What you could call the Super Bowl of romance fraud is right around the corner: Valentine’s Day, where the only winners when it comes to fraud are scammers.
The unsung detectives of the romance scams boom are unlikely ones — folks like Ryan Abood, CEO of Gourmet Gift Baskets, a company that provides sweets for your sweetie on special occasions.
But how can a gift basket company identify that romance scams spike right around Valentine’s Day?
“How we catch them is that they’re typically using stolen credit cards, and then what we do is we start to dig, where it’ll fail a bunch of AI that we have around testing credit cards and whether they’re good or not,” said Abood. “And eventually, when it fails enough, a human will intervene, and that’s really where you start to see the card messages and you can kind of get a sense of the sentiment behind them. Our heart breaks because it’s pretty clear that this person is talking to somebody that is not who they say they are.”
That's how most romance scams begin.
And while red is typically the color of love, it’s also the color of some flags you should look out for.
“Even though you’re having this really intimate relationship with them via text or even via phone call, if they can’t meet you in person, that should be a sign that maybe there’s something wrong,” said Katie Hass, the director of Utah’s Division of Consumer Protection.
WATCH: Romance scammers target 11 million older adults, using AI to steal money
Hass says while we’re used to seeing the elderly fall victim to romance scams, the division receives reports from consumers of all ages; no one is safe.
A combined analysis of Better Business Bureau complaint data and other data shows that 70% of romance scam reports resulted in confirmed financial losses last year.
The Federal Trade Commission estimates $2.4 billion was lost to romance scams in 2024.
Your antenna should go up if they ask for even small amounts of money. They’re testing you to see if you’re willing to give.
Also, if they ask you for a more non-traditional form of payment that can’t be refunded, like gift cards, cryptocurrency or even cash, that too is a sign that it's a scam.
If you want to try to “sleuth out” a potential scammer, the answers you need may lie in their picture.
“Take the image the person has sent you and run searches for that image on the internet and see if you find that person in other spaces,” said Hass. “There are technologies out there now that you can use against the people using technology by taking images and seeing if it’s an AI-generated image, seeing if it’s an image that’s attached to somebody else’s account that isn’t actually the same name or person.”
Hass says something to keep in mind: if someone like your banker or even a trusted friend or family member says you should think twice before sending thousands of dollars to someone you don’t know, listen to them.
If you find yourself to be a victim of one of these scams, report it to the Federal Trade Commission and the Utah Division of Consumer Protection.
