Synthetic Dating Profiles on Social Platforms Funnel Romance Seekers Into Chinese-Operated Online Scam
Overview
A cross-platform marketing ecosystem is enticing social media users searching for romantic partners, luring them with AI-enhanced or -generated images and videos promoting fake dating candidates. Tempted users are led to any of 26 dating-themed websites focused on seniors, wealthy singles, or ethnicity-based niches.
Registrants on the purported dating sites stand to lose not just money – in fees for use – but also control over their sensitive personal data. Members of SuccessfulMatch[.]com, a U.S.-operated website behind the network we discovered, accused the operator of sharing their personal information, including HIV and sexually transmitted disease status, to other dating sites. A 2014 court case awarded plaintiffs $15 million for a leak of their medical information to “over 1,000 similar websites.”
Graphika’s 2025 public report on romance scams identified little use of Generative AI. Through our internal monitoring, we’ve since increasingly seen actors use AI-generated media and text to boost the scale and quality of romance scams, as they migrate from impersonating celebrities and stealing profile images to creating richly detailed fake personas.
Our analysis of the recently discovered network focused on two interconnected elements:
- Synthetic media lures: The AI-generated images and videos are convincing at a glance, but often reveal detectable artifacts upon close inspection.
- Broad and resilient domain network: The activity is designed for scale; rather than relying on a single brand or domain to attract users, this network uses multiple dating sites as entry points into a smaller set of destination scam domains.
By examining this network and its behaviors, we were able to gauge the sophistication and scale of online romance scams intended to move social media users off mainstream platforms and into private discussion spaces..