The uniform in the photographs was never real. The AI software that generated it didn’t need a tailor, a police station or an appointment letter. According to the Ahmedabad Crime Branch, in May this year, a 27-year-old man identified as Himanshu Panchal, used AI tools to generate pictures of himself in a Gujarat Police sub-inspector’s uniform and posted them on Shaadi.com, Jeevansathi, Bumble, and Hinge. He backed up the fake image with forged documents and a series of invented legal and financial troubles. But the deception did not last. One of the women did what the technology was designed to defeat: she checked. According to a news agency report, she grew suspicious, scrutinised his claims and discovered that he was not a police officer. She approached the police and registered a complaint. Fortunately, she had not given him any money. By the time he was arrested, he had reportedly cheated at least 21 hopeful brides across Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra. Weeks later, in Kanpur, the same technology was used on a larger scale. Police arrested the alleged mastermind behind three fake marriage bureaus that reportedly advertised AI-generated images of attractive women on social media. Interested men were directed to a call-centre-style operation involving 23 female telecallers, each working towards weekly collection targets.
The men were charged registration fees, profile-verification fees and other processing charges. More than 1,700 men had reportedly been cheated in this way. Police traced the money to 11 linked bank accounts. The case came to light after a man from Barabanki complained that he had lost nearly Rs 4 lakh to the fraudulent agency within a few months, having been promised help in finding a spouse.
In another case, a man named Sanket created a fake female profile on an online matrimonial website using Instagram photographs of attractive women. Posing as Mumbai-based medical practitioner ‘Dr Sayali Patil’, he targeted a doctor and his father. He used AI voice-changing technology to sound like a woman during phone calls and impersonated fictitious family members, including brothers ‘Lokesh’ and ‘Manmat Desale’ and a retired uncle. Later, posing in person as ‘Manmat Desale’, he collected cash and took the victim’s ATM card to pay for personal expenses and shopping. Following a complaint filed on August 22, police registered a case under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Information Technology Act and arrested him.
Software manufactured a husband. It also manufactured brides. The scammers know that the attraction lies not merely in a fabricated face but also in the credentials on which the marriage market runs: a stable profession, a respectable family, an agency with an office and a phone line.
The Case of the Vanishing Wooer
Officers from the Hyderabad Cyber Crime unit cite a case from November 2025 in which a woman met a scammer on a matrimonial app. She had been hoping to find someone to marry. While browsing profiles on the platform, she came across a man who ticked every desirable box in the contemporary Indian marriage market: he had a stable, well-paying job, lived abroad, earned far more than most people, and posted photographs that suggested a comfortable, settled life. Most importantly, he claimed that he genuinely wanted to settle down and start a family. She was hopeful about building a stable future with him, but before long, demands for money began arriving one after another.
First, he asked her to transfer funds to help him “sort out a problem”. Soon afterwards, someone claiming to be a Delhi Airport staff member called to say that the man's belongings had been seized by customs and that he needed to pay outstanding taxes. The callers repeatedly assured her that every penny she transferred would eventually be refunded in full. Only when the man she had sincerely regarded as her fiancé cut off all contact and disappeared without a trace did she realise that she had been scammed. By then, she had lost more than Rs 1.1 crore.
From the outset, the man had claimed to be a citizen of another country. After just a few conversations, he suggested moving their chats from the matrimonial app to WhatsApp, saying it would be more convenient to communicate privately. To allay her suspicions, he sent her photographs of himself, along with several official-looking documents, gradually building her trust until she became convinced of his identity.
Once he had persuaded her to let her guard down, he said he planned to travel to India to meet her. This marked the beginning of the second phase of the scam. A woman claiming to be a Delhi Airport staff member called the victim and told her that the man had been detained at the airport for attempting to enter the country with undeclared foreign currency. More calls followed, with scammers impersonating public officials demanding payments for various charges, including GST, outstanding personal income tax, IMF certification and visa renewal fees. Each time, the victim was assured that every rupee she transferred would be refunded in full. In the end, however, she never recovered a single rupee.
The Great Matrimonial Fraud NetworkDismissing matrimonial fraud as just another dating-site scam obscures a larger problem unfolding across India’s online dating and matrimonial ecosystem. Advocate Mayank Arora, partner at The Chambers of Bharat Chugh, argues that such fraud should not be treated as isolated cheating cases when there are signs of organised networks. “This seems to have become the vocation of a set of criminals who have organised themselves to make this their vocation,” he says.
