The amount of money stolen in investment fraud and romance scams linked to social media in Japan totaled about ¥66.02 billion in the first half of the year, exceeding the ¥45.5 billion marked in the whole of 2023, police data showed Wednesday.

There were 3,570 social media-linked investment fraud cases in the January to June period, with the damage totaling about ¥50.63 billion, according to the data from the National Police Agency.

The data showed that about ¥15.39 billion was stolen in 1,498 romance scam cases.

Of the investment fraud cases, 51.6% involved advertisements on social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.

In a majority of cases, imposters pretended to be celebrities, including noted analyst Takuro Morinaga and entrepreneur Takafumi Horie.

The average amount of damage in social media investment fraud and romance scam cases was over ¥14 million — much higher than that in special fraud cases unrelated to social media at about ¥2.6 million.

In 54 of the social media investment fraud cases, the amount of damage exceeded ¥100 million, with the highest being ¥800 million.

About 70% of romance scam victims were asked to pay money for investments.

In 35.7% of all romance scam cases, or the largest group, imposters contacted victims through matching apps.