Online dating site scam busted by Cyberabad police, five gang members arrested

A five-member gang from West Bengal involved in cheating of gullible youth of lakhs of rupees in the name of arranging dating with beautiful girls and providing them female escort services has been busted and its kingpin and four others arrested, the Cyberabad police said Tuesday.

The arrested included kingpin Debashish Mukherjee and his associates Faij-ul-Haq, Anitha Dey, Sandeep Mitra and Neetha Shankar.

Cyberabad police commissioner VC Sajjannar told reporters that the cyber crime wing of the department received a complaint from a young man on July 20 this year stating that he was cheated by an online dating website which promised to arrange a girl for dating. He had paid Rs 15.20 lakh in different installments to the dating site’s account but was not provided any service, while its operators had stopped taking his calls.

“The complainant enrolled himself as a member of a dating site www.getyourlady.com in May this year. On May 25, he received a call from a girl named Riya who asked him to pay Rs.1,080 towards membership fee. After that, he went on depositing money into an account suggested by her in the name of various fee such as club license fee, registration fee, service charges, and background verification charges etc. The website operators also charged more than Rs 87,000 towards GST,” the commissioner said.

When the victim made the final payment of Rs 4 lakh, the tele-caller stopped responding to his calls and he could not make any contact with them. “Having no other option, he approached the cyber crime police,” Sajjannar said.

During the course of investigation, the cyber crime wing tracked the network and finally cracked the racket. The police commissioner said Mukherjee, the mastermind behind the racket, created dating websites and lured the youth in the name of providing girls/women for dating. He established 20 branches – 12 in Silguri and eight in Kolkata and appointed managers and team leaders at every branch and offered them commission on the basis of business done by each branch, apart from a salary.

First Published: Sep 25, 2018 19:54 IST