The use of dating apps to scam people is not new, over the years as with any other online sector, scammers are always finding whatever means they can to dupe people out of their money.
The same goes with dating apps with ones like Tinder, Bumble, and more being used to scam people out of money, items and more.
The latest one in this is the ‘Bumble Scam’, so called by the Gurugram Police where a 32-year-old woman has managed to con men out of an almost alleged Rs. 1 crore by using the dating app Bumble.
What Is This Bumble Scam?
The scam was carried out by Surbhi Gupta a 32-year-old woman who would use aliases like Payal and Sakshi to hide her real identity.
As per reports she is an MBA graduate from an institution in London and was arrested by Gurugram Police on 12th October and after police interrogation was revealed that she had duped around 10 men off more than Rs. 10 lakh in just 2 months.
The police in another report said that in around 3 months she made almost an estimated Rs. 1 crore from defrauding these men.
The scam came to the police’s attention when a man from Gurugram’s Sector 29 filed a report on October 10 that he’d been robbed by a woman he met on the dating app Bumble.
Reportedly her modus operandi would be first to lure in the men, invite them to a location where it would be just the two of them, get them drunk, make them order food and it was here she would catch them entering their ATM PIN.
Sandeep Kumar, investigating officer, Sector 29 police station, Gurugram states “She followed the same modus operandi with everyone. Met men through the dating app, gained their trust, spiked their drinks, and stole their cash, cards and phones.”
Some reports claim she had a bad breakup and an abortion and Kumar comments “Perhaps she wanted to take revenge by looting men.”
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As per a report by The Print, Vikas, a 30-year-old male working in an IT firm was one of the men the woman conned when he switched to Bumble just six months ago. Surbhi was apparently the second woman he met there and he recalled “Surbhi would often pay the bill. It felt [like] she was not looking for money but a genuine relationship.”
It was when she invited him to a hotel room in Gurugram, claiming it to be fun evening of beer and pizza that the actual incident happened. As per the reports, when Vikas went to the door to get the pizza they’d ordered Surbhi spiked his drink with a sleeping pill and then robbed him of his iPhone, Rs. 5,000 in cash and two ATM cards.
The Print quoted Vikas saying “I will never use a dating app. Never ever. And never consume anything from outside,” and that his last message to her was a WhatsApp writing “I trusted you and you cheated me.”
According to reports, most of the men that Surbhi conned had an iPhone as a common factor between them. Her next victim was a 31-year-old software developer with a BMW and a flat in DLF Phase 4 who had the same fate as Vikas.
The police believe that when he left to more ice cubes, Surbhi spiked his drink and then stole 10 debit cards, two credit cards, an iPhone 14 Pro, and Rs 10,000 in cash along with withdrawing Rs 2.78 lakh from his bank accounts.
Image Credits: Google Images
Feature image designed by Saudamini Seth
Sources: The Print, India Today, News18
Find the blogger: @chirali_08
This post is tagged under: Surbhi Gupta bumble, bumble scam, london mba, Surbhi Gupta bumble, gurugram dating app, gurugram dating app fraud, dating fraud, dating app scam india, dating app, bumble, bumble india, bumble app, bumble dating
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