The BNS, which came into force in July 2024, includes a dedicated organised-crime provision under Section 111, covering economic offences and cybercrime, subject to specific statutory requirements. Not every matrimonial fraud case, however, automatically qualifies. Meanwhile, data from the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal show that 1,128 complaints were filed under the category “online matrimonial scam” in 2025, up from 854 in 2024. These figures capture only formally reported cases classified under this category, leaving a much larger grey area of fake profiles, impersonation, identity theft, financial fraud and extortion.
“Matrimonial fraud can be accurately described more as a form of relational social engineering than simple deception using a fake profile,” explains criminologist Arun Kumar. Once a victim believes a relationship is genuine, he says, a financial request “is no longer evaluated as an isolated transaction. It is interpreted through the lens of affection, commitment and future marriage.” Many such crimes may never enter official matrimonial-scam statistics because they are classified under other criminal categories, despite marriage being the bait.
A former Delhi DCP warns that matrimonial fraud must be viewed as a potential organised-crime threat rather than merely a one-on-one betrayal. “In many cases, there may be a wider network working together, and our investigation must focus on identifying and dismantling that network,” he says.
Private detective Naman Jain, founder of Sleuths India, says these scams exploit familiar vulnerabilities, but through emotional manipulation. “Matrimonial fraud is not fundamentally different from other scams that prey on vulnerability. These fraudsters play on the emotions.” His agency has handled cases involving divorced people, those considered past the conventional age of marriage, and individuals insecure about their appearance, finances or relationship prospects. “They start telling people they are very good, appreciating their qualities, and negating the advice of the people around them,” Jain says. The goal is to foster emotional dependence before striking. Once that trust is established, “is the time when they start either blackmailing them or extracting money under some cover story.”
A Rainbow of Cheating
This discrepancy is at the heart of the issue. India publishes specific statistics on online matrimonial scams, but it has no comprehensive figures for matrimonial fraud across all categories. The reason is simple: such scams are no longer confined to a single type of crime, nor do they necessarily originate online. They have evolved into an integrated ecosystem with multiple entry points: a matrimonial advertisement in a newspaper, a local agent in the neighbourhood, a matchmaking agency, a blind-date group on WhatsApp, a formal dating website, or even an acquaintance who swears, “I know this family well.” Once a scam is initiated, it can move freely between these channels, without being tied to any single platform.
The most persistent myth about matrimonial fraud is that it happens only to the gullible. It doesn’t. Dr Pretty Duggar Gupta, consultant psychiatrist at Aster Whitefield Hospital, says the deception works because victims are effectively making two judgments at once: Is this financially safe? And is this person genuinely committed to me? “The second question can distort the first,” she says.
Gupta describes this as psychological familiarity: the feeling of knowing someone even when the relationship has never been tested in everyday physical life. Cognitive dissonance sets in later, when victims must reconcile two conflicting beliefs: this person loves me, yet something about the relationship is wrong. Rather than immediately abandoning the relationship, the mind often searches for explanations that allow both beliefs to coexist. A missed meeting becomes an emergency, an inconsistent story becomes a misunderstanding, and a request for money becomes temporary help.
Two other mechanisms deepen the trap: intermittent reinforcement, in which affection alternates with withdrawal, and sunk-cost reasoning. The more time, emotion and money a person invests, the harder it becomes to accept that the relationship was fraudulent. “Trusting the partner despite all warning signs does not mean that the person is unintelligent,” Gupta says. “These scams take advantage of extremely normal aspects of human nature such as the capacity to trust, attach, hope and relate.”
Where the Deadly Twain Meet
The old dating market, built on matchmakers and personal acquaintances, has not been replaced by digital platforms. Instead, the two have merged into a single network that scammers exploit at every stage. Local agents make introductions and establish credibility; matrimonial advertisements lend legitimacy to the arrangement; dating websites provide fabricated profiles and photographs; and WhatsApp becomes the space where intimacy and trust are cultivated. Fake professional credentials elevate the scammer’s status, while hired decoys posing as relatives corroborate the lies. Pre-arranged bank accounts provide the final link, allowing money to be transferred out as soon as it arrives. By the time the victim realises what has happened, the search for a life partner has become a means of financial exploitation.
The Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, under the Ministry of Home Affairs, has warned that scammers steal or manipulate photographs and fabricate personal details, including names, ages, professions and incomes, to create fake profiles on dating and social platforms. They gradually build emotional bonds before exploiting the victim’s trust for money. The government has also cautioned that dating platforms are being used to funnel victims into investment scams. At its most sophisticated, the fraud resembles a sales funnel: a fabricated identity leads to a romantic encounter, followed by trust-building, marriage promises, repeated demands for money and, finally, disappearance.
