Romance scams continue to be one of the most financially damaging forms of online fraud.
Using internal fraud monitoring data, complaint-level romance scam data from the Better Business Bureau (BBB), national report totals, and search trend data from Google Trends, a new report by Gourmet Gift Baskets explores how these scams evolved through late 2025.
Google Trends data serves here as a measure of public awareness. It captures how often people search for information about romance scams, often after exposure to news coverage, scam alerts, or personal experience.
Key Takeaways
- 70% of analyzed romance scam reports involved confirmed financial loss.
- Total reported losses reached over $14 million. The average victim loss was $16.9K, but the median loss was only $4K, showing a small number of extremely costly cases.
- In February 2025, Gourmet Gift Baskets saw by far the highest fraud-declined share, with nearly 1% of sales flagged as fraudulent, which is more than three times the annual average.
How Much Did People Lose?
Of 551 reports, 388 had confirmed dollar losses, meaning most people who filed these complaints actually lost money. Their uncapped losses total about $14.2 million, even though a few extremely large cases (including one reported loss of about $1.25 million) push that uncapped total up, capping each case at about $77,915 still leaves total losses at roughly $6.55 million, showing that the financial harm is substantial even under conservative assumptions and that a small number of very large scams account for a big share of the total.
BBB yearly totals have bounced up and down:
- 2021: 264 reports
- 2022: 697 reports, a big increase
- 2023: 476 reports, a drop
- 2024: 547 reports, rose again
- 2025: 545 reports, about flat vs 2024 (down by 2 reports, roughly -0.4%)
While Google searches for scams hit a record high in 2025, total BBB reports didn't change much. This shows awareness and reporting are different. Greater awareness could come from more victims searching for help, more news coverage, warning campaigns, or people sharing scam alerts online.
Google Trends data tracks how often people searched for "romance scam." From 2021 to 2024, interest slowly grew. Then, in 2025, it spiked to a record high, reaching a peak score of 100 (the highest level of attention in the dataset).
Internal fraud signal from Gourmet Gift Baskets
To complement victim-reported BBB Scam Tracker complaints and Google Trends search patterns, we incorporated an internal operational dataset from Gourmet Gift Baskets' fraud-tracking. This dataset captures merchant-side fraud pressure that is often invisible in public complaint data, specifically orders flagged and declined by fraud controls.
Gourmet Gift Baskets logged by far the highest share of fraud-declined transactions in February 2025. Nearly 1% (0.85%) of all sales were flagged as fraudulent. This is more than three times the annual average (0.23%).
"Romance scams are not just numbers on a chart. They show up in day‑to‑day fraud monitoring as real orders placed in real time," explained Ryan D. Abood, President and CEO of GourmetGiftBaskets.com.
"These orders often use stolen or fake credit cards to send gifts as part of a grooming campaign. An internal review conducted over just a few months can uncover dozens of suspected romance-fraud orders, and while that may seem small in number, the human impact is large. This kind of frontline fraud work detection will never catch every case, especially when scammers use their own legitimate cards. Still, it offers a valuable 'behind the curtain' view of how romance scams actually play out and helps turn abstract data into concrete stories."
Which States Are Losing the Most to Gift Scams?
California clearly leads the romance scam dataset in both the number of reports and the total money lost, with New York, Texas, Florida, and Ohio also showing high levels of activity and harm. Smaller-sample states in the file sometimes show very large average losses per victim, suggesting that even when there are fewer reports, the people who do come forward may have lost substantial sums.
Top States by Number of Reports:
- California, 83 reports
- New York, 39 reports
- Texas, 32 reports
- Florida, 30 reports
- Ohio, 24 reports
Top States by Number of Reports:
- Kentucky, 4.85
- Nevada, 4.42
- Missouri, 3.1
- Iowa, 3
- West Virginia, 2.83
Top States by Total Money Lost
- California, $1,218,561
- Ohio, $630,208
- Pennsylvania, $469,125
- Texas, $362,675
- Michigan, $349,260
Top States by Average Loss
- Connecticut, $77,915
- Nevada, $52,943
- Arkansas, $38,984
- Ohio, $37,071
- Illinois, $29,871
California led both in the number of reports and total losses. But Ohio and Pennsylvania had higher losses per case, showing that victims there often lost more money per scam.
Targeted States
Based on internal data, we analyzed where fraudulent orders were shipped, using internal fraud-declined basket data. We use it to identify which states appear to be more heavily targeted than expected, after accounting for differences in state population, so the results aren't dominated just by large states like Texas or California.
