For people looking for love online, a match with a scammer could cost them their life savings.

A congressional investigation, which began in September 2025 and lasted about a year, found that Tinder’s scam detection systems struggled for years to keep fraudulent accounts off the dating app. Parent company Match Group has since moved to address the shortcomings with new verification requirements and upgraded detection technology.

Romance scams have become a leading form of financial fraud in the U.S., costing Americans nearly $1.5 billion in reported losses last year, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

“There’s a lot of stigma to being a victim to scams,” Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., who launched the investigation alongside Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said in an interview last week. “People should understand that really sophisticated people who are doing all the right things are still getting scammed because of the level of technology and resources that these criminal enterprises now do.”

Scammers today can realistically pose as representatives from familiar organizations like the local YMCA or a bank, and the accessibility of AI tools makes it easier than ever to research family members and mimic their voices. But romance scams, Hassan said, can be particularly emotionally devastating.

That was the case for Pennsylvania resident Sue Nuss, who told Congress’ Joint Economic Committee about her experience turning to Tinder in search of companionship after she lost her husband. There, she met a man who claimed to be from New Jersey.

Nuss told NBC News that, over a month and a half, he won her trust with words that made her feel like he really “sees” and “understands” her.

The committee’s report, published Tuesday, stated that the man duped Nuss with a series of “fabricated” crises: job problems on an oil rig, an arrest in Mexico, his mom’s stroke and even her funeral — all excuses to ask Nuss, 77, for money. When the scammers behind the profile tried to trick her into believing the man she was dating had died, she said, she realized it was all a scam.

“I have always been a very giving person my entire life, and I’ve always been a caregiver,” Nuss told NBC News last week. “And I fell prey. I was very vulnerable. I fell prey because of my personality and because I was lonely. And I was very ashamed of what happened.”

Days after what she thought was a budding online relationship fell apart, Nuss’ scammer showed back up on Tinder with the same profile, she said in an interview.

Soon, another group approached her claiming they could recover what she had lost. Then, through an elaborate cryptocurrency scheme, that group managed to scam even more money from Nuss. She believes both scammer groups were connected, the report stated. It added that, in total, she lost more than $700,000.

“I struggle. Some days are really bad days and some days are good days. I do get therapy. I’m starting a very special therapy next week called EMDR because it’s a trauma,” Nuss said. “I don’t trust my decisions now.”

Congress last month passed the Romance Scam Prevention Act, which would require online dating service providers to notify and warn any users who get messaged by potential scammers. The bill awaits President Donald Trump’s signature.

This summer, Hassan also introduced legislation with Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., to create a central reporting portal for victims of scams, an initiative that she said could give the federal government the tools to detect patterns in scams to shut them down more effectively.

Scammers stole more than $1 trillion globally in one year, according to a 2024 report from the Global Anti-Scam Alliance.

“Enterprises that run scams are now costing the global economy more than the illicit drug trade does,” Hassan said. “This is really important for individuals. It’s really important for our economy. And so, the more people speak up about the need to change the way the federal government handles scams, the faster it’s going to happen.”

The Joint Economic Committee’s investigation sought to combat the prevalence of romance scams on platforms owned by Match Group, the biggest online dating company in the world, with a portfolio that includes Tinder, Hinge, Match and Plenty of Fish.

It found that during the third quarter of 2025, nearly 1.5 million scammers or other bad actors on Tinder and Hinge matched with someone. Nearly 500,000 of those accounts then exchanged contact information with other users.

Internal documents shared voluntarily with the committee noted that most of Tinder’s machine-learning detection scam models hadn’t been updated in years, and Match Group staff members found that scammers could quickly circumvent the company’s patchwork detection rules. Excessive false positives also overwhelmed the human moderators trying to detect dangerous accounts.

The committee wrote that it welcomes the changes Match Group has made to address those concerns.

Match Group deployed new detection models throughout the latter half of 2025 and the first half of 2026 to better catch bad actors, according to the committee’s report. This year, it introduced 169 automated rules and “improved” 108 others aimed at targeting and removing inauthentic actors.

One of its key rollouts is a mandatory biometric face check for all new users on Tinder and Hinge, meant to prevent users from making multiple accounts and ensure banned users can’t make new accounts.

Yoel Roth, Match Group’s senior vice president of trust and safety, told NBC News the company is “grateful the Committee recognized our significant advancements to protect our users against romance scams.”

“That said, the report mischaracterizes both the historical scale of our investment and the work already completed. Alongside our engagement with the Committee over the past year, we’ve made the largest safety advancements in Match Group’s history,” Roth wrote in a statement. “Trust and Safety is a foundational priority, and we intend to continue leading the industry in building tools that promote authentic, safe connections.”

Much of that safety work, including the face checks, was already underway before the committee’s investigation, according to Match Group. It reports having seen a roughly 60% reduction in exposure to bad actors in every market since the face checks began.

Hassan similarly said those measures have “already been successful in dramatically reducing the number of matches that their customers have with a scammer.”

“They need to do more, though, because there are still gaps in their systems,” she added. “And they are going to need to stay vigilant in new ways, because the criminals are always changing their technology and their tactics, too.”