Mumbai: Dating app con siphons off Rs 3.5 lakh from 57-year-old woman

The Netflix documentary Tinder Swindler shocked the audiences when it first released on the OTT platform. For a while, the documentary made it to the Top 10 list on the platform as well.

A woman from Mumbai's Santacruz area was recently swindled in a similar fashion. The woman (57) matched with the accused on a dating application and conned her of Rs 3.5 lakhs.

According to reports, the woman matched with the accused she named as Vineet Shah who told her he was a restaurateur who'd lived in US for over 25 years and was now in city to open a new restaurant. He also claimed to be a divorcee with a child.

Shah, the accused and the woman got to know each other and soon after he deleted his profile on the dating app since he had found "perfect woman", the victim told the Times of India.

She added that the accused met her every alternate day and borrowed money under different pretexts. The woman said that initially she gave him Rs 40,000 for his expenses till his parents, who were allegedly winding up their assets, returned from the US.

The accused then asked for a tab on his birthday as a gift from the woman and she obliged. He took Rs 1 lakh from her to invest with a jeweller so she could get fixed returns. The accused then took Rs 15,000 under the pretext of buying her a phone but never did.

Meanwhile, he honey trapped her by saying that his parents would love her and also heaped praises on her in front of his aunt. He proposed her on August 30 and engaged her in preparations. Shah told the woman he liked her gold chain and got the jeweller to evaluate its cost.

The accused ghosted her after the incident. She approached a non-profit group for help when she couldn't reach him for 10 days. They then contacted the police, the TOI report stated.