Romance Scam (Traditional)

Online romance fraud began in the early 2000s on dating sites, run mainly by Nigerian 'Yahoo boys' and Ghanaian 'sakawa' groups; no single first case is credited, and the model descends from the 19th-century 'sweetheart swindle'.

The romance scam descends from the 'sweetheart swindle' of the 19th and 20th centuries, in which con artists courted widows for their savings, and from the Spanish Prisoner and 419 letters. Its online form appeared with dating sites in the early 2000s, driven largely by Nigerian 'Yahoo boys' and Ghanaian 'sakawa' networks who built fake profiles as US soldiers, engineers and widowers; the FBI and FTC began tracking 'confidence/romance fraud' as its own category in the 2010s. The scam has since moved to social media and apps, and since about 2020 has merged with the crypto 'pig-butchering' model run from Southeast Asian compounds, which is profiled separately. Losses reported to the FTC passed $1 billion a year in 2023, and nearly 60% of 2025 reports began on social media.

A fake profile, usually with stolen photos of an attractive stranger, matches with the victim on a dating site, Facebook or Instagram and quickly moves the conversation to WhatsApp or email. Over weeks or months the scammer professes love, plans a future together and explains why they cannot meet: deployed overseas, working on an oil rig, stuck at customs. Then the emergencies begin, a medical bill, a customs fee, a plane ticket, each paid by wire, gift card or crypto. The victim is often isolated from friends who raise doubts, may be recruited to receive and forward other victims' money, and the scam ends only when they run out of funds.

A stolen photo set and a free dating profile are the only capital, one operator can run dozens of 'relationships' with copy-paste scripts and now AI-written messages, and victims hand over money willingly for months. It is among the highest-yield scams per victim: the FTC's median loss was $2,000 in 2023 and totals passed $1.1 billion a year, with romance victims often converted into money mules. Prosecution is rare because scammers are abroad and victims are ashamed; US convictions such as Van Yeboah's 85 months are the exception.

Americans reported $1.14 billion in romance-scam losses to the FTC in 2023 and $1.16 billion in the first nine months of 2025; the FBI logged $929 million in confidence/romance losses in 2025. The largest prosecuted network is the Ghana-based syndicate around Derrick Van Yeboah, blamed for over $100 million (US DOJ, 2026). Victims, often widowed or over 60, lose homes and pensions, and judges have cited depression, shame and family estrangement as lasting harms.