Not every romance scam begins with a fake identity. Some relationships start with genuine intentions before financial temptation turns one partner into an exploiter. Others are fabricated from the outset, while some are merely fronts for investment fraud. Nor are such scams confined to the digital age. Newspaper matrimonial advertisements once provided all the access scammers needed to exploit people seeking companionship.
Former Telangana DGP Anjani Kumar rejects simplistic explanations based on age or gender, noting that both men and women can be victims or perpetrators. A 2024 study, Digital Romance Fraud Targeting Unmarried Women, also examines the phenomenon within the broader gender and social structures shaping women’s search for relationships.
Cases investigated by the police illustrate how enduring these tactics are. In Hyderabad, an 80-year-old retired doctor responded to a newspaper matrimonial advertisement and was persuaded by a woman claiming she would marry him. She defrauded him of Rs 17,700 before disappearing. In Pune, another 80-year-old man—a retired bank employee—lost Rs 11.5 lakh to a woman he had contacted through a similar advertisement. She communicated only through text messages, repeatedly inventing emergencies involving a sick relative or cash-strapped business to extract money. Police later discovered that she was already married and suspect she may have targeted other vulnerable people using the same routine.
In Thane, a 73-year-old woman was allegedly defrauded of more than Rs 57 lakh by a 62-year-old man she met through a newspaper matrimonial advertisement. He promised to marry her and take her to Pune for a comfortable life, ultimately swindling her retirement savings before fleeing.
What made these analogue scams particularly effective was the credibility that matrimonial advertisements carried. Unlike casual introductions, a newspaper advertisement seeking a spouse often implied a serious, marriage-minded individual, making it easier for scammers to exploit the victim’s desire for companionship. The absence of face-to-face meetings, evasive answers and increasingly urgent requests for money were warning signs, but the promise of a stable relationship often overshadowed suspicion. Digital platforms may have expanded the reach and speed of such fraud, but the psychological mechanism remains the same: exploit the hope of finding a partner, turn trust into obligation, and make the victim’s own emotional investment the scammer’s most effective weapon.
These cases challenge the assumption that matrimonial fraud emerged with smartphones and dating apps. Long before digital platforms became ubiquitous, newspaper advertisements offered scammers a ready-made route to vulnerable people. The technology has changed, but the underlying playbook—manufacturing trust, exploiting the desire for companionship and extracting money—has remained remarkably consistent.
The Myth of the Credible Matrimonial Agency
Smartphones have merely streamlined the scamming process, making fraudsters more efficient. The time spent building trust, soliciting money and disappearing has shrunk considerably. A scam that once took months, or even half a year, can now be executed in a fraction of that time, allowing fraudsters to target more victims.
One role in these crimes is often overlooked: matrimonial agencies. These agencies are not inherently linked to fraud. Most are legitimate intermediaries that help people find suitable partners, connecting prospective brides and grooms for a reasonable service fee. However, police reports and case files reveal that some unscrupulous agencies and unethical agents have become key links in these schemes. They target single, elderly and vulnerable individuals, draw them into exploitative networks and share the proceeds with scammers.
Hyderabad Cyber Crime Police have investigated several marriage fraud cases linked to local matrimonial agencies. Two of the cases involved fake agencies, including one operating under the name Sankalpa Matrimonial Services. Syed Salman Hussain, founder of Hyderabad Matrimony, a marriage bureau operating in Somajiguda since 2011, says legitimate agencies have a responsibility to screen clients rather than simply maximise registrations. “We make it a point of choosing our clients, not the other way around,” he says. However, he acknowledges that even this process is not foolproof. “Even educated individuals fall prey to fraud at the hands of other so-called educated people.”
In another case investigated by Hyderabad law enforcement, a fraudulent entity operated under the name Sai Sravani Marriage Bureau. It is important to distinguish such fraud involving physical matrimonial agencies from the more familiar scams built around fake profiles on dating apps.
The distinction is significant. When scammers fabricate profiles on dating or matrimonial platforms, victims may recognise the deception as a familiar form of cybercrime. Fake, brick-and-mortar matrimonial agencies, however, exploit a different vulnerability. They can rent offices, advertise in newspapers and on social media, maintain working phone numbers and employ staff who appear no different from those at legitimate businesses. Their physical presence—a real address, an office and people whom clients can meet—becomes a powerful tool of deception. Victims may assume that an agency with a physical office cannot be fraudulent, lowering their guard and walking straight into the trap.
