In short: Romance-scam activity is not spread evenly across the year. Reported cases and losses tend to rise around three calendar windows: the January surge in new dating-app sign-ups, Valentine’s Day, and isolating holiday periods like Thanksgiving and the Christmas/New Year stretch. Knowing why helps explain why extra caution during these specific windows is worth building into a habit, not just general awareness.
Why scams cluster around certain dates
Scammers running romance schemes are, in practical terms, running a volume operation — working many conversations at once and prioritising the ones that convert fastest into trust and then into a payment request. Three recurring calendar patterns make that operation more effective at specific times of year.
The January sign-up surge
Dating platforms consistently report their highest volume of new sign-ups and re-activated accounts in the first weeks of January, as people follow through on New Year resolutions around dating and relationships. A larger pool of new, less experienced users is a larger pool of potential targets, and scam accounts are created and active alongside genuine new members during this window.
Valentine’s Day
Consumer protection agencies, including the FTC, have repeatedly flagged February as a period of elevated romance-scam reporting. The emotional framing of the holiday itself — pressure to be in a relationship, heightened focus on romantic gestures — gives a scammer’s declarations of love or plans for a future visit more emotional weight than they would carry at a neutral time of year.
Isolating holiday periods
Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year period combine two things that make romance-scam tactics more effective: increased loneliness for people who are geographically distant from family or experiencing a difficult holiday season, and a ready-made urgency narrative — “I need money to fly home for the holidays,” “I’m stuck at an airport and can’t reach my family,” “I want to send a gift but my account is frozen.” These stories borrow legitimacy from a season when travel problems and financial stress are genuinely common.
What stays true no matter the season
None of this changes the underlying pattern. A request for money, cryptocurrency, gift cards or account access from someone known only through online contact is risky regardless of the calendar date. What changes seasonally is how much emotional and situational cover the request has — which is precisely why the same request can feel far more reasonable in February or December than it would in a random week in June.
Why “just be more careful in February” isn’t quite the right advice
It would be simpler if the guidance were only to raise your guard during three specific windows and relax the rest of the year. In practice, scam operations run continuously, and a conversation that begins in a quiet month can still be timed to reach its financial request during a high-risk window later on — a match who started messaging in March may wait until the run-up to Christmas to introduce a travel emergency, because the story lands better then. The seasonal pattern is most useful as an explanation for why a request can suddenly feel more plausible than it would have a few weeks earlier, not as a reason to only think about romance-scam risk at certain times of year.
Practical habits for these windows
- Treat calendar-timed urgency as a signal, not a coincidence. A request that conveniently lines up with a holiday, a flight home, or “something special for Valentine’s Day” deserves the same pause as any other urgent money request — arguably more.
- Keep verification steps consistent even when everyone else seems to be moving fast. January’s surge in new accounts does not mean profile photos, stated jobs or claimed locations need less scrutiny — if anything, a newly very active platform benefits from the same proportionate checks used year-round.
- Talk to a trusted person before responding to a holiday-timed request, especially one involving money, gift cards or account details. A second opinion is most useful exactly when a request feels the most emotionally urgent.
- Do not let a “special occasion” change the pace of an in-person meeting. Pressure to meet immediately, skip a public venue, or send money “so we can finally be together this Christmas” should be treated the same as pressure at any other time of year.
- If something already feels wrong, pause the interaction rather than confronting the person directly — verify independently through the platform’s own reporting tools and trusted sources, not by asking the match to prove themselves further.
Do this now if a payment or code has already been requested: stop before sending anything further, and verify independently through your bank or the platform — not through contact details the other person has provided.
Sources
- FTC: What to Know About Romance Scams — patterns in romance-scam reporting, including seasonal spikes.
- FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) — annual reporting on romance and confidence-fraud losses in the United States.
- Action Fraud (UK) — national fraud and cybercrime reporting service, including romance fraud guidance.
This article provides general safety information, not financial or legal advice. Reported figures and seasonal patterns are drawn from published agency data and can change year to year.