Meta warns users not to fall for romance scammers posing as celebrities or military

Think you might have met someone “attractive, single and successful” on Facebook or Instagram? You might want to think again, Meta says. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, the company is once again warning users not to fall for romance scams.

These kinds of schemes, in which scammers create fictitious identities to form online relationships with unsuspecting victims, aren’t exactly new. (The FTC says that people lost more than a half billion dollars to romance scams in 2021.) But the people behind these scams are apparently persistent. Meta says that already in 2025 it’s taken down more than 116,000 accounts and pages across Facebook and Instagram that were linked to romance scams. In 2024, it removed more than 408,000 such accounts.

According to Meta, these scam accounts often originate in West African countries with scammers impersonating members of the US military or famous celebrities. In both cases, they’ll claim to be “looking for love” and will strike up conversations with people on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp as well as other messaging platforms. Eventually, the scammer will request gift cards, crypto, or other types of payments.

Meta has taken steps to fight these types of schemes. The company said last year it would bring back facial recognition tech to address celebrity impersonation. It also works with other companies to shut down organized groups of scammers. Still, David Agranovich, director of threat disruption at Meta, noted that "scammers evolve consistently."

Researchers also say that AI has made it even easier for scammers to assume convincing fictitious identities. “In the last three or four months, there's a couple of different tools that have come out where they're free, they're accessible, they're easy to use, and they allow the attacker to transform their face dynamically within the video call,” Rachel Tobac CEO of SocialProof Security said during a call with reporters. “They can also use these deepfake bots that allow you to build a persona, place phone calls, use a voice clone and a human actually doesn't even need to be involved.”

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