Romance Scammers Have Found a New Target: Your Home Equity (NBC)

This Valentine's Day, while you're focused on romance, romance scammers are focused on your home equity.

Organized fraud rings like the "Yahoo Boys" are now explicitly targeting HELOCs, and leveraging romance scams to either steal enough personal information from their victims to open and drain a HELOC, or manipulate the victims into opening a HELOC and sending them the cash.

SentiLink research led by David Maimon found that in fraudster-controlled channels, chatter about how to exploit HELOCs is increasingly common. And downstream, when we looked at a sample of HELOC applications from 2025, we found that high-risk applications surged 161% in the second half of the year.

Fraudsters are always changing and adapting, so it's critical that consumers fraud fighters are equipped with the latest knowledge. Many thanks to our friends at NBC for covering this concerning trend:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/romance-scammers-get-victims-open-home-equity-loans-research-rcna258812