Overview
- Law enforcement and consumer groups in the US and UK issued pre–Valentine’s warnings this week, emphasizing that romance fraud persists long after the holiday.
- Nationwide and HSBC report a pivot from emergency-plea cons to investment-style lures using fake crypto and trading platforms, with reported UK cases up 5% from 2024 to 2025.
- Action Fraud estimates £106 million lost in the UK in 2024–25, and the FTC reports more than 65,000 US cases with around $3 billion in losses, figures widely viewed as underreported.
- Scammers increasingly deploy generative AI, deepfake voice and video, and “scamware” to sustain many scripted conversations and defeat simple identity checks like brief video calls.
- Experts urge banks to move beyond basic transaction flags to behavioral analytics and timely warnings under evolving UK APP reimbursement rules, while consumers should treat off‑platform messaging, secrecy, and any money or crypto requests as red flags.