Swiping right has become a pricey trap for many in India, where Grindr and other dating apps serve as stalking grounds for scammers spinning fake profiles, sob stories, and shattered promises. This deception hits the LGBTQ community hardest, with reports indicating hundreds of people are duped each year.

The modus operandi of these scams unfolds when an LGBTQ user connects with a match on Grindr or Tinder, someone claiming to be from the U.S. or Europe, and the texts spark a flawless romance, until a frantic call shatters the illusion. They’ve flown to India to meet them, they say, but customs officials at the airport have detained them for carrying wads of foreign cash. A desperate plea follows: Send money to settle fines, with a hollow vow to repay once released—a vow that vanishes the moment the payment lands.

Although dating apps have tightened policies to shield users—Match Group, Tinder’s parent company, rolled out a campaign across Tinder, Hinge, Match, Plenty of Fish, and Meetic with in-app tips to spot scams—fraud persists. Delhi Police on Jan. 11 busted a gang that targeted gay men on Tinder, luring them with fake profiles promising shared desires, then holding them hostage to extort cash. A minor was among the five people who authorities arrested.

Though India decriminalized homosexuality in 2018, lingering social stigma still marks LGBTQ people as prime targets for dating app scammers. 

Noida police in Uttar Pradesh state in 2020 dismantled a gang that honey-trapped at least 10 professionals on a gay dating app, robbing two of them of $500 and $1,700 respectively. Gurugram police in Haryana, a bustling tech and finance hub, that same year nabbed another gang that preyed on more than 50 users of the same app.

Scammers often dig deep, coaxing out home addresses, job details, and family ties from their targets—sometimes with an accomplice who turns violent, assaulting the victim. Activists, however, note most of them don’t come forward to the police, silenced by India’s staunchly conservative mores that allow catfishers to slip away and target more people unchecked.

A 28-year-old gay man in Mumbai in March 2024 fell prey to a dating app scam, losing nearly $11,000 to a man posing as a Texas-based doctor. 

After striking up a friendship online, the scammer promised an expensive watch as a gift—only to call the next day, claiming he’d been detained at Delhi’s airport for carrying a hefty sum of foreign currency. Moments later, a supposed customs officer named Priya demanded $859 in taxes to secure his release. What began as a single payment spiraled into a financial abyss, with the victim funnelling roughly $11,000 in a month, the Indian Express reported.

“These incidents have grabbed headlines recently. Scammers create fake profiles, build trust with their targets, and then hit them with extortion demands, threatening to out them to family or friends, said Ankit Bhuptani, an LGBTQ activist who founded Queer Hindu Alliance. “It’s a cruel twist of the knife, preying on the fear of societal rejection that still lingers despite legal progress.”

“Even though the Supreme Court struck down parts of Section 377 in 2018, decriminalizing homosexuality, the reality on the ground is that acceptance isn’t universal,” added Bhuptani. “Families and communities can still be harsh, and these scammers weaponize that vulnerability. The fact that arrests have been made—like those recent busts in Ghaziabad and Noida—shows the police are acting, but the persistence of these scams tells us we have got a long way to go.”

Bhuptani noted that a mix of technological, societal, and legal challenges fuels these scams. He said scammers thrive because dating apps can be a Wild West—fake accounts are easy to set up, and AI tools make them even more convincing.

“I have heard of cases where victims lost lakhs (thousands of US dollars), like that guy in Ghaziabad who was blackmailed for 1.4 lakhs ($1,700) after being filmed in a compromising situation. It’s predatory and shameless,” said Bhuptani. “The emotional toll is just as bad as the financial hit—imagine the terror of being outed in a society where many still see being gay as taboo.”

Bhuptani argued India’s legal framework is primed to tackle dating app scams, pointing to constitutional protections—Article 14’s equality guarantee and Article 15’s anti-discrimination shield the Navtej Johar ruling, which decriminalized homosexuality in 2018, bolstered. He noted that blackmail and extortion already fall under Indian penal code Sections 383 and 384, while the IT Act can pin scammers for online fraud and identity theft.

