Congress investigated dating-app scams: what it found, and what it means if you were banned

Congress has spent a year inside Match Group’s scam defences, and on Tuesday 13 October it published what it found. The report, from the Joint Economic Committee under Senator Maggie Hassan, who opened the investigation with Senator Marsha Blackburn in September 2025, says that about 1.5 million suspected scammers and other bad actors on Tinder and Hinge matched with at least one American in the first nine months of 2025, that most of Tinder’s machine-learning scam models had not been updated in years, and that the typical scammer’s profile was being shown about eight times as often by December 2025 as in May 2024. Match Group says the report mischaracterises its investment and that the past year has brought the largest safety changes in its history. This page sets out the findings, how the investigation ran, what Match Group has changed and claims, what the FTC’s and FBI’s numbers say about the money, what the Romance Scam Prevention Act will require once signed, and what all of it means if a fraud system banned you and you are not a scammer. If you are mid-appeal, nothing in the report changes your route, and the tiers are on the pricing page.

AppealMyBan is an independent service. Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Match Group, the Joint Economic Committee or any company or office named below.

Every figure on this page is from the senators’ offices, from the reporting of 13 and 14 October, from the FTC’s and FBI’s own publications, or from the platforms’ 2025 EU transparency reports, each linked where it is used and read on 15 October. The committee’s report itself was not online at a public address when we read the coverage, so the findings are given as the senators’ offices and the reporters who read the report describe them. Where sources disagree, both numbers are given.

What the report found

The investigation covered Tinder, Hinge, Match, Plenty of Fish and the smaller Match Group brands. Match Group cooperated, handing over more than 670 pages of internal documents, and the committee interviewed fraud experts and victims. NBC News, The Washington Times, The Boston Globe, The Record and The Guardian each read the report, and their accounts agree on the figures below.

The Guardian’s account opens with Mary, who met a man on Plenty of Fish in 2024 and lost almost $100,000 in cryptocurrency payments. She described it as “like being in a vortex”, each payment feeling disconnected from the last until she added up the total. Hassan’s own line on why so few of these cases are reported: “There’s a lot of stigma to being a victim to scams.” Her conclusion, in the release from her office, is that dating apps and other platforms “need to ensure that their own scam defenses quickly and proactively evolve to meet these new threats”, and she has paired the report with a separate bill, the ReportScams.gov Act, for a single federal portal to report scams.

Two numbers float around for the rise in a scammer’s reach. The Washington Times, working from the impression counts Match gave the committee, puts it at about eight times. Hassan’s office and the Yahoo News write-up put it at more than 700%. They are the same change, 67 to 542, said two ways.

How the investigation ran

It began with a letter of 24 September 2025 from Hassan and Blackburn to Match Group’s chief executive, Spencer Rascoff, announced by the committee and by Blackburn’s office. The letter called romance scams “a leading form of financial fraud in the United States”, costing Americans at least $1.3 billion a year, and asked for documents on how Match detects and removes scammers across Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid and its other brands, how much it spends on trust and safety, how many members interact with fraudulent accounts, whether the company earns revenue from suspected scam accounts, and what part its matching algorithms play in building the trust that scammers exploit. The deadline for answers was 15 October 2025. The Hill and Fast Company covered the letter at the time.

The letter leaned on an older case. In 2019 the Federal Trade Commission sued Match Group, alleging that Match.com had used messages from accounts it had already flagged as likely fraudulent to sell subscriptions, that in some months between 2013 and 2016 more than half of the instant messages and favourites members received came from fraudulent accounts, and that nearly 500,000 subscriptions were bought within 24 hours of such a message between June 2016 and May 2018. Match settled on 12 August 2025 for $14 million without admitting liability, as TechCrunch reported and the FTC’s case page records. The order also bars Match from locking paying subscribers out of their accounts after a billing dispute.

