The Romance Scam Prevention Act became law on October 20 with President Trump’s signature, requiring online dating services to tell a member when someone who messaged them has been banned for fraud. The White House listed H.R. 2481 among ten bills signed that Tuesday. The law is aimed at the gap between a scammer being removed from an app and the person who trusted that scammer finding out.
What the law makes dating services do
The version of the bill the House passed in June 2025 defines a “fraud ban” as ending or suspending a member’s account because the service judges there is a significant risk that the member will try to obtain cash from other members. A service that imposes such a ban now owes a warning to certain other members, and the House-passed text spells out who and when.
The duty runs to any member who received a message through the service from the banned account. The notice is due within 24 hours of the ban. A provider may take up to three days when circumstances warrant, and it must be sent by email or text message, or by another route if the member agrees.
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Anyone who traded messages with a profile that later disappeared is the person the rule is written for. A member who chatted with a stranger for weeks and then found the profile gone should now expect a notice naming that profile. Members who never heard from the banned account get nothing.
There is one built-in delay. If a law enforcement official asks a provider to hold off because of an ongoing investigation, the provider may not send the notice until that delay ends. It then has three days to notify. That carve-out keeps a warning from tipping off a scammer who is under investigation.
What the notice has to say
The warning is not a vague “an account was removed” message. The bill requires it to give the banned member’s username or other profile identifier, plus the most recent time the recipient sent or received a message from that account. A member can match that detail against the chat history on the phone.
The notice must also say, where applicable, that the banned member may have used a false identity or tried to defraud members. It must state that members should not send cash, other currency or personal financial information to another member. The wording has to be clear and conspicuous.
Two more items are required. The notice must carry information on best practices for avoiding online fraud, which may be a link, and contact details for the provider’s customer service department. Providers are shielded from claims by members, banned members and former members for actions taken to comply with the notification rule.
Who enforces it, and what happens to state rules
The Federal Trade Commission enforces the rule. A violation is treated as a violation of an FTC rule defining an unfair or deceptive act or practice under Section 18(a)(1)(B) of the FTC Act, and the agency uses its usual powers. State attorneys general may also sue in federal court for residents, after notifying the FTC.
The FTC can step in on those cases. If the commission has already sued a company over the same violation, state attorneys general cannot bring a case against that defendant while the federal action is pending. Other state consumer protection officers can sue as well if their state allows it, under the same limits.
The bill also sets one national standard. States and their subdivisions may not enforce laws that require or prohibit this kind of member notification or govern how providers give it. State contract and tort law is not displaced, so a victim’s other legal claims are left alone.
Providers do not have to comply right away. The House-passed text takes effect one year after enactment, which would be around October 20, 2027 if the signed version kept that timing. Until then, a dating app has no federal duty to send a fraud-ban notice.
Why romance scams are the target
The Federal Trade Commission’s data spotlight on 2022 reports found $1.3 billion in reported romance-scam losses, with a median loss of $4,400. Nearly 70,000 people reported a romance scam that year. The same series put losses at $493 million in 2019 and $730 million in 2020.
How people paid matters for recovery. Cryptocurrency and bank wires together made up more than 60 percent of reported losses in 2022. The median loss was $10,079 for crypto and $10,000 for bank transfers, while gift cards were the most common method, in 24 percent of reports, with a median of $700.
The FTC’s consumer guidance on romance scams describes the usual script. The new contact wants to leave the app quickly, cannot meet in person, and claims to be abroad, on an oil rig or in the military. Then come requests for medical bills, plane tickets, visa fees or help starting cryptocurrency investing.
A notice under the new law arrives only after the app acts, and it does not return money already sent. Anyone who paid with a gift card, wire, credit or debit card or crypto is told by the FTC to contact the company or bank right away and ask for a refund. Reports go to ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and the app should be told too.
The law’s limit is timing and reach. A warning lands within one to three days of a ban, and only if the scammer wrote to that member. Anyone already sending money to a profile that has not been banned gets no notice at all. The practical question is what to do in the first hours after a request for cash.
Sent money to a dating-app match who turned out fake?
A fraud-ban notice reaches a member after the scammer is gone, and by then the money, the bank details or the gift-card codes may already have moved. The law covers the warning. It says nothing about the first hour after someone has paid.
The Senior Fraud Defense & First-Hour Recovery Kit picks up at that point. It lays out the first-hour recovery plan and the free credit-freeze steps, and its fraud evidence and report log keeps every report to the bank and the FTC in one place. Part 3 explains what each report does.
Get the Senior Fraud Defense Kit’s first-hour recovery plan and credit-freeze steps →
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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
