes that limiting investments to regulated financial institutions and seeking a second opinion before acting can significantly reduce the risk of loss.
Romantic crypto scams
Common warning signs of romance-driven crypto schemes include requests to invest in scams through fake crypto websites, or requests to send crypto assets.
The trail typically ends at a fraudulent trading platform controlled by organized criminal networks, leaving victims with heavy financial losses.
“Foreign criminals are exploiting dating apps, social media, messaging platforms, and artificial intelligence to steal money from American citizens,” CFTC Chair Michael Selig said.
He urged consumers to warn friends and family and to safeguard digital assets by relying on trusted software and US-regulated intermediaries.
“Pig butchering”
As crypto trading emerged, romantic crypto scams became part of a grander romantic fraud scheme group called “pig butchering.”
These schemes represent a more industrialized evolution of online fraud. Rather than opportunistic scams, these operations are typically run by organized criminal networks that use scripted relationship-building techniques and professionally designed digital infrastructure.
Initial contact may appear accidental or benign, but interactions are carefully managed over weeks or months, with scammers tracking a victim’s responsiveness, financial capacity, as well as emotional state before introducing any investment narrative.
A defining feature of pig-butchering schemes is the use of controlled trading platforms that convincingly simulate legitimate market activity. Victims may see dashboards showing steady gains, account balances that increase over time, even customer-service-style interactions that reinforce credibility.
Early withdrawals are sometimes permitted to establish trust, creating an illusion that the system is real and liquid. Only later are victims encouraged to commit larger sums, often framed as a limited opportunity or a step toward financial independence.
Behind the scenes, the funds are rapidly moved through a complex spider web of layered accounts, crypto wallets, and offshore entities, making the recovery impossible once the scheme collapses.
By the time victims realize something is wrong, communication has usually ceased and the platforms have vanished.
Regulators note that the combination of emotional manipulation and crossborder structure makes pig-butchering scams particularly damaging and resistant to traditional enforcement tools.
Elder financial exploitation
Elder financial exploitation occupies a distinct and growing category of relationship-driven financial crime, not only because of the scale of losses but because of the structural vulnerabilities it exposes.
According to FinCEN analyses, older adults are frequently targeted due to a combination of accumulated assets, predictable income streams, declining cognitive capacity in some cases, and increased reliance on others for financial and daily assistance. Exploitation can come from outside actors or from individuals within the victim’s circle of trust, including family members.
From a financial system perspective, elder exploitation often manifests through subtle but telling transactional patterns rather than overt fraud. These include:
- sudden changes in long-standing banking behavior;
- large and repeated withdrawals inconsistent with prior spending habits;
- unexplained wire transfers or cashier’s checks;
- abrupt changes to account signatories or contact information; and
- heightened involvement of a third party who appears to direct financial decisions.
FinCEN stresses that elder financial exploitation is chronically underreported, making financial institutions a critical detection point. Unlike conventional fraud, losses may unfold gradually, draining retirement savings or home equity over time.
Mail theft and romance
Mail theft has re-emerged as an important enabler of financial crime, including schemes that intersect with romance-related fraud, because stolen postal deliveries can yield a trove of personally identifiable information and monetizable financial instruments.
According to FinCEN’s alert on check fraud, criminals who intercept mail may extract bank statements, pre-approved credit offers, tax documents, and even paper checks. In the context of romance scams, mail theft can provide fraudsters with details used to personalize their approach, validate fabricated identities, or hijack a victim’s existing financial accounts without raising immediate suspicion.
FinCEN’s guidance underscores how these schemes often leverage multiple vectors: social engineering to build trust, and document theft to fuel credibility and facilitate access, amplified by financial system vulnerabilities to complete the fraud.
The interlocking nature of these tactics complicates detection, because transactional red flags may appear benign when viewed in isolation.
For example, a seemingly ordinary check alteration could be dismissed as a bookkeeping error unless contextualized with other indicators of exploitation.