Broken hearts and bank balances as nearly £90 million lost to romance fraud last year

EMBARGO: Immediate Release

As Valentine's Day approaches, a Freedom of Information request by the Liberal Democrats has revealed a staggering epidemic of love seekers falling victim to romance fraud.

In 2023, £88,312,382 was lost to scammers duping their victims into sending money under the false guise of a relationship. This is equivalent to nearly £242,000 in losses every single day.

On average, those falling victim to fake romances are losing an average of over £10,000 each. 

Scams targeting love seekers have been increasing in recent years, with 8,608 reports of romance fraud made across England and Wales in 2023 - up 8% from the number of reports in 2022. 

Both the number of cases and volume of losses had increased compared to 2022. The number of reports was up by 8%, with losses up by nearly 0.5%. And since 2020, a whopping £341 million has been lost as a result of romance fraud.  

The Liberal Democrats have slammed the Conservative Government for these figures, arguing that they have failed to keep up with the evolving nature of fraud, leaving innocent people vulnerable to online scams like romance fraud.

The party is calling for a tougher plan to tackle online fraud - including setting up an Online Crime Agency, and a real-time scam warning system to check and report suspicious activity.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesperson Alistair Carmichael MP said: 

“Finding love in the age of online dating is hard enough without the real fear of being left with both a broken heart and a broken bank balance. 

“People searching for a partner to share their life with deserve to feel confident that they aren’t falling victim to cruel fraudsters. 

“Instead, thanks to this Conservative government’s sheer incompetence and their failure to crack down on online scams, these fraudsters can vanish into the sunset with eye watering sums of money while leaving a trail of devastation behind them.”

ENDS

Notes to Editor:

A full breakdown of the volume of romance fraud reports and losses associated with them, broken down by police force, can be found here. This was provided by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau following an FOI request.

Romance fraud is defined by Action Fraud as situations where “victims are duped into sending money to criminals, who go to great lengths to gain their trust and convince them that they are in a genuine relationship.”

Liberal Democrat plans for an Online Crime Agency would: 

• Create a national agency to effectively tackle online crimes such as personal fraud and threats and incitement to violence on social media;

• Attract and invest in professionals with the necessary skills;

• Coordinate work across the UK, recognising that perpetrators and victims of online crime can be based in entirely different parts of the country.

The story was first reported in The Mirror.