There isn’t any wrong or right way to date. One can opt for a traditional route or go down the popular online dating path. And one can start dating once they’re 18-years-old or they can wait till 70 to find their true love. However, if a person is 65-years-old, married, and has just started to learn about the world of the internet, then maybe they should refrain from any form of dating.
According to Mid-Day, a 65-year-old Malad resident wandered into a free classified site and ended up losing a ton of money in an attempt to get a date. He told the police that,
“When I checked the website, I saw a tab, ‘looking for.’ I then clicked on ‘entertainment’. I was asked to register on the site. When I completed the registration, I received a call from a woman named Meera.”
He further explained in his statement to the police that,
“Meera shared pictures of three girls and told me to pick one. When I did so, she told me I would have to pay Rs 25,500 to meet the girl, after which I could date her for a year.”
Upon further investigation, the man revealed that he was asked to pay for various other reasons. However, the girls never delivered on their promises. He said,
“Then for other reasons such as to make a confidential agreement, a video call insurance and so on, they took around Rs 46 lakh from me. After paying all the money, the girl, Rosy, I had spoken to twice stopped calling me.”
On May 5, the Mumbai man paid Rs 82,500 as privacy fee, Rs 1.75 lakh as video call insurance, Rs 2.85 lakh to make a yearly contract with the girl and Rs 5.50 lakh for profile verification.
But wait, there’s more! On May 7, Meera called the man to pay Rs 26.50 lakh for premium membership and Rs 50,000 as “extra charges, and he did. That’s when he got the contact number of a girl named Rosy. And even after that, he was asked to pay Rs 7.85 lakh as “holding charges”.
After burning through around Rs 46 lakh, both Meera and Rosy went silent. And that’s when the Mumbai man started to get worried.
The man browsed through the comments of the website and noticed that there were a lot of negative statements. He started calling Meera and Rosy to get his money back and they kept stalling. This continued till January 10, 2019, after which he decided to file an application at the Kurar P.S. in February. The official FIR was registered on March 29, 2019.
Udaykumar Rajeshirke, senior inspector at Kurar police station said that,
“We have filed a case against an unknown person for cheating the victim of Rs 46.03 lakh. We are investigating the money trail and call details. We urge people not to get fooled by such sites.”
It’s true. If a site is asking you to shell out lakhs and lakhs of money, there’s a high chance that they’re fooling you. But the most important thing is that if you are married, please don’t cheat on your significant other by logging into fraudulent or legit dating websites.