In 2025, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded $929.3 million in reported losses to romance and investment fraud, up 38% in a single year. It is the number we print on our homepage — and it is worth reading carefully.
What the number is
It is the sum of what victims chose to report, to one US agency. IC3 counts complaints, not crimes. That is why every figure on our evidence band sits next to its source and its year: the number is only as honest as the label on it.
What it is not
FTC data puts the reporting rate at roughly one incident in twenty. Multiply the reported figure by twenty and the "real" number stops being a point and becomes a range. And the least likely reporters are the people least likely to report — older adults, and people who feel shame about a romance fraud. The official number is a floor, not an estimate.
What the shape tells you
Three things in the data matter more than the total. One: about 60% of these scripts start on general social media, not dating apps — the fraud has moved from places people are cautious to places they are casual. Two: 94% of victims recover nothing — which is why the first hour (bank, card, report) is the only window where money comes back. Three: the 38% year-on-year rise mixes more victims with better reporting, and nobody can cleanly split the two — which is exactly why we print the source and the year beside every number.
What it means for you
The number is not a prediction that you will be targeted. It is a description of how targeting works at scale: slow, personal, and aimed at the places you already trust. The cheapest defence in the data is the one our whole product is built around — verify on a second channel before money moves.