US Congressional Probe Finds Dating App Scammers Reached Users at Scale on Tinder and Hinge

A year-long investigation by the US Joint Economic Committee has found serious shortcomings in how Match Group tackles fraud on its dating platforms, which include Tinder, Hinge, Match and Plenty of Fish. According to the findings, nearly 1.5 million scammers and other bad actors on Tinder and Hinge matched with legitimate users during the first nine months of 2025.

On Tinder, investigators found that the number of profile views received by a median scammer rose by more than 700 percent between May 2024 and December 2025. The report states that Match Group "knew that Tinder was more likely to show a profile if it belonged to a scammer or other bad actor rather than a regular user." The committee has spent years examining romance scams, which took $1.5 billion from Americans last year, according to Federal Trade Commission data. The report describes the industry as run by organised criminal groups in Southeast Asia and West Africa, using human trafficking victims to carry out "pig butchering" schemes.

The report includes dozens of victim testimonies. One woman joined Tinder after her husband died and was scammed out of thousands of dollars by a person who kept presenting fabricated crises needing money. She told investigators that romance scams take more than money, leaving wounds nobody sees. Business owners and staff can be targeted in the same way, so awareness matters.