Your Gaming Buddy Might Be a Romance Scammer – And Nobody’s Researching It –

By Neil Tyson ACFS, Owner and Founder at Rightway Compliance

You’re playing your favourite online slot game or sitting at a virtual poker table when a friendly message pops up in the chat. Someone compliments your play style. You exchange a few messages about the game. They seem nice. Before long, you’re chatting regularly, perhaps moving to WhatsApp. They mention they’re going through a divorce. You bond over shared experiences. Then, a few weeks later, they introduce you to this “amazing cryptocurrency investment opportunity” their friend/colleague/ family member told them about…

Sound familiar? It should. Because this scenario is playing out across online gambling platforms right now – and almost nobody is talking about it.

The Scam Hiding in Plain Sight

As someone who’s spent over 30 years investigating fraud across the gambling sector, financial services, and beyond, I’m constantly surprised by how certain scams fly under the radar. Romance scams originating in online gaming and gambling environments appears to be one of them.

We know romance scams are a massive problem. The FBI reported that Americans lost over $650 million to confidence fraud and romance scams in 2023 alone.[1] In the UK, Action Fraud data shows similar devastation. But here’s what we don’t know: how many of these scams started in a poker chat room, a bingo site community, or a slots platform social feature.

From Words With Friends to Hundreds of Thousands Lost

The evidence that does exist is chilling. AARP documented multiple cases where victims lost six-figure sums after being contacted through a gaming app.[2] In one 2023 case reported by WMAR Baltimore, a widow lost $35,000 after being contacted through an online game’s chat feature – her initial investment in what she believed was Bitcoin supposedly grew to nearly $1 million before she realised it was all fraudulent.[3]

In Florida, NBC-2 reported in 2024 that Lee County Sheriff’s Office investigated a case where a victim lost over $30,000 after meeting a scammer through an online gaming app.[4] The pattern is consistent: initial contact through game chat, quick escalation to private messaging, building trust over weeks or months, then the financial exploitation begins.

Australian government officials reported that losses from romance scams through one gaming app alone totalled nearly $430,000 in 2019.[2] And these are just the documented cases from a single gaming platform. How many others are suffering in silence, too embarrassed to report that they sent their savings to someone they met while playing online blackjack or bingo?

The Hybrid Romance-Investment Scam Evolution

The threat is evolving rapidly. Hybrid romance-investment scams (known in Chinese as Sha Zhu Pan, sometimes referred to by the offensive English translation “pig butchering”) – where victims are gradually cultivated through trust-building before being exploited financially – now explicitly use fake gambling and investment platforms as part of the fraud.

Academic research from 2024-2025 has begun examining this phenomenon. A March 2025 study interviewed 26 victims of these hybrid scams and found that scammers systematically direct victims to fraudulent cryptocurrency investment platforms and fake gambling websites.[5] The research, titled “Hello, is this Anna? A First Look at Pig-Butchering Scams,” revealed how organised these operations are, often involving trafficked workers forced to execute the scams from Southeast Asian fraud compounds.

More concerning still, research published in the Journal of Crime and Justice in 2025 examining Chinese victims noted that Tencent’s 2019 research report described these as “Southeast Asian gambling scams where victims are lured into gambling or fake investment platforms under the guise of relationship.”[6]

The connection to gambling is explicit in the scam methodology – but the academic focus remains almost exclusively on dating apps as the initial contact point.

The gambling platform angle remains a blindspot.

Why Gambling Platforms?

Think about it from a scammer’s perspective: gambling platform users are attractive targets. They’re comfortable with risk, familiar with transferring money online, and engage with platforms that have chat features designed to increase player engagement and community building. Plus, there’s a ready-made conversation starter: the game itself.

The FBI has explicitly warned that romance scammers use “dating sites, apps, and chat rooms” and noted they might “start a chat with you on a gaming site.”[7,8] But compared to dating app scams, the gaming and gambling platform vector receives minimal attention.

The Research That Doesn’t Exist

Here’s what troubles me most: despite comprehensive academic literature on romance scams, I can see virtually no empirical research specifically examining the gambling platform vector.

