Cybercriminals using matrimonial, dating apps to find targets for honey trapping, say police

Beware of online fraudsters using fake identities to befriend and scam unsuspecting victims for money and gifts.

Recently, a software employee from Visakhapatnam received a ‘friend request’ from an unknown young female on Instagram. After accepting the request, they started chatting and exchanged their contact numbers. Gradually as their friendship grew, the woman started asking him for money, in a phased manner, citing emotionally moving personal reasons. After lending her around ₹22 lakh, the techie realised that he was getting conned by the woman and lodged a police complaint.

It was later found that the woman faked her identity by using an unknown person’s photo as the display picture. The police found that the accused was a 32-year-old woman from Madhapur of Hyderabad and she was arrested by the team of cyber crime police.

Though the accused in this case has turned out to be a woman, in most of these honey-trapping cases, the accused are men. As per the cyber crime police, at least five such cases are reported from various parts of the city every month.

Cybercrime Police Station Inspector K. Bhavani Prasad said that cyber fraudsters browse matrimonial sites and dating applications to identify their targets. Then they approach the targets through social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to befriend them with fake identities. The fraudsters use pictures of unidentified woman as their display picture.

“Some fraudsters befriend the victims while some others lure the victims in the name of marriage. They make emotional appeals seeking money or gifts from the victims who end up realising that they were cheated only after the fraudsters stop responding to their messages or block them on the social media platforms. In some cases, the fraudsters also threaten to circulate the morphed pictures of the victims on the Internet,” he said.

Mostly software employees, businessmen and college-going youth have been the prime targets for the cybercrime gangs, say the police.

The police have also urged people not to accept requests from unknown persons on social media and to always keep their accounts private. The police also urged victims to report at www.cybercrime.gov.in or dial 1930.