Mary met a man on the dating app Plenty of Fish in 2024. She told the Guardian she had been looking for a connection, but instead became the victim of a romance scam that cost her almost $100,000.
“There was a lot of conversation, and then it started with the constant contact, pressure and repeated asks for money,” Mary, who asked that her last name be withheld, said in an interview on Tuesday. “It just escalated really, really quickly.”
Mary was one of several people who spoke to staffers from the US Congress’s joint economic committee as part of an investigation by Senators Maggie Hassan, Democrat of New Hampshire, and Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, into romance scams on dating platforms owned by Match Group. Match Group operates apps such as Tinder, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, Match (formerly Match.com) and others.
