Romance scams in Finland

What romance fraud looks like in Finland

It almost never starts on a dating site. More often it is Facebook, Instagram or a stray message in a messenger — from someone with no mutual acquaintances, a pleasant photograph and a story about working abroad.

The Finnish police, in their piece on romance fraud, describe the type almost word for word: a doctor, an engineer, a soldier or a sailor, always far from Finland. The occupation is not chosen at random — it explains why you cannot meet and why the connection is bad.

In Helsinki alone the police record dozens of such cases a year. Those are the ones that were reported. How many people stay silent out of shame has never been counted, and that is a problem of its own: until a case is told, the money is almost impossible to get back.

The three phases of the scheme, as the police describe it

The police break romance fraud down into three stages, and they come strictly in order. A fraudster cannot speed them up — trust is not built in a week.

The first phase is getting close. Contact every day, a great deal of attention, a quick declaration of feelings. Fairly soon the conversation moves out of the social network into private messengers. The gain for the fraudster is that messages in private chats are invisible to the platform, reporting the message itself is harder than in a social network, and the profile can be deleted without trace. So take the screenshots yourself.

The second phase is the crisis. This is where the scheme gives itself away. The “loved one” or someone close to them suddenly has an illness, an accident, an arrest, or a problem with documents. Always unexpected, always urgent, always requiring money right now.

The third phase is money. A small sum first, to test your willingness. Then more. Then more again, because “the first transfer did not arrive” or “a customs duty has to be paid”. A woman from Mäntyharju gave away around 60 000 euros over nine months this way, taking out loans and buying gift cards. She went to the police only when he did not land at Helsinki-Vantaa.

How romance fraud differs from an ordinary swindle

The difference is in the time it takes and in what is being broken into. A phishing email counts on a second’s inattention: you did not notice the substituted address and entered your details. A romance scheme works over months and does not touch your passwords at all.

What gets broken into here is not an account but a judgement. By the time money is first mentioned, the person has been receiving daily attention for six months, and the request sounds not like a demand from a stranger but like a plea from someone close who is in trouble. Refusing in that situation is psychologically harder than spotting a forged link.

A practical thing follows from this. The advice to “be more careful” is useless here — the victims were careful, just about the wrong thing. What works is different: agreeing with yourself in advance that money is not sent to a person you have never seen in the flesh, under any circumstances. A rule adopted before you meet anyone holds up better than a decision made at the moment somebody writes to you about a hospital.

How much Finns actually lose

According to Finanssiala ry, in 2025 there were attempts to steal 148 million euros from Finns, of which 72.5 million reached the criminals. Banks managed to stop or recover 75.5 million — more than half of the attempts.

One figure from that is more important than the rest: in 60 % of cases the money is transferred by the customer themselves. This is not an account break-in. It is someone who was persuaded and deliberately pressed “confirm”.

That is why bank protection works less well here than against phishing. Technically the transfer looks entirely lawful: the right customer, the right device, the right confirmation code.

The Bank of Finland puts total losses from payment fraud in 2024 at more than 100 million euros. There is no separate line for romance schemes there — they are spread across other categories, and that is one reason the scale of the phenomenon is underestimated.

Another detail of the same kind: the annual cyber security review for 2025 does not mention romance fraud at all. Not because it does not exist, but because it does not fit the categories in which records are kept.

Why the statistics show a decline while the problem grows

Looking at the 2024 reports, romance fraud appears to be going down. That is an artefact of classification, not reality.

Fraudsters have changed the ending of the scheme. The third phase used to finish with a request to send money for treatment or a ticket. Now it increasingly offers a “profitable investment” or a trading platform — and the case goes into the statistics as investment fraud.

The meeting, the months of messages and the manipulation have all stayed the same. Only the label on the last step has changed. That is worth remembering when you come across a claim that the problem is shrinking.

Who becomes a victim more often

Here something uncomfortable has to be said: women suffer more often, and more often in three fairly specific life situations.

The first group is aged 30 to 40, single, in a period of upheaval: a divorce, a move, the loss of someone close. The second is 40 to 55, in a relationship that stopped providing warmth long ago. The third is 65 to 82, living in isolation, often after losing a spouse.

What the three have in common is not naivety. What they have in common is a shortage of attention. The fraudster is selling not love but the experience of finally being listened to every day.

Something less often said is also worth saying. Men are caught too; they simply report it noticeably less often, because shame gets in the way. For the same reason the statistics on men are almost certainly understated more than those on women.