A 2023 systematic literature review published in Interacting with Computers analysed 53 studies on romance scams.[9] The researchers noted that scammers use “social media, dating or gaming apps and websites” – but the vast majority of research focuses exclusively on dating platforms. Gaming and gambling chat rooms barely feature in the literature.

Similarly, a 2023 systematic review in Journal of Financial Crime covering studies from 2000-2021 found the same gap.[10] The reviews acknowledge gaming platforms as a contact vector, but no studies systematically investigate:

How prevalent romance scam activity is within gambling operator platforms
What behavioural patterns might indicate a player is being targeted
Which platform features scammers exploit most effectively
Whether gambling behaviour correlates with romance scam vulnerability
What intervention points exist for operators to detect and disrupt these scams

Meanwhile, victims continue to lose devastating sums. The Federal Trade Commission reported that in 2022, Americans lost $1.3 billion to romance scams, with cryptocurrency and bank wires accounting for over 60% of reported losses.[11]

A Player Protection Blind Spot

UK gambling operators are rightly focused on safer gambling, anti-money laundering compliance, and responsible gambling tools. Significant investment goes into detecting players at risk of gambling harm, implementing deposit limits, and providing intervention when concerning patterns emerge.

But romance scams represent a different kind of harm that perhaps all to often falls outside the typical player protection framework. Yet the risks are substantial:

For players: Devastating financial and psychological harm, often involving exploitation of existing vulnerabilities (loneliness, recent bereavement, life transitions)

For operators: Reputational risk if platforms are perceived as hunting grounds for scammers; potential regulatory scrutiny as consumer protection expectations expand; intersection with financial crime obligations given the money laundering dimension

For regulators: Gap in understanding how gambling environments might facilitate or be exploited for fraud that combines romance scam tactics with gambling/investment fraud

The good news? Gambling operators already have sophisticated player monitoring systems, customer interaction protocols, and safer gambling teams. The infrastructure exists to detect and disrupt romance scam activity. What is perhaps missing is the evidence base to know what to look for and how to intervene effectively.

What We Need to Understand

To address this properly, we need rigorous research that:

Maps the landscape: How common is this really? What do operators actually see in their chat systems and customer complaints?

Understands the victim journey: How do scammers operate within gambling environments differently to dating apps? What makes players vulnerable at the point of initial contact?

Identifies detection opportunities: What behavioural signals might indicate scam activity? How can operators distinguish predatory contact from legitimate social interaction?

Develops practical interventions: What player education works in this context? What early warning systems can operators implement? How do we empower players to recognize and report suspicious approaches?

Creates implementation pathways: How do we translate research findings into operator-ready tools that actually get used?

This isn’t theoretical. There are gambling operators who have encountered this issue in their customer protection work. There are law enforcement investigators who’ve handled cases. There are victims who could tell us exactly how it happened. The pieces exist – they just haven’t been systematically brought together.

A Wake-Up Call

Here’s my challenge to the industry: stop assuming this is someone else’s problem.

If you operate an online gambling platform with chat functionality or community features, romance scammers have almost certainly tried to exploit it. Your customer service teams may have encountered victims without recognising the pattern. Your AML systems might flag unusual transactions without understanding the romance scam context.

The question isn’t whether this is happening on your platform. The question is whether you’re able to detect it, whether your staff know how to respond, and whether your players have the tools to protect themselves.

Where We Go From Here

The gambling industry has shown it can respond to player protection challenges with innovation and commitment. The development of sophisticated responsible gambling tools, the investment in research through bodies like GambleAware and initiatives like the Allwyn Player Protection Lab, the willingness to collaborate with academics and regulators – these all demonstrate an industry capable of addressing emerging harms.

Romance scams in gambling environments are an emerging harm we’ve collectively failed to address because we’ve failed to properly investigate it.

It’s time we changed that. Players deserve better. The evidence base exists to be built. The expertise spans academia, law enforcement, victim support, and the gambling industry itself. What’s needed is the will to tackle it seriously.

Because right now, while we focus on traditional gambling harms – entirely rightly – there are players having conversations in chat rooms that will lead to financial devastation and psychological trauma. And we’re doing nothing to stop it because we don’t even know it’s happening at scale.

We can’t protect players from threats we’re not studying.

