A crime ring in India that was allegedly running romance scams across a network of fake online dating websites has been broken up.
The operation was uncovered after a male victim submitted a report to the police claiming that he was duped out of approximately $25,000.
26 individuals were arrested in total, including 23 women who were hired to talk to men across the eight dating platforms in order to make sure they kept paying.
Cyber Crime cell Sub-Inspector N Ravi Kumar told The Indian Express: “They popularise their sites through Facebook. With three types of membership, they make the person deposit money in installments, attracting them by sending photographs and dupe them.
“During the investigation, we found the process is underway from Kolkata with the girls trained in talking to men.”
A total of 46 mobile phones and 48 bank accounts were seized, and all of the defendants were initially presented to a Kolkatan court.
US-based Match Group are currently in trouble with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for allegedly promoting fake profiles to try and encourage users to sign up for premium accounts.
The online dating giant responded to the claims at the end of last month by stating internal emails had been misrepresented and that the FTC had “cherry-picked” facts to support its case.
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