Bengaluru: Man poses as girl, cons men through dating websites

BENGALURU: A 25-year-old youth, who allegedly lured men through dating websites and apps pretending as a girl and cheated them, has been arrested by the cyber crime police. The accused, Sagar Rao, a resident of Immadihalli Main Road at Vinayaka Layout in Whitefield, is a BA graduate and was working as a non-technical staff at a software company in Whitefield.

Police said a complaint was registered in Cyber Crime police station in October 2017 by the mother of a youth, who was cheated by a girl named Shilpa.

The girl had promised to go on a date with the youth. She cheated him by getting `71,000 credited to a bank account. The police had registered the case and had sought certain information from the dating websites and apps used by the accused girl.

“Meanwhile, the victim met with an accident and thus, we could not gather more information about the girl from him. After we received information from the websites, we contacted the victim and got information from him. As investigations progressed, it was established that it was a man who was registered as a girl in dating websites and cheated men. Based on several clues, he was arrested,” the police said.

“He was using girls’ names such as Shilpa, Sonia Jain, Monisha Jain, etc. and was approaching men on dating websites. After chatting with them as a girl, he lured them by saying he would go on a date with them on the condition that they credited money to his bank account. He had approached 12 men but only two of them got cheated — one lost `71,000 and the other from Hubballi lost `10,000,” the police added.
He also used fake names and chatted with girls and made similar attempts to get money from them, but none fell prey to his attempts.

“Further, he confessed that he committed the offence to buy gifts for his girlfriend. He had presented her a mobile phone, which is seized. He also spent money to take her to luxury dining restaurants,” the police added.