The conversation needs to start now.

About the Author: Neil Tyson ACFS, is Owner & Principal Consultant at Rightway Compliance, with over 30 years of experience in fraud investigation, AML compliance, and player protection across regulated sectors including gambling, financial services, and public sector organisations. He previously led national investigation strategy at the Legal Services Commission and held senior roles at FTSE 100 companies including Centrica plc.

REFERENCES

[1] Federal Bureau of Investigation, Cleveland Field Office. “FBI Cleveland Warns of Romance Scams and Confidence Fraud.” FBI.gov, 13 February 2025. Available at: https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/cleveland/news/fbi-cleveland-warns-of-romance-scams-and-confidence-fraud [Accessed November 2025]

[2] AARP. “Romance Scammers Target Victims on ‘Words With Friends’.” AARP.org, Updated 2 January 2025. Available at: https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/words-with-friends-romance-scam/ [Accessed November 2025]

[3] WMAR Baltimore. “Widow loses life savings in romance scam that started on a gaming app.” WMAR2News.com, 26 September 2023. Available at: https://www.wmar2news.com/matterformallory/widow-loses-life-savings-in-romance-scam-that-started-on-a-gaming-app [Accessed November 2025]

[4] NBC-2 Florida. “LCSO deputies investigate Words With Friends ‘romance scam’.” NBC-2.com, 12 February 2024. Available at: https://www.nbc-2.com/article/lcso-deputies-investigate-words-with-friends-romance-scam/46736337[Accessed November 2025]

[5] Wang, F., Topalli, V., Afroz, S., McCoy, D., and Stringhini, G. “‘Hello, is this Anna?’: A First Look at Pig-Butchering Scams.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.20821, March 2025. Available at: https://arxiv.org/html/2503.20821v1 [Accessed November 2025]

[6] Button, M., Wang, C., Lazarus, S., Whittaker, A., Huang, K., Sugiura, L., and Tunley, M. “An Anatomy of ‘Pig Butchering Scams’: Chinese Victims’ Experiences and Police Perspectives.” Journal of Crime and Justice, 2025. DOI: 10.1080/01639625.2025.2453821. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01639625.2025.2453821[Accessed November 2025]

[7] Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Romance Scams.” FBI.gov, Updated 19 August 2024. Available at: https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/scams-and-safety/common-frauds-and-scams/romance-scams [Accessed November 2025]

[8] Federal Trade Commission. “Romance scammers love . . . to take your money.” Consumer.ftc.gov, 7 February 2024. Available at: https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2024/02/romance-scammers-love-take-your-money [Accessed November 2025]

[9] Johnson, G.I., Thuermer, G., Beigi, G., Liu, H., and Rui, R. “Tainted Love: a Systematic Literature Review of Online Romance Scam Research.” Interacting with Computers, Volume 35, Issue 6, December 2023, Pages 773-806. DOI: 10.1093/iwc/iwad048. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/iwc/article/35/6/773/7331428 [Accessed November 2025]

[10] Cross, C., Holt, T., Button, M., and Rocha-Silva, T. “What do we know about online romance fraud studies? A systematic review of the empirical literature (2000 to 2021).” Journal of Financial Crime, Volume 31, Issue 2, July 2023. DOI: 10.1108/JFC-02-2023-0031. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2949791423000131[Accessed November 2025]

[11] Federal Trade Commission. “Bad Romance: Top ‘Love Game’ lies told by romance scammers.” FTC Business Blog, 14 February 2023. Available at: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/02/bad-romance-top-love-game-lies-told-romance-scammers [Accessed November 2025]

Your Gaming Buddy Might Be a Romance Scammer – And Nobody’s Researching It

Your Gaming Buddy Might Be a Romance Scammer – And Nobody’s Researching It –

By Neil Tyson ACFS, Owner and Founder at Rightway Compliance

The Scam Hiding in Plain Sight

From Words With Friends to Hundreds of Thousands Lost

The Hybrid Romance-Investment Scam Evolution

Why Gambling Platforms?

The Research That Doesn’t Exist

A Player Protection Blind Spot

What We Need to Understand

A Wake-Up Call

Where We Go From Here

REFERENCES

FURTHER READING

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