Arora believes investigators must look beyond individual complaints to identify the infrastructure behind such crimes: repeat offenders, common bank accounts, fabricated identities, SIM-card procurement networks, call centres, forged documents and links between seemingly unrelated cases. The question, in other words, is not simply, “Who cheated this victim?” but “Who built the machinery that made the cheating possible?”
Upgrading the Canvas of Grift
Among the recent cases to emerge, the most disturbing development is that the person listed on a matrimonial profile may be entirely fabricated and may never have existed at all.
Police in Kanpur recently busted a call centre allegedly running a large-scale matrimonial scam, arresting several people. Investigators found that the gang had allegedly defrauded victims using hundreds of fake matrimonial profiles, paired with AI-generated or digitally altered photographs designed to look like genuine personal pictures. If these allegations are proved, they point to a drastic shift in how matrimonial fraud operates.
Until recently, anyone meeting a prospective partner through matrimonial channels would ask a straightforward question: Is this person who they claim to be? Are they exaggerating their credentials or concealing the truth? Now, the doubt runs deeper: Does the prospective bride or groom even exist? Could their photographs, personal history and entire identity be fabricated?
This alarming development is not confined to northern India. While the Kanpur case illustrates how AI can be used to manufacture fictitious romantic prospects, the evolution of such scams in South India shows how fraudsters have exploited new tools and vulnerabilities.
In 2025, Tamil Nadu’s Cyber Crime Wing issued a public warning following a wave of dating website scams that had caused hundreds of victims financial losses. The modus operandi revealed by the police was an evolved version of an old fraud. Scammers created fake profiles on matrimonial websites, contacted victims through WhatsApp and gradually built emotional bonds by chatting daily about their lives and feelings. Once victims had lowered their guard, the scammers introduced seemingly lucrative investment opportunities.
To establish credibility, they initially allowed victims to withdraw small profits, creating the illusion that the investments were genuine. Once victims committed substantial sums, the scammers blocked withdrawals and demanded additional payments to unlock the accounts, draining their savings in stages.
“A prospective spouse can gain credibility through emotional intimacy and an apparent commitment to a shared future,” Kumar says. An investment presented as “something we can do together to build our future” is no longer evaluated merely as a financial product. “The marriage narrative supplies trust,” he says; “the investment narrative supplies the mechanism for extracting larger sums.”
Love and Hope, With Terms and Conditions
When the cases are pieced together, a clear modus operandi emerges: a premeditated strategy designed to exploit the desire for companionship and marriage. The scammers never intended to marry their victims; the proposal was merely a lure. They began by cultivating a romantic relationship, gradually steering the victim towards an investment trap. The emotional intimacy built through daily conversations and promises of a shared future lent credibility to financial demands that would otherwise have raised suspicion.
Had a stranger asked the retired doctor to invest Rs 3 lakh in an obscure trading platform with no verifiable credentials, he would probably have been wary and refused. But when the proposal came from someone he believed he would spend the rest of his life with, framed as a way to save towards opening a hospital together, the situation took on an entirely different meaning. The blunt demand for money was disguised as a shared aspiration, making the deception harder to recognise.
Matrimonial fraud exploits a fundamental contradiction of online courtship: meeting someone has become effortless, but verifying their identity remains difficult. As Kumar puts it, the central investigative question in matrimonial fraud is “no longer only whether a person’s story is genuine, but whether the digital identity corresponds to a verifiable real-world individual.”
The old matrimonial scam promised a wedding and delivered a disappearance. The new version is far more ambitious. It can manufacture an entire life around a fictitious person—a family, a prestigious career, financial success and a shared future—before introducing the investment opportunity that is the real objective all along. AI has made this fabrication more convincing. What makes the fraud particularly dangerous is that it does not simply exploit financial greed; it weaponises hope, loneliness, and the deeply human desire to build a life with someone. Victims are not merely persuaded to part with their money; they are led to believe that doing so is an act of love and commitment. By the time the deception unravels, the loss extends beyond savings to emotional devastation. Combating such crimes, therefore, requires more than warnings about suspicious links or fraudulent investment platforms. It demands greater scrutiny of digital identities, stronger coordination between matrimonial platforms and law enforcement, and public awareness that emotional intimacy is not a proof of authenticity. In
this new landscape of matrimonial fraud, the most consequential question is no longer simply whom one is falling in love with, but whether there is a real person on the other side of the screen at all.