AI Virtual Human Matchmaking Scam: Platforms Use AI to Generate High-End Profiles to Lure Victims into Exorbitant Service Fees

Who Gets Targeted

Primarily single youth aged 25 to 45 and some elderly people living alone. Driven by relationship anxiety or emotional loneliness after registering on dating platforms, they are attracted by AI-generated profiles of premium guests pushed by the platform. Victims lack the ability to authenticate AI-generated photos and videos, and because they are anxious to find a partner, they overlook questions regarding unreasonable platform fees, ultimately paying high matchmaking service fees ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of yuan under script guidance, only to experience ghosting or the sudden disappearance of their matches.

骗局怎么运作

• Step 1: Traffic Harvesting. Matchmaking platforms use AI tools to batch-generate realistic photos and short videos of high-quality male and female guests, fabricating personas with high income, high education, and meticulous attentiveness. These are widely distributed on short video platforms and dating apps to attract single users to register and fill out personal profiles.
• Step 2: Throwing the Bait. Under the guise of system matching, platform customer service or matchmakers actively push the aforementioned AI-generated virtual guest namecards to victims, claiming that the guests have a good impression of the victims. This induces victims to purchase chat points or upgrade memberships within the app for direct contact.
• Step 3: Ambiguous Scripting. Once victims top up their accounts, sales staff arranged by the platform use unified script templates or even AI chatbots to interact with victims on their behalf, maintaining continuous daily greetings and emotional care to create an ambiguous atmosphere and further lower the victims' vigilance.
• Step 4: Charging Exorbitant Service Fees. After victims develop emotional dependency, matchmakers intervene to promote offline VIP matchmaking service packages costing tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of yuan, promising to arrange offline meetings with crush-worthy guests, and inducing victims to sign draconian contracts that are difficult to fulfill while paying the full amount.
• Step 5: Disappearance and Evasion. After victims pay the high fees, the virtual guests who interacted with them earlier suddenly refuse to meet under various pretexts or completely lose contact, while the offline blind-date matches provided are mostly temporarily hired matchmaking stand-ins. When victims demand refunds, platforms stall or refuse by citing contract terms.

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 Overly Perfect Guest Profiles: Photos and video textures are extremely uniform; personas feature housing, cars, high education, and emotional dedication, but social media backgrounds are completely blank.
• 🚩 Inducing Top-ups Before Meeting: The platform requires users to purchase points, virtual gifts, or memberships to message recommended guests, while chat interactions are frequent but real-time photos or video calls are refused.
• 🚩 Matchmaker Pressure Sales: While users are chatting enthusiastically with virtual guests, matchmakers immediately call to push high-end offline service packages, creating a sense of scarcity and urging quick contract signing and payment.
• 🚩 Draconian Contract Terms: Service fees routinely reach tens or hundreds of thousands of yuan, yet terms regarding breach and refunds are ambiguous, setting harsh refund conditions or placing all blame entirely on the user.
• 🚩 Mismatched Meeting Partners: Blind-date partners arranged after paying high service fees differ vastly in appearance and personality from the guests interacted with earlier, and meetings quickly end with the excuse of incompatibility to refuse further contact.

真实案例

• According to a Tencent News report in January 2026, a woman in Shanghai produced a 238-page PPT exposing the dark industry of matchmaking, involving hundreds of people and amounts totaling 220,000 yuan, revealing how certain platforms fabricated guest profiles to defraud service fees.
• According to a report by the Jining People's Procuratorate in February 2026, a fraud ring used AI to generate beauty videos to drive online traffic, luring 15 victims deep into sweet traps and committing fraud, resulting in major property losses for the victims.
• In March 2026, Shanghai Observer cooperated with the Consumer Protection Commission to publish a 3.15 investigative report detailing how a woman spent 15,000 yuan to purchase matchmaking services, topped up chats on a dating app only to have her dream male guest disappear, later discovering the chat partner was actually a robot.
• In February 2026, CNR reported that Shandong police cracked a massive telecommunications fraud case involving a fake matchmaking app: the criminal organization recruited female chat agents and built a fake dating app, attracting 6.36 million male user registrations over two years with over 5,000 people involved and an amount of approximately 360 million yuan. (Source: [https://news.cnr.cn/native/gd/20260202/t20260202_527513387.shtml](https://news.cnr.cn/native/gd/20260202/t20260202_527513387.shtml))
• In February 2026, CNR reported that Shandong police cracked a massive telecommunications fraud case involving a fake matchmaking app: the criminal organization recruited female chat agents and built a fake dating app, attracting 6.36 million male user registrations over two years with over 5,000 people involved and an amount of approximately 360 million yuan. (Source: [https://www.xinhuanet.com/20260202/5ef7a51a57c34cb9beebc1a1911eebec/c.html](https://www.xinhuanet.com/20260202/5ef7a51a57c34cb9beebc1a1911eebec/c.html))

Official Stance

• On February 2, 2026, CNR published a report questioning how fake matchmaking apps attracted over 6 million registrations in two years, urging public security and regulatory departments to step up crackdowns on fake dating platforms and AI-synthesized persona traffic scams.
• On March 15, 2026, Shanghai Observer cooperated with the Shanghai Consumer Protection Commission to release a 3.15 investigative report, warning consumers to watch out for top-up traps involving robots posing as real users on dating platforms and scams involving high-value service contracts.
• On April 13, 2026, Xinhua News Agency client published a Xinhua Spotlight report warning against the phenomenon of AI domineering CEO scams targeting the elderly, pointing out how the gray industry of AI digital human generation harms elderly groups and issuing clear warnings for preventing such emotional scams.

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Refuse Top-ups Before Meeting: Refuse to purchase memberships, points, or virtual gifts within dating apps until identity has been verified through video calls or offline meetings.
• ✅ Reverse Image Search Verification: Search crush guest photos using search engine reverse image search functions; if they are stolen internet images or public AI generation model libraries, their true nature will be revealed.
• ✅ Review Contract Details: When signing matchmaking service contracts, review service contents and refund terms clause by clause, refusing draconian terms that require full upfront payment with no refunds.
• ✅ Retain Evidence and Complain: Keep chat logs, contracts, and payment proofs, and immediately report to public security authorities or the market supervision administration 12315 upon discovering signs of virtual human interaction or matchmaking stand-ins.