And one more thing: age is no protection. Among those affected are people with higher education, senior positions and professional experience with money. The scheme does not aim at competence but at loneliness, and loneliness does not correlate with education.

• You met with no mutual acquaintances, and the initiative is always theirs
• A quick move to WhatsApp or Telegram
• A declaration of feelings before a first meeting
• A video call never works out — the camera has been “broken” for months
• A meeting has fallen through at least once
• A request to tell nobody about the relationship

Can a person be checked in advance

Partly yes, and it takes about fifteen minutes. The most useful thing is a reverse image search: if the same shot turns up in someone else’s profile or on a stock site, the conversation is over. This is done through Google Images or TinEye, by uploading the photograph straight into the search.

The second is a video call without warning. Not one arranged for tomorrow but right now, for a minute. Everyone has a broken camera once. Nobody has a broken camera four times in a row.

The third is inconsistencies in small things. Ask about the weather where they supposedly are, or about a district of the city. The story is usually worked out at the large scale and falls apart on the everyday.

What not to do: run background checks through databases and order a “check” from dubious services. First, that is processing someone else’s personal data with no basis. Second, such services not infrequently turn out to be frauds themselves and sell you a fifty-euro report compiled from open sources.

What to do if you recognise the scheme

First and foremost: do not send money. Not as a loan, not “one last time”, not in gift cards, not in cryptocurrency. Gift cards and crypto are practically impossible to recover — which is exactly why they are asked for.

If a transfer has already been made, it is a matter of hours. Call your own bank immediately, before the police: a bank may still be able to stop the payment, and the police cannot.

Then a police report. The electronic service is open around the clock except between 22:45 and 06:00. Save the messages and screenshots of the profile before the account disappears: it is usually deleted as soon as the fraudster is found out.

What happens after you stop paying

Almost nobody writes about this, and it is useful to know: the story rarely ends at the moment a person stops transferring money.

The first thing that usually happens is a sharp change of tone. Persuasion gives way to hurt feelings, hurt feelings to pressure, pressure to threats: to tell your relatives, to publish the messages, to come in person. All of that is part of the same scheme and is aimed at shame. A threat to tell those close to you works only for as long as you have not told them yourself.

The second is an attempt to bring you back through a different person. Weeks or months later a new acquaintance appears, outwardly unconnected to the previous one, and the conversation follows the familiar script. The reason is simple: the details of people who have already paid circulate between groups, and to them you are a proven contact.

The third, and the most cynical, is the so-called “money recovery”. Someone writes presenting themselves as a lawyer, an investigator, a bank employee or a platform representative, and offers to recover what you lost. For a small advance payment, a commission, or a “transfer tax”. This is a separate scheme, built on the fact that the victim of the first one is already ready to grab at any chance.

The rule here is simple and universal: no real authority and no bank takes an advance payment to return your own money. Any such offer is a second wave, not help.

The practical conclusion: after you stop paying, expect activity rather than silence. Blocking the contacts, closing your social media and filing a police report are not about revenge but about making sure the next attempt does not find you again.

Where to turn in Finland

The official sequence is set out by Traficom and looks like this: the bank, then the police, then Suomi.fi if personal data has leaked, then a report to Kyberturvallisuuskeskus, and separately, victim support.

The last point is often forgotten, and it matters. Rikosuhripäivystys operates on 116 006, and it is free. The financial loss here is only half the damage; the other half is that a person spent several months in a relationship that did not exist.

A word about shame, because it gets in the way more than anything else. The Eastern Finland police received 1 033 reports in a year — only those who brought themselves to do it. Every report not filed means the scheme goes on working on the next person, and the money moves further along a chain of accounts from which it can no longer be retrieved.

If someone close to you has been defrauded, the least useful thing you can say is “how could you not notice”. They have already said it to themselves. What helps is helping them call the bank and get as far as a report, preferably the same day.

The three phases and what to do at each

The phases follow the Finnish police description (poliisi.fi, updated 30.5.2024).

Frequently asked

Sources

• Poliisi: Rakkaushuijaus — tästä se yleensä lähtee — description of the three phases
• Poliisi: Eastern Finland statistics for 2025 — 1 033 reports, 15 % romance fraud
• Finanssiala ry: fraud in 2025 — 148 million attempted, 60 % transferred by the customer
• Traficom: Toimi näin, jos tulit huijatuksi — the official sequence of steps
• Poliisi: filing a report
• Bank of Finland: losses from payment fraud — more than 100 million euros in 2024
• Rikosuhripäivystys (RIKU) — support for victims, 116 006
• Yle: research on online dating in Finland — 53 per cent of Finns have tried a dating service