The Cyber Police on Tuesday busted a racket that lured people into paying money to become part of “dating clubs” by arresting five men based in Thane. The accused are suspected of having cheated at least 2,000 people across the country.
The Cyber police received information about the racket a month ago when people started getting text messages from unidentified numbers offering memberships to clubs for casual dating and sex. The accused set up three websites — sexclub, sexodate and instaclub — and offered to arrange hotel rooms and promised privacy to members on payment of ₹1,000 as a one-time membership fee.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (Cyber) Akhilesh Singh said, “A lot of people paid the money through Paytm but never heard back from the supposed clubs. We started tracking the Paytm accounts used by the accused and found that they closed the accounts every two to three days and set up new ones. We traced the trail of money to the Paytm account of a jeweller in Mumbai.”
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Mr. Singh said the jeweller admitted that the accused bought gold coins from him on a regular basis. The police then put the jeweller's store under surveillance and detained a suspect who came to pick a batch of gold coins, which were paid for through Paytm. The suspect led the police to three offices on Ghodbunder Road in Thane.
Mr. Singh said, “We seized three laptops, 16 hard drives and 300 SIM cards. The arrested include owners of the companies. The accused began a separate racket where they offered jobs to unemployed youth and secured their identity and address proofs. They then used the information to procure SIM cards and used them in the dating club racket.” The accused then sent bulk messages offering membership. The accused expected no one to complain to the police about the racket as it involved paying money for sex.
The arrested accused have been identified as Mohammed Shakib Kotvala (24), Girish Jaiswal (33), Kamal Vishwakarma (31), Arjun Kanojia (28) and Sharif Khan (24). They have been remanded to police custody till April 10. They have been charged with cheating under the Indian Penal Code along with relevant sections of the Information Technology Act.
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