“The problem isn’t the laws; it’s enforcement and awareness. Police need better training to handle queer-specific cases with sensitivity, and dating apps must step up—think stricter verification, AI-flagging of suspicious profiles, and user education on spotting red flags,” said Bhuptani. “But laws alone won’t fix this. Society’s got to shift. As long as being LGBTQ carries a stigma, scammers will have leverage. We need campaigns—loud, bold ones—pushing acceptance, normalizing queer identities, and making it clear that outing someone is not a weapon that works anymore.”

Pune police, meanwhile, on Feb. 27 filed an First Information Report  against a gang that blackmailed a gay man on a dating app, bleeding him of $1,248 over five months.

President Donald Trump delivered a divisive and partisan address before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday that also included multiple references to his administration’s anti-transgender executive actions.

“We’ve ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and indeed the private sector and our military,” Trump said, promising, “our country will be woke no longer.”

Later, he said “We have removed the poison of critical race theory from our public schools, and they signed an order making it the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.”

“I also signed an executive order to ban men from playing in women’s sports,” Trump said.

At that point, the president introduced one of his special guests, Payton McNabb—who, he said, was seriously injured three years ago when her girls’ volleyball game was “invaded by a male” who spiked the ball “so hard in Peyton’s face, causing traumatic brain injury.”

GLAAD, in a press release before Trump’s speech, noted that “McNabb has since been hired by opponents of trans people to use her injury to argue that all trans youth should be denied the chance to play sports as their authentic selves.”

She is “a paid spokesperson for an anti-transgender group that also advocates to ban health care and to force schools to dangerously out LGBTQ youth without their consent,” the group wrote.

Trump continued, “Take a look at what happened in the women’s boxing, weight lifting, track and field, swimming, or cycling, where a male recently finished a long distance race five hours and 14 minutes ahead of a woman for a new record by five hours.”

“It’s demeaning for women, and it’s very bad for our country. We’re not going to put up with it any longer.”

During this section of the speech, news cameras turned to Riley Gaines, a former NCAA swimmer turned anti-trans activist, who was a guest of Republican U.S. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa) and has worked with the same group as McNabb.

GLAAD wrote that Gaines “parlayed her fifth place finish into a career of testifying in states she does not live in to support full bans on transgender youth as young as kindergarten from playing sports.”

Later, when decrying government spending, Trump noted $8 million was used “to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of” and $8 million “for making mice transgender.”

About an hour into his speech, the president said, “My administration is also working to protect our children from toxic ideologies in our schools. A few years ago, January Littlejohn and her husband discovered that their daughter’s school had secretly socially transitioned their 13 year old little girl.”

“Teachers and administrators conspired to deceive January and her husband while encouraging their daughter to use a new name and pronouns,” he said. “‘They-them’ pronoun, actually, all without telling January, who is here tonight and is now a courageous advocate against this form of child abuse.”

GLAAD notes that “records show January Littlejohn of Tallahassee, Fla., worked with the school district to support her nonbinary child, before Littlejohn sued the district with lawyers from a national anti-LGBTQ group.”

According to GLAAD, the family’s complaint accused school of discussing “restrooms and name change requests with their child without their consent” but “a public records request showed that the family had ongoing communications with the school and gave approval to let their child and their teachers lead on appropriate school protocols.” 

“The Trump White House is using the address to Congress to continue its baseless and unhinged disinformation campaign against transgender Americans,” GLAAD said. “The invited guests being deployed to smear transgender people are paid spokespeople for anti-LGBTQ groups that demand schools dangerously out LGBTQ students without their consent, who go against every major medical association supporting medically-necessary health care, and do nothing to promote women and girls in sports or protect everyone’s safety and wellbeing.” 

Washington Blade International News Editor Michael K. Lavers and Bet Mishpachah Executive Director Joshua Maxey on Sunday spoke about their recent trips to Israel.

Bet Mishpachah, an LGBTQ synagogue in D.C., hosted the conversation.

(Video courtesy of Bet Mishpachah)