Two UK romance-scam counts, not one

UK Finance's Annual Fraud Report 2026 covers 2025 and is built from its members: banks and card firms. Romance scam losses were £39.2 million across 6,335 cases. In 2024 the same table shows £31.8 million and 5,210 cases. A case is an account or card that lost money, not automatically one person. Losses are gross, before later recovery. The report says £26.2 million was returned to victims in 2025, which it describes as 67% of romance-scam losses, and that there were 9.7 payments on average per scam. These are authorised push-payment cases. Attempts that took no money are not in the case count.

The Report Fraud Annual Assessment for FY2025-26, from the City of London Police, is a different pile: reports from the public under the Home Office code dating scam, NFIB1D. Volume rose from 9,449 reports in FY2024-25 to 11,980. The assessment body puts losses at £121.1 million, up from £106 million, while the key findings round that new total to £122 million. Average loss per report fell from £11,222 to £10,108. The document warns that this code includes some financially motivated sexual extortion, so it can overstate romance fraud as a pure category. Read the PDF before you quote a single line.

Nothing above is a measure of We Love Dates. Nothing above should be merged into a 'UK romance scam total'. The pattern of the crime is on the romance-fraud page. How to report in the UK is on the reporting page. An optional identity badge, described separately, does not show up in either series.