Romance Baiting
The Scam That Starts With "Hi, Is This Sarah?"
INTERPOL calls it romance baiting. Your clients’ employees call it losing their savings to someone they believed in.
A wrong-number text lands on an employee's phone. The stranger apologizes, and the conversation drifts into something friendlier. Over weeks, the two talk daily. He mentions a crypto platform where he has been making steady money. She invests a few thousand dollars. The dashboard shows the money growing. He suggests she add more. When she tries to withdraw, the platform demands a tax payment. Then another. Then the account disappears.
The Numbers Federal Investigators Are Watching
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center logged more than $8.6 billion in investment fraud losses in 2025, the costliest category it tracks. Cryptocurrency investment fraud accounted for $7.2 billion of that total. Reported losses to confidence and romance fraud reached $929 million, up 38% in a single year.1 Federal agencies treat these as the two ends of a single scheme. The relationship is the setup. The investment is the payoff.
Why Employees Do Not See It Coming
Romance baiting is built to slip past the warning signs employees are trained to spot at work. There is no phishing link. No urgent wire request from the CEO. As far as the employee knows, they are in a real relationship, making real decisions with real money. By the time something feels wrong, the funds are offshore and the partner has vanished.
The approach has also moved. Nearly 60% of people who reported losing money to a romance scam in 2025 said it started on a social media platform rather than a dating app.2 The fallout follows them to work. Employees who have lost retirement savings are not fully present at work, and the damage lingers for months.
What Belongs in Every Renewal Conversation
A voluntary identity theft protection plan is one of the few benefits that can help catch this scam early. Monitored bank and credit accounts surface unfamiliar activity within hours. Alerts on new loan or credit card applications give the employee a chance to act before the account funds. And when something does go wrong, a licensed investigator picks up the phone. No employee must work the case alone.
Product Spotlight: IDShield Financial Monitoring and Restoration
IDShield® watches the accounts most likely to move when a scam succeeds, with financial account monitoring, credit inquiry and new-account alerts, monthly credit scores, ScamCheck and a quarterly credit report. If the activity looks wrong, a licensed private investigator can open a case and works it end-to-end. Benefits extend to the enrollee, spouse or domestic partner, and eligible dependents. When a romance-baiting scam hits, the first proof appears in the account, not the inbox. That matters because the employee is usually the last person in the story to believe it is a scam. An alert about an unfamiliar transfer or a new line of credit gives them a fact they cannot dispute, early enough to stop the next payment. And if the money is already gone, the case does not land on their kitchen table alone. For brokers, it is a benefit that answers an event clients are already reading about, at a cost that fits beside everything else in the benefits portfolio.
Talk to Your LegalShield Business Solutions Representative
Reach out to your LegalShield Business Solutions representative or email [email protected] to get updated proposals, enrollment materials, and talking points.