What came out on 13 October is a staff report, not the record of a hearing, and Match Group was not subpoenaed: it gave the documents voluntarily. The report was issued by the committee’s Democratic staff under Hassan, who is the committee’s senior Democrat, from an investigation the two senators opened together, which is why some outlets call it bipartisan and others call it Hassan’s. Both are right about different things. Global Dating Insights and Online Personals Watch carry the trade’s reading of it.

What Match Group says it has changed

Yoel Roth, Match Group’s senior vice-president of trust and safety, said the report “mischaracterizes” the historical scale of the company’s investment, and in the same breath that the company is “grateful the committee recognized our significant advancements to protect our users against romance scams”, which he called the largest safety advancements in Match Group’s history. The company’s position, as The Washington Times reports it, is that much of the work, including the face checks, was already under way before the senators wrote. The measures it points to are these.

The committee’s answer is in the report itself: it welcomed the changes and said they came only after scams had spread for a long time. Axios reported the California requirement in June 2025, TechCrunch the US-wide announcement in October, and Biometric Update the December start. The percentages are Match Group’s own, not the committee’s, and they measure interactions with accounts Match itself classifies as bad actors.

One line in the table matters for the rest of this page. A face check that keeps a scammer from opening a second account does so by comparing faces across accounts, and Hinge says so in its own pages: Face Check exists partly to detect duplicate accounts, and the data can be shared across Match Group brands. The same comparison is what stops a banned person from coming back, whether or not the ban was right.

The money, in the FTC’s and the FBI’s numbers

The senators’ letter said at least $1.3 billion a year. The FTC’s own series, which pools reports from its Consumer Sentinel network including those the FBI passes on, runs like this.

The sources are the FTC’s February 2023 spotlight, which restated earlier years to include FBI reports and so runs higher than the $547 million the FTC announced for 2021 at the time, its February 2024 post on the 2023 figures, the 2024 data book, and local reporting of the FTC’s nine-month 2025 figures. The $1.5 billion is the FTC number the committee and Global Dating Insights use for 2025; we did not find it in an FTC release of its own. Treat the table as a floor: the FTC counts only what people report, and Hassan’s point about stigma is that most do not.

The FBI’s count is separate and lower, because it comes only from complaints to its Internet Crime Complaint Center. Its 2025 report, published in April 2026, logged more than a million complaints and $20.9 billion in losses across all internet crime, with confidence and romance fraud at $929.3 million from 23,159 complaints, up about 38% on 2024, as AARP summarised it. People aged 60 and over reported $7.7 billion of the total across every crime type. The FTC added one more figure in April 2026 that cuts against the dating-app framing: nearly 60% of the people who reported losing money to a romance scam in 2025 said it started on a social media platform, not a dating app.

The scams themselves have a name the industry is trying to change. “Pig butchering”, the long con in which a stranger builds a relationship and then walks the victim into a fake cryptocurrency investment, is run at scale from compounds in Southeast Asia, often by trafficked workers; Tech Policy Press tracks the separate bills Congress has aimed at those syndicates. Interpol asked in 2026 for the term “romance baiting” instead, on the ground that the old name shames the people it describes. Mary’s $100,000 in cryptocurrency payments is that pattern exactly.

The Romance Scam Prevention Act, clause by clause

Congress passed one law in the month before the report. The Romance Scam Prevention Act, H.R. 2481, was introduced on 31 March 2025 by Representatives David Valadao and Brittany Pettersen, passed the House by voice vote on 23 June 2025, and passed the Senate by unanimous consent on 23 September, where Blackburn had carried the companion bill, S. 841. The enrolled text is dated 29 September. As of 15 October we can find no record of the President signing it; NBC News, writing on 13 October, said it awaited his signature. These are its terms, from the text as reported and the sponsors’ summaries.

For the person a scammer targeted, the notice is the point of the law: a named profile, a date, and a plain instruction not to send money. Pettersen’s office called it a landmark, and Global Dating Insights walked through the mechanics for the industry. For the person on the other end of a mistaken fraud ban, the same notice is the problem, and that is the next section.

