Romance fraud occurs when a person is deceived for financial gain by someone the victim believes to be a romantic partner, and it remains significantly underreported. This study analyses monthly cases reported to Action Fraud in the UK from April 2014 to January 2024 against the release dates of five widely viewed TV docuseries, LexisNexis newspaper coverage and Google Trends search volume. GEE Poisson models show that in the month a docuseries was released, reported cases rose by an average of 13%, but the increase did not hold: its size fell by an average of 14% with each month after release. News coverage and online searches had no measurable effect on the relationship.
Research Objectives
- Assess whether TV portrayals of romance fraud relate to monthly cases reported to police.
- Test whether news articles or Google searches moderate that relationship.
- Determine whether the effect persists or fades after release.
- Compare the five programs individually.
Methodology
- Monthly counts reported to Action Fraud, April 2014 to January 2024 (118 observations), came from the NFIB Fraud and Cybercrime Dashboard plus Freedom of Information requests to the City of London Police.
- A search of Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Amazon Prime and Apple TV produced 23 programs; five met the criteria: released in the window, romance fraud central, over 1,000 IMDb reviews (a proxy, since viewing figures were unavailable).
- News coverage was monthly UK newspaper articles from LexisNexis; public interest was normalized Google Trends volume for the same terms.
- GEE Poisson models with an AR(1) structure controlled for trend, season and UK COVID-19 lockdowns, with a docuseries by time interaction term to measure how quickly the effect faded.
- Negative Binomial regression served as a sensitivity analysis for overdispersion; data and R code are on GitHub.
Key Findings
- Combined, reported cases rose by an average of 13% in the month a docuseries was released (IRR = 1.13, p = 0.007), but the size of that increase fell by an average of 14% with each month afterwards (IRR = 0.86, p < 0.001). The effect is real but not lasting.
- Individually, Dirty John, Love Fraud and The Puppet Master showed significant increases of 6%, 24% and 9%, with the size of those increases falling by 8%, 20% and 13% per month respectively, while The Tinder Swindler and Bad Vegan showed no significant association.
- The authors propose two possible explanations. The first, which they call the most likely, is that the earliest three docuseries had a more pronounced effect on viewers' perceptions and emotions simply because they were released first, raising awareness of an issue largely unknown before then, even though the two most recent programs gained more traction than Love Fraud and The Puppet Master by IMDb review count.
- The second explanation, which the authors describe as less probable and harder to prove, is that the case outcomes in the two later programs may be perceived as less favourable to victims: the offenders in Dirty John, Love Fraud and The Puppet Master either died or were imprisoned for the crimes documented, whereas the offender in The Tinder Swindler never faced charges for the frauds described, and in Bad Vegan both the offender and the victim were sentenced to prison.
- With news articles and Google searches added, the docuseries effect held (Model 4: IRR = 1.12, p = 0.016); neither was significant and neither moderated the effect. The authors conclude the effect is driven directly by viewership, and that the visual and emotional impact of the programs alone may be enough to influence help-seeking and reporting.
- Cases rose steadily across the study period, with a notable peak of 901 in March 2021 and further peaks later; lockdowns were associated with a 4% increase.
Recommendations
- The authors note that a deeper understanding of this relationship could be essential for shaping both media production and public awareness strategies, as it may encourage more victims to come forward and report these otherwise hidden crimes.
- Future research should investigate the relationship between specific content in TV programs and reporting behaviour, identifying which messages or themes contributed to an increase in reporting compared with those that did not.
- Future research should explore whether true crime docuseries focusing on other crime types, such as sexual violence or attempted homicide, also lead to increases in reporting.
- Surveys with fraud victims could provide insight into the mechanisms linking media portrayals of crime to crime reporting.
Key Takeaways
- Widely viewed true crime docuseries were followed by a measurable but temporary rise in UK romance fraud reports, with the size of the effect shrinking every month after release.
- Novelty, not reach, is the authors' preferred explanation: the three earliest programs carried the significant effects; the two later ones did not.
- For Thailand and ASEAN the design is replicable, though the findings are UK-specific.
References
Grant, S., & Buil-Gil, D. (2025). The effect of true crime docuseries on romance fraud reporting to the police. Crime Science, 14, Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40163-025-00244-y
Full text (Open Access): https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40163-025-00244-y
