Addictive, eye-opening, and brutally honest; Netflix’s latest jaw-dropping documentary ‘The Tinder Swindler’ has rightfully established that sometimes swiping right can lead you to a partner awfully wrong for you.
The documentary unmasks the painful reality about how threatening the world of online dating is. Specifically, for women worldwide, digital dating platforms appear quite enticing for finding that one, true love. But there is more to this than meets the eye when it comes to looking for the perfect soulmate via dating apps.
Love bombing turning into a nightmare
Before the 2020 ban of Tinder in Pakistan, data from analytics firm ‘Sensor Tower’ revealed that the popular app had been downloaded more than 440,000 times in the country, within the last 12 months.
However, Bumble remains an active application that puts the woman in control to make the first move. But that doesn’t mean that they are safe from scammers, harassers, and potential rapists that lurk to take advantage of them.
Watching ‘The Tinder Swindler’ just made us realise the plight of a plethora of Pakistani women, who have suffered the same fate by Pakistani serial scammers akin to that Cecilie Fjellhoy, Ayleen Charlotte, and Pernilla Sjoholm by the Israeli conman, Shimon Hayut.
We scrounged the internet for similar tales of Pakistani women. Apparently, our local Facebook advice groups are brimming with stories of young girls that hoped to find their Prince Charming via social media connections or dating apps. However, they ended up getting duped by men who were either cheating on their wives, catfishing for money, or romantically manipulating girls to only leak their pictures later on the web.
Various of these heart-wrenching stories made headlines in newspapers. Others still remain in the dark, with their victims struggling from the aftermath of their traumatic experiences.
Local Tinder Swindlers that loom large
One such empowering true tale is of Sania, founder of a prominent and award-winning mobile application in Pakistan. Though she got defrauded, she was strong and smart enough to recover
the money she lost on the man she once loved.
“A couple of years ago, I met this handsome ‘Casanova’! He was flattering, asked the right questions, gave the right answers, and soon I was floating in a sea of dreams. It was going steady, we would talk all night, every night and then one day he asked me for money worth 1000 USD!”
Like the Tinder Swindler, he too had a crisis he needed to be saved from.
“He told me he was in some kind of emergency and eventually I gave him amount worth 100K!”
But like every con man, he ghosted her when it was time to pay back the amount.
“A few months passed and I needed the money to buy a ticket to travel. My money was stuck so I asked him. He made me wait for a month and then stopped picking up my call.”
However, once she recovered from her anguish, she decided to give him a taste of his own medicine.
“I felt insulted, ugly, conned and what not. I was broken and was about to lose my self-esteem. Then remembered one thing. Once he sat in front of me and told me a story of how he caught a man who conned his dad. He caught the man by pretending to be a girl and adding his son on Facebook, thus finding out the man’s whereabouts.
I opened his Facebook, analysed his weaknesses and relationships. I wrote a letter to his sister confessing my feelings and how much hard it is for me to earn money. I was trembling because it was a risk. It was 4 am in morning. By 4 pm the next day I didn’t hear a word from his sister but my money was in my account and a message from him to stay away from him and his family.”
However, Sania was lucky in getting her money back from the vile swindler. Meet Alisha, 32, from Karachi who survived the wrath of a Facebook dating scam.
“I met a guy on Facebook in Lahore, back in 2016. We immediately connected and I fell in love with him. He proposed to me and told me he will come with his parents to Karachi to make it official with my family. Two months later, he asked me for 50K for traveling expenses and I gladly paid him, thinking he is finally coming to my city. It has been six years since he vanished after toying with my feelings, never came to Karachi as per my knowledge and I still haven’t gotten my money.”
A similar tale is of Paras, 26, from Faisalabad who was head over heels in love with Asghar on an online dating app, back in 2020.
“I had to literally fight with my parents to accept his family’s proposal. They didn’t want to marry their daughter to someone she dated online. After much reluctance, I got engaged to him but a month before marriage, they sent us a long list of expensive dowry items.
Later, he fled with all my dowry including the jewelry, and sold the car my father gave us, leaving to settle in the Gulf, post-COVID. I am still fighting for my Khula, regretting ever signing myself on that dating app”.
Swindlers of the heart
The list of traumatising cases of online dating gone wrong are endless. But will the internet be ever a safe space for women?
A report by ‘Analytic Insight’ ranks Pakistan on the fifth of the ‘World’s top 10 Scamming Countries in the World in 2021’. It describes the scam by local men impersonating as soldiers on online dating services to persuade their victims to pay them money as the most common of all.
Of course, such pseudo digital daters should not just be exposed but also be charged legally. But while our lawmakers ponder over ways to make cyberspace a safe sphere for all, women need to be educated on some basic signs to identify the difference between a love interest and scammers online.
If they are too quick to profess their love, claim to be a millionaire or based in the military, ask money for emergencies and promise to meet but churn up reasons to avoid; chances are you are talking to a con. So, run- run as fast as you can!
Note: Stories of all victims have been added with consent. However, the names have been changed for privacy.