• The FBI IC3 2025 report records 23,159 Confidence/Romance complaints and $929,287,469 in reported losses, up about 38% on 2024.
  • Victims aged 60+ account for $584,032,745 of those losses, about 63% of the category by DII's calculation.
  • The category includes family and friendship deception, so it is not a measure of dating-app fraud.
  • The source is a Cognyte blog that promotes its NEXYTE platform, reposted automatically by Malware News on 11 November.

Malware News on 11 November reposted a Cognyte blog post that restates the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center's 2025 figures: 23,159 confidence/romance complaints and $929,287,469 in reported losses. The page is an automated repost and adds no reporting of its own.

The numbers come from the IC3 annual report, published in April 2026. Cognyte uses them to argue that investigators can link shared phone numbers, emails and crypto wallets across victim reports to expose wider networks. The post is vendor marketing for NEXYTE, and should be read as such.

The DII Take

The data is solid. The framing is a sales pitch. For dating operators, the useful reading is that romance fraud is growing around the industry, not that it is measured within it: the IC3 report does not break out dating apps, and the FTC says nearly 60% of people who lost money to a romance scam in 2025 reported it started on social media. That is a reputational problem for dating brands even where the fraud begins elsewhere.

A broad category, and a rising one

The IC3 defines the category as a case where "An individual believes they are in a relationship (family, friendly, or romantic) and are tricked into sending money". It also covers the Grandparent's Scheme. The figures, according to the IC3 report:

  • Complaints: 23,159 in 2025, against 17,910 in 2024 and 17,823 in 2023.
  • Losses: $929,287,469 in 2025, against $672,009,052 in 2024, roughly a 38% rise.
  • Victims aged 60+ filed 10,188 complaints with $584,032,745 in losses in 2025, versus $389,312,356 in 2024.
  • Cryptocurrency appeared in 5,925 complaints with $394,787,515 in losses.
  • Of 626 complaints with a likely AI nexus, losses were $19,041,653.
Victims aged 60+ filed 10,188 Confidence/Romance complaints with $584,032,745 in losses in 2025, versus $389,312,356 in 2024.

Payment trails and what to watch

In the IC3 transaction chart for the category, prepaid and gift cards took 31%, cryptocurrency 25% and wire or ACH 21%. The IC3 report also says crypto investment scammers, largely organised criminal enterprises in Southeast Asia, typically make first contact through text messages, social media, advertisements or dating applications before moving the conversation to a messaging platform.

Elsewhere, UK Finance reported that authorised push payment romance fraud losses rose 23% to £39.2M in 2025. The FTC's figures use different categories and cannot be added to the FBI's.

Watch whether regulators start asking dating platforms for data on the off-platform handovers that the IC3 report describes, and whether older members, the group behind most losses, become a focus of safety design.

  • The FBI's $929.3M romance figure covers family and friendship deception as well as dating, so operators should not cite it as dating-app fraud.
  • Losses concentrated among victims aged 60+ and routed through gift cards and crypto point to where platform safeguards would matter most.

Sources: FBI Internet Crime Report 2025 (FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center); Romance Scams: Following the Network Behind the Profile (Cognyte); Romance Scams: Following the Network Behind the Profile, repost (Malware News); UK Finance Annual Fraud Report 2026 press release (UK Finance); New trends in reports of imposter scams (US Federal Trade Commission); FTC Data Spotlight on social media scam losses (US Federal Trade Commission)