RESIDENTS in west Wales are among those who have lost the most amount of money to dating scams according to recent research.

Scams.info found that residents in west Wales lost £530,410 per 100,000 people to dating scams in 2022. This is the third highest in the UK and second highest in Wales.

Only Bedfordshire and Gwent lost more money than those in the Dyfed-Powys Police force.

West Wales was also the county that reported the second highest number of dating fraud incidents with 77.87 reports per 100,000 people. Only Gwent recorded a higher number.

Scams.info is a website that locates and tests gambling websites to ensure safety.

They used NFIB data collected in January 2023 to identify the regions in the UK that had lost the most money to online dating scams by looking at fraud reports and losses by each police force for the category ‘dating fraud’.

It was then collated in the number of fraud reports per 100,000 people, overall losses per population, number of reports and overall monetary losses per 100,000 people.

Scams.info then ranked the data according to the overall monetary loss per 100,000 of each area.