The other side of a fraud ban: when the systems get it wrong

The report describes the failure from the moderator’s chair: rules scammers slip past, and so many false positives that the human reviewers could not keep up. From the member’s chair a false positive has a different name. It is a ban for scams and fraud that you did not commit, decided by a system, with a reason you were never shown. The platforms’ own EU reports put numbers on how big that group could be.

Tinder’s 2025 Digital Services Act report, on Match Group’s safety resources page, lists 2,169,598 EU account terminations, 94.1% of them under scams and fraud and almost all of those logged as inauthentic accounts, with most of the measures under that ground decided by automation alone. Hinge’s report counts 633,534 terminations, 60.7% under scams and fraud, 445,488 of them decided by an automated system with no person involved. Across Match Group’s brands the 2025 EU filing records 10,196,219 reports and 10,024,628 bans or suspensions, 83% of them automatic. The appeal figures are the other half of the picture: Tinder reversed 12,058 of 56,991 appeals against account bans, 21.2%, at a median of 19 hours; Hinge reversed 31,251 of 86,650, 36.1%; six dating apps between them reversed 139,130 of 1,014,961. Why Hinge bans people and Tinder suspicious activity break those grounds down, and do dating app ban appeals work sets every reversal rate side by side.

None of those EU figures says how many of the bans were wrong. A reversal is a ban the platform itself decided to undo on a second look, which is a floor, not a measure. But put the report and the reports together and the shape is clear: the same models that let 1.5 million bad actors through also produced false positives at a rate the moderators could not absorb, and in the EU the brand reversed one appeal in five.

The Romance Scam Prevention Act raises what a wrong fraud ban costs. Once it is in force, a fraud ban on a US account triggers a notice to everyone that account messaged, within 24 hours, naming the username and saying its owner “may have been using a false identity or attempting to defraud members”. The bill’s safe harbour means the app cannot be sued by the banned member for sending it in good faith. So an appeal against a fraud ban has to be fast, and it has to be right the first time, because the notice will already be in other people’s inboxes by the time a reviewer reads it. What that looks like in practice:

1. Use the one in-app appeal, inside its window. Tinder’s appeal is the Appeals Center, on your own login, one appeal per violation, within six months, and it takes no written statement. Hinge’s is the box on the ban screen. Nobody can send either for you.
2. Verify if you are asked. A fraud ground on a real person is usually a face or a photo the system tied to another account, or a report it could not check. Banned from Tinder for being fake sets out what a live selfie answers and what it does not.
3. Go above the queue. The Match Group escalation desk is the one reviewer who can see more than one brand, and a fraud ban on Tinder is the kind of decision that spreads to Hinge.
4. Ask for the record. An access request obliges the platform to give you the personal data behind the decision. It is the route in our case study, a Tinder ban lifted 31 days after our access request, and reading your Tinder data export shows what comes back.
5. In the EU, ask for the statement of reasons the Digital Services Act requires and consider a certified dispute body; dating-app bans in the EU’s DSA database explains both.
6. Do not open a new account. Face Check exists to match a new face to a banned one, and a second account turns a possibly mistaken ban into a deserved one. Dating app device bans explains the four layers that tie them together.

In the United States no regulator reviews an individual ban. The FTC’s order against Match bars it from locking subscribers out after a billing dispute and nothing more, and the new Act gives the FTC a duty to enforce the notice, not to hear the banned member. The United States page sets out what the state laws do and do not give you.

What a scam looks like, in the report’s and the FTC’s words

What AppealMyBan files for a fraud ban

1. We read what the app told you, the ground it named, the date, and whether a statement of reasons arrived, and we tell you whether the in-app appeal takes words or only a button.
2. We write the appeal you send, where there is a box for it, answering the fraud ground with the things a reviewer can check: who you are, what the photos are, and where the report came from.
3. We file what a third party may file, in your name, under a signed authority, copying you the moment it goes: the Match Group escalation desk, the access request for the enforcement record, and in the EU the statement-of-reasons request and a certified dispute body.
4. We answer what comes back. The Case is $149: every route found, drafted and filed, and every reply answered for 60 days. The Advocate is $349 and covers up to four apps from the same company, so Hinge as well as Tinder.

