Dating apps & dhokha: Delhi man poses as US model to blackmail, extort money from at least 700 women

Tushar Singh Bisht, a BBA graduate who was working as a technical recruiter at a private company in Noida was arrested from the Shakarpur area of East Delhi.

A 23-year-old man who defrauded over 700 women on dating apps by posing as a US-based model was arrested by the Delhi police on Friday. The man, identified as Tushar Singh Bisht befriended women through social media or dating apps and after deceiving them into sharing their private pictures, blackmailed them.

According to a report by NDTV, Bisht, a BBA graduate who was working as a technical recruiter at a private company in Noida was arrested from the Shakarpur area of East Delhi.

Bisht's father is a driver while his sister works in Gurugram and his mother is a homemaker.

As per the report, Bisht arranged a virtual international mobile number through an app using which he created fake profiles on apps such as Bumble and Snapchat. He stole photos and stories from the account of an actual Brazilian model and posed as a freelance US-model on soul searching trip to India. Most of Tushar's targets were aged between 18 and 30.

Tushar would befriend the women on these apps and after gaining their ask them for their mobile numbers and intimate photos and videos. In the beginning, Tushar used to save the media files driven by his lust however, over the time it evolved into a systematic scheme of extortion, police said.

Tushar blackmailed his victims into giving him money by threatening them to upload their private pictures online or sell them on dark web.

Police investigation has revealed that Tushar targeted more than 500 women on Bumble and over 200 on Snapchat.

The fraud to the fore on December 13, 2024 when a second year Delhi University student filed a complaint with the Cyber Police Station. The victim had met Tushar on Bumble in January 2024. Pretending to be a model, Tushar initiated a friendship with the girl which soon transitioned into private chats. Following his modus operandi, Tushar saved the explicit photos, videos shared by the victim while constantly avoiding meeting her in person.

Soon Tushar started blackmailing the victim with the media files shared by her which led to her filing a complaint with police.

During their raid in Shakarpur, police found 13 credit cards, a mobile phone with incriminating data and a virtual international mobile number linked to Tushar's criminal activities. Tushar is said to have extorted at least four more women apart from the complainant.

Police have also retrieved over 60 WhatsApp chat records with victims from Delhi and neighbouring regions and information about two bank accounts, one of which contains entries of payments made by his victims.