• The study analysed 35 media-reported Indian dating-app fraud cases from 2020 to 2025; 25 showed a move to a physical meeting.
  • Reported losses ranged from INR 7,000 to INR 9 crore, and one Jaipur case involved kidnapping and murder.
  • Tinder was named in 8 cases and Bumble in 7; 10 cases did not name a platform.
  • The authors say the data cannot estimate prevalence and may over-represent newsworthy cases.

Researchers from OP Jindal Global University, The Police Foundation in London and the University of the Western Cape have published a study in Elsevier's Journal of Economic Criminology that finds a recurring pattern of romance fraud in India moving from dating apps to offline encounters. The paper went online on 13 September 2026, and The Tribune reported on it on 18 October. According to the authors, offenders make contact on a platform, groom the target emotionally, then arrange a meeting where money is extracted or, in some cases, coercion and violence follow.

It is an exploratory, qualitative study, not a measure of how common this is. Of the 35 cases, 25 showed an identifiable transition to a physical meeting. The other 10 stayed mostly online, as extortion, sextortion or fake investment schemes.

The DII Take

Trust and safety teams should read this less as a verdict on any one app and more as a map of where protection runs out. Safeguards that stop at the chat window may do little once a conversation moves to encrypted messaging and then to a café or rented flat. The sample is small and press-driven, so treat it as a catalogue of tactics, not a risk ranking.

Two offline patterns, and where the apps appear

The authors describe "coercive social debt scams" in cafés, restaurants and bars, where victims are pressured into paying inflated bills. A second type, "private extortion and violence scams", took place in rented apartments and hotel rooms. It involved coercion and robbery and, in Case 4 in Jaipur, kidnapping and murder.

Tinder was named in 8 cases and Bumble (BMBL) in 7. Aisle and TrulyMadly appeared once each. The authors note that 23 of 30 victims with a reported gender were male, a skew they say should not be read as the real distribution.

Of the 35 cases, 25 showed an identifiable transition to a physical meeting.

What to watch

The authors say platform safeguards mattered most at first contact, while environmental oversight matters once meetings move offline. Their policy suggestions, offered as indicative only, are better platform safeguards, awareness of the risks of rapid offline meetings and stronger situational prevention. They also note limited centralised public law-enforcement data on romance fraud in India, which leaves regulators with little to benchmark against.

For context, the US Federal Trade Commission said in April 2026 that nearly 60% of people who reported losing money to a romance scam in 2025 said it began on social media. As in-person dating gets pushed by the apps themselves, expect safety scrutiny to follow the meeting, not just the match.

  • The Journal of Economic Criminology study gives operators a documented offline-harm pattern in India, but only 35 English-language press cases support it.
  • Product teams should test whether in-app safety prompts survive the move to encrypted chat and a first date.
  • With limited public police data in India, academic case studies may shape the early regulatory conversation.

Sources: Romance fraud in India: A qualitative study of online–offline transitions in the digital dating ecosystem (Elsevier / OP Jindal Global University repository); Romance fraud in India, JGU PURE repository record (OP Jindal Global University); FTC Data Spotlight: Reported losses to scams on social media eight times higher than in 2020 (US Federal Trade Commission); 'Romance fraud' in India: Study shows how the digital dating ecosystem is exploited (The Tribune)