When romance is a scam...

Loneliness combined with the pressure to find a relationship leads many to seek company in the online space but this is fraught with frauds, warns Arvind Narrain

The pandemic and the lockdown with work from home norms and the loss of contact with people has exacerbated feelings of loneliness for queer people. This enforced isolation has meant that the online world has perforce to play an even stronger role in the lives of queer people.

This has led to a spurt in online crimes which are very smart and strategic in tapping into the feelings of loneliness and the desperation to find romantic partners. There have been a number of young gay men who have been conducting online romances with scamsters purporting to be gay and from another country like the USA or Austria. The scamster with whom you have been conducting a long online romance sometimes for months, promises to visit you in your country. One day, the young man receives a call from the scamster saying that he is stuck in Bengaluru Airport and needs to pay the Customs officials or he is at risk of imprisonment. The young man ends up paying huge sums of money and once the payment is done, the one he is in love with disappears without a trace. There have been repeated cases of young men falling for this scam losing amounts to the tune of a couple of lakhs in some cases. What the very prevalence of this scam indicates is that there is a disease of loneliness combined with the pressure to find a relationship and this needs to be addressed.

Queer support groups like Swabhava and Good as You have been posting material on their internal platforms spreading awareness of these scams and the need to take legal action. They have begun communicating simple messages such as that one should ‘never send money to anyone you have only communicated with online or by phone’ and working with victims to empower them to file a complaint. Once some people are able to come forward and file complaints, then the process of trying to shut down the scamsters can begin.

In the United States, these scams are taken seriously with the FBI specifically describing ‘romance scams’ as the use by a criminal of a ‘fake online identity to gain a victim’s affection and trust’. As the FBI puts it, “The criminals who carry out romance scams are experts at what they do and will seem genuine, caring, and believable.’ ‘The scammer then uses the illusion of a romantic or close relationship to manipulate and/or steal from the victim.’ Since this scam has hit Indian shores as well, affecting all lonely, trusting and vulnerable people be it heterosexual or queer, the Indian cyber police should also update their understanding of ‘romance scams’, produce info-material on the same, and move quickly to shut them down once a complaint has been registered.

(The author is a lawyer & writer based in Bengaluru. He is the
co-editor of Law like love: Queer perspectives on law.)