We are not a law firm and do not give legal advice. We never ask for a password. The free check takes about two minutes.

Where each figure on this page comes from

• The report’s findings. NBC News, The Washington Times, The Boston Globe, The Record, The Guardian, Global Dating Insights, La Voce di New York and Online Personals Watch, all read 15 October.
• The investigation. The senators’ letter of 24 September 2025 and the releases from the committee and Blackburn’s office; The Hill, Fast Company and The Washington Times on the letter; the FTC’s case page and TechCrunch on the 2019 complaint and the 2025 settlement.
• Match Group’s measures. Axios, TechCrunch, Forbes, Biometric Update and Global Dating Insights on Face Check; the rule and model counts as reported by NBC News and The Record.
• The money. The FTC’s 2023 spotlight, 2022 release, 2024 post, 2024 data book and April 2026 release; the FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report and AARP’s summary of it; Tech Policy Press on the syndicate bills.
• The Act. Congress.gov, the reported text, the enrolled text, S. 841, and the releases from Valadao, Pettersen and Blackburn.
• The bans. Tinder’s, Hinge’s and Match Group’s 2025 EU transparency reports on Match Group’s safety resources page, published 28 February 2026 and read for our earlier pages; the six-app reversal total from do dating app ban appeals work. The two rows of figures on this page restate numbers given in the text.

Questions people actually ask

What did the Congress report on dating app scams find?

That about 1.5 million suspected scammers and other bad actors on Tinder and Hinge matched with at least one US member in the first nine months of 2025, that nearly 500,000 of them exchanged contact details, that most of Tinder’s scam-detection models had not been updated in years, and that the typical scammer’s profile was shown about eight times as often by December 2025 as in May 2024.

Who wrote the report on Tinder and romance scams?

The Joint Economic Committee’s staff under Senator Maggie Hassan, its senior Democrat, from an investigation she opened with Senator Marsha Blackburn in a letter to Match Group of 24 September 2025. Match Group gave more than 670 pages of documents voluntarily.

Is Tinder safe to use after the report?

The report says Tinder’s defences were out of date through 2025 and credits the changes since, chiefly a mandatory video-selfie check for new US members. Match Group claims interactions with bad actors have fallen by more than half. The FTC’s 2025 data say nearly 60% of romance scams that cost money started on social media rather than a dating app, so no app is the whole risk.

What is the Romance Scam Prevention Act?

A federal bill that requires a dating app to notify every member a banned account messaged, within 24 hours of a fraud ban, naming the banned profile and telling the member not to send money or financial details. The FTC and state attorneys general enforce it, and it takes effect one year after it is signed.

Has the Romance Scam Prevention Act been signed into law?

Not as far as we can find on 15 October. It passed the House on 23 June 2025 and the Senate on 23 September, and the enrolled text is dated 29 September. NBC News reported on 13 October that it awaited the President’s signature.

What does Match Group say about the report?

That it mischaracterises the historical scale of the company’s investment, and that the past year brought the largest safety advancements in its history: Face Check for new Tinder members across the US, 169 new automated rules, 108 improved ones and new detection models. The company says interactions with bad actors are down 50% to 70%.

Can Tinder or Hinge ban you by mistake as a scammer?

Yes, and the report itself says false positives overwhelmed the moderators. In the EU, 94.1% of Tinder’s 2025 terminations and 60.7% of Hinge’s sat under scams and fraud, most decided by automation, and Tinder reversed 21.2% of appeals against account bans. The apps publish no figure for how many bans were wrong; the reversal rate is the floor.

How do I appeal a Tinder fraud ban?

Through the Appeals Center on your own login, once, within six months of the ban; it takes no statement. Then the Match Group escalation desk, an access request for the record behind the decision, and in the EU a statement of reasons and a dispute body. Do not open a new account while any of that is open. The decision belongs to Tinder.