In plain terms, the output is a most-targeted ranking that highlights states that contribute a disproportionately high share of fraud baskets relative to their population share. A score of 1 means the state's fraud basket volume is roughly proportional to its population; a score above 1 means the state is over-indexed (more targeted than expected); and a score below 1 means it is under-indexed.
Common Scam Tactics
Many scam reports lacked detailed text, but among those that did, clear themes emerged.
Frequent Storylines:
- Crypto or investment talk: 19% of reports
- Fake investment or trading promises:17%
- Other Patterns:
- "Customs fee" or "package" stories
- Payment requests through gift cards
- Military romance scams
- Wire transfer requests
Romance scams remained a costly and persistent threat through late 2025, with most BBB complaints involving confirmed financial loss and total damages still substantial even under conservative assumptions. One clear seasonal pressure point shows up around February, when Valentine's Day-related gifting and relationship-focused messaging can create a perfect environment for scammers to push victims toward urgent purchases and payments.
That pattern also appears in Gourmet Gift Baskets' internal fraud monitoring, where February 2025 recorded the highest fraud-declined share of the year, aligning with the broader idea that Valentine's Day season can amplify both scam activity and fraud attempts. At the same time, search interest in romance scams hit a record high in 2025, while BBB report totals stayed roughly flat, suggesting awareness is rising, but exposure and attempted fraud remain high during peak seasonal periods like February.
Methodology
Source We used complaint-level BBB Scam Tracker entries compiled from https://www.bbb.org/scamtracker/lookupscam and Google Trends data for U.S. search interest in the query romance scam. Google Trends values are relative indices normalized within the selected time window, rather than absolute counts of searches.
Cleaning and standardization Non‑U.S. and unparseable locations were retained for overall context but excluded from U.S.-only state rankings and any per-capita calculations. We treated a report as having a confirmed loss when Dollars Lost was present and greater than zero. To reduce distortion from extreme values, we created a capped-loss field using the lower of the 99th percentile of positive losses or Q3+3×IQRQ3+3×IQR computed on positive-loss reports.
Metrics and views We computed KPIs using both uncapped and capped losses, including number of reports, number of reports with confirmed loss, loss rate, total losses, and average and median loss among victims. We summarized results at the national level and produced U.S.-only state tables (and where applicable, joined state population data to compute reports per 100k). For awareness, we aggregated weekly Google Trends data into monthly and yearly averages to describe changes in search interest over time.
Internal merchant fraud signal from Gourmet Gift Baskets
To complement victim-reported BBB Scam Tracker complaints and Google Trends awareness patterns, we incorporated a small internal operational dataset from Gourmet Gift Baskets fraud tracking. This dataset captures merchant-side fraud pressure that is not visible in public complaint systems, specifically orders flagged and declined by internal fraud controls.
Because this is internal operational data, we treated it as a directional signal rather than a population estimate. We used it to describe seasonality and intensity of attempted fraud within a single merchant environment, not to estimate national prevalence or victim losses. The unit of analysis is fraud-declined events as recorded by the merchant, which may reflect attempted fraudulent purchases, screening rule changes, and manual review practices.
For reporting, we summarized the internal data at the monthly level for 2025 and highlighted peak and trough months to contextualize external reporting and awareness trends.
Targeting Score
We calculated a population-normalized targeting score to identify which states are disproportionately represented in fraudulent basket Ship-To activity. First, we summed the fraud basket counts across all states in the dataset to get a total, then computed each state’s share of total fraud baskets. Our internal dataset includes information for 21 states.
Fraud share = state fraud baskets / total fraud baskets.
Next, we attached 2023 state population estimates and computed each state’s population share within the same set of states included in the dataset
Population share = state population / total population of included states.
Finally, we calculated the Targeting Score as the ratio of those two shares
Targeting Score = Fraud share / Population share.
A score of 1.0 means the state’s fraud basket volume is roughly proportional to its population, above 1.0 means the state is over-indexed (more targeted than expected), and below 1.0 means it is under-indexed.
Limitations
BBB Scam Tracker is self-reported and not representative of all victimization, and reporting rates may vary by awareness, media coverage, and willingness to file a complaint. Location fields are user-entered and can be incomplete or inconsistently formatted. Google Trends reflects attention rather than incident volume, and spikes can be driven by news coverage or public alerts as much as by changes in scam activity.