UK Cybercrime Journal: £102 million Lost to Scams in 2025

 

What Happened

• On 5 May 2026, new data revealed that British romance scam victims were defrauded of a staggering £102 million last year, representing a 29% surge in reported cases.
• The figures come from information gathered by Report Fraud (f.k.a ActionFraud), which is a City of London Police-run service that logged 10,784 romance scam reports in 2025.
• According to the data, cybercriminals are reportedly pocketing roughly £280,000 everyday by exploiting online relationships, with individual losses averaging £9,500 and in extreme cases, reaching up to £1 million per victim. 
• This wave of scam victims is part of the growing trend where scammers blend emotional manipulation with fake cryptocurrency investment schemes, heavily weaponising AI-generated profiles, and focusing on lonely victims aged 55 to 74.

Analyst Comment 

When analysing fraud statistics, it is important to remember that underreporting is very common, with many victims staying silent out of shame. Therefore, this is likely only a fraction of the real figures and the problem is likely much worse than we know. The data we do have, however, still reveals there is essentially an army of digital scammers routinely bleeding UK citizens dry, using not much more than a Midjourney AI subscription, a ChatGPT script, face-swapping services, and an entirely fictitious character with an emotional backstory.

Losing £102 million in a single year to fake internet characters is a truly wild national milestone. The fact that reports surged by nearly a third (29%) proves that in our society, emotional vulnerability is being monetised at industrial scale. We aren’t just looking at a clumsy email from a Nigerian prince anymore. This is industrial-grade social engineering. Scammers are playing the long game, spending months "love-bombing" victims before dropping the inevitable bombshell that they need a quick bank transfer to cover a “medical emergency” or an unmissable cryptocurrency investment opportunity.

In March 2026, the UK Government took some action against this threat and sanctioned Xinbi, a Chinese-language cryptocurrency marketplace accused of enabling large-scale online fraud and human exploitation. Xinbi reportedly processed more than $19.9 billion in transactions between 2021 and 2025, highlighting how much money the scam industry is generating globally.

Until we treat the underground scam economy with the same significance we treat ransomware or nation state attacks, the UK will continue to be one of the world's most lucrative money spinners for heartless cybercriminals.

Defensive Takeaways

— Enforce the "Face-to-Face" Financial Boundary: If you are advising family members (especially those in vulnerable demographics), establish an unshakeable, non-negotiable rule: if you have not looked a person in their physical eyeballs, you do not send them money, gift cards, or cryptocurrency.

— Teach Others Digital Sanity Checks: Teach your friends and family the art of basic digital literacy. Run profile images through reverse-image search tools (Google Lens or TinEye) and consciously flag the platform migration trap. Scammers desperately want to move targets off monitored apps like Tinder or Bumble and onto unmoderated WhatsApp or Telegram channels as fast as possible to avoid automated dating app ban filters.

— Learn From the Mistakes of Others: To find examples of victims falling for these scams, the UK Financial Ombudsman Service’s database of decisions can act as a useful resource. The decision details can help you understand how these scams work, how much money individuals can lose, and the rate at which UK banks offer refunds or compensation. More examples can be found in my talk on this topic here.

— Leverage Stripe’s FT3 Framework: If your organisation or team is tasked with combating fraud, then categorising these scammers TTPs is crucial. That’s why Stripe has developed the Fraud Tools, Tactics, and Techniques (FT3) framework. It’s designed to help security teams understand the landscape, spot gaps, develop detections, improve incident response, and foster collaboration.

Relevant Sources

1. https://www.cityoflondon.police.uk/news/city-of-london/news/2026/may/romance-fraud-costs-uk-victims-102-million-in-a-year-as-reports-surge-by-nearly-a-third
2. https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/05/05/romance-fraudsters-fleeced-uk-victims-of-102m-in-2025/5227963
3. https://therecord.media/xinbi-crypto-marketplace-sanctioned
4. https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decisions-case-studies/ombudsman-decisions/search?Keyword=cryptocurrency+investment&Sort=date

Relevant CTI Resources

1. https://search-uk-sanctions-list.service.gov.uk/designations/GHR0190/Entity
2. https://www.chainalysis.com/blog/xinbi-designation-chinese-language-crypto-scam-infrastructure/
3. https://www.trmlabs.com/resources/intel-library/xinbi-guarantee
4. https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/chairman-prince-group-indicted-operating-cambodian-forced-labor-scam-compounds-engaged
5. https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/multi-billion-dollar-guarantee-marketplaces-exploit-stablecoins-scams

6. https://github.com/stripe/ft3

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