Romance Scams by the Numbers: What the FTC and Pew Data Actually Show in 2026

All week we’ve been telling you the scam problem is real. Today we show receipts. Every number below comes from a primary source — the FTC’s Consumer Sentinel data or Pew Research Center’s survey of U.S. online daters — and every one is linked at the point of mention, because a statistic without a source is just a vibe with a percent sign.

The headline numbers

Start with the big one. According to the FTC’s April 2026 Data Spotlight, people reported losing $2.1 billion to scams that started on social media in 2025 — roughly eight times the $261 million reported for 2020. Five years, one order of magnitude. That figure covers all scam types, but romance scams hold an ugly share of it: the same FTC report counts $298 million reported lost to romance scams originating on social media in 2025 alone — second only to investment scams among social-media fraud losses.

Where scams actually start (it’s not where you think)

Here’s the finding that should reframe how you think about “dating app danger”: per the FTC, nearly 60% of people who reported losing money to a romance scam in 2025 said it started on a social media platform — not on a dating site.

That tracks with how the scam economy works. Scammers optimize for unmoderated, unlimited, free contact surfaces — open DMs, friend requests, comment sections. A dating platform with verification steps and a paid tier is a worse hunting ground than a social feed where a fake account costs nothing and reaches anyone. The lesson isn’t “dating platforms are all safe” — Wednesday’s moderation comparison covers exactly how they differ — it’s that where you let strangers reach you matters as much as how you vet them. For gamers, whose DMs span Discord servers, in-game chat, and streaming platforms, that’s not an abstract point.

The reporting iceberg

Every number above is almost certainly a dramatic undercount. A 2021 study by FTC economist Keith Anderson found that only about 4.8% of people who experience mass-market consumer fraud complain to a Better Business Bureau or government entity. Romance scam victims have extra reasons for silence: embarrassment, grief, and sometimes not yet realizing the relationship was the scam. If roughly one in twenty losses gets reported, the true romance-scam economy isn’t measured in hundreds of millions. Do the multiplication yourself; we’ll wait while you get angry.

What daters themselves report

The FTC counts dollars; Pew Research Center counts experiences, and the experiences are widespread:

• 52% of Americans who have used a dating site or app say they’ve encountered someone they believe was trying to scam them.
• Among people who used a dating platform in the past year, that figure rises to 62% — the trend line points the wrong way.
• Asked how platforms handle the problem, 40% say companies do a bad job finding and removing bots and fake accounts, versus 20% who say they do a good job — a two-to-one vote of no confidence in moderation-by-algorithm.

What this means for gamers

Nothing in the public data says gamers are more gullible than anyone else — and we’d never pretend otherwise. But the numbers above describe an attack pattern with clear implications for how we socialize: scams start where DMs are open and free, they’re built on long-form parasocial trust, and they end in a money ask. Open DMs, long voice-only friendships, and fast-formed trust with strangers is a fair description of gaming’s social layer at its best. The culture that makes gaming friendships wonderful is the same surface a scammer scripts against. Awareness, not paranoia, is the patch.

The takeaway

Three things the data supports. Scam losses are large and compounding — eightfold growth in five years. The reported numbers are the iceberg’s tip, given a ~5% reporting rate. And most of it starts on unmoderated free platforms, which makes your choice of where to meet people a genuine safety decision — arguably the biggest single one you control. If you’d rather make that decision once, up front, a human-reviewed platform built for gamers is our entirely predictable but sincerely held suggestion.

Tomorrow: the whole week, wrapped and skimmable, in the Sunday digest.