Trust as a target: The parallels between application and romance fraud

GlobalData

Tue, February 10, 2026 astatine 7:41 AM CST 4 min read

Romance scams aren’t lone heartbreaking. They are large concern for criminals.
Every twelvemonth successful the UK, determination are much than 9,400 reports of romance fraud. This equates to a nonaccomplishment of much than £106m oregon astir £11,200 per unfortunate connected average. The reports of romance fraud proceed to emergence astatine a clip erstwhile individuality fraud arsenic a full is surging. The communal thread tying them together? Trust is exploited and identities are misused.

Romance scams are often seen arsenic idiosyncratic crimes alternatively than fiscal ones. However, down this affectional communicative sits an uncomfortable truth. The aforesaid societal engineering techniques utilized to extract wealth and accusation from victims progressively provender exertion fraud and individuality misuse.

By looking astatine the tools and tactics utilized successful some of these scams it is rapidly made wide that misplaced spot remains fraudsters’ astir effectual tool. Learning however to combat this efficaciously is critical.

Social engineering tactics are commonly utilized crossed respective types of fraud but are arguably astir effectual successful romance scams. The criminals committing romance fraud are experts astatine identifying the close idiosyncratic to target. These victims are not careless. Warning signs are simply harder to spot, particularly erstwhile emotions are involved. Additionally, advances successful AI-generated images and deepfake videos person made it progressively hard to separate betwixt what is existent and what is fake. These fraudsters trust connected 2 cardinal ingredients: turning spot into a weakness and creating urgency arsenic they determination from affectional to fiscal exploitation.

The parallels with exertion fraud statesman to look astatine this stage. While romance scams exploit affectional trust, exertion fraud exploits procedural trust. Financial organisations trust connected individuality information appearing close and accordant crossed applications. In some cases, the deception succeeds erstwhile the idiosyncratic oregon fiscal instauration accepts the details astatine look value.

This overlap becomes progressively salient erstwhile romance scams determination beyond speech to emotionally driven and coerced action. At this point, criminals petition fiscal assistance oregon entree to accounts oregon individuality details. Financial assistance is often positioned arsenic impermanent oregon applicable support. Requests for individuality oregon relationship details are framed arsenic a indispensable measurement to determination the narration forward.

Criminals’ occurrence complaint is expanding rapidly, with TSB’s latest romance fraud study showing that wealth sent to scammers jumped by 37% successful a year, with a 15% summation successful lawsuit volume. Once a fraudster has your details, they volition support them adjacent aft the narration ends and usage them to unfastened caller accounts, transportation wealth and make fraudulent applications.