- Philippa Souza
- BBC – Sao Paulo
Police said in an interview with the BBC that most of the victims of the Tinder scandal were men looking for quick and casual hookups.
A man contacted a woman through a dating application and exchanged messages with her, and after a period of time, they made an appointment to meet face to face, and when he arrived at the agreed place, he was kidnapped by armed men .
What was supposed to be a promising romantic encounter turned into a nightmare that lasted for days.
In São Paulo, the largest and richest city in Brazil, this type of crime is common.
The public safety minister told the BBC that the proportion of people lured using fake profiles as bait on dating apps like Tinder was now “over 90 per cent of abductions recorded by local police”.
The victim is subjected to psychological and sometimes physical torture to seize his bank accounts.
In 2022 alone, anti-kidnapping agents of the São Paulo Civil Police handled 94 such cases and arrested more than 250 suspects.
Single men over the age of 40 are the main target of criminals.
One of the victims was a doctor working at the city’s prestigious Das Clínicas hospital, who was detained for around 14 hours in early November after arranging a meeting via a dating app.
He was only released after the criminals carried out various bank transactions of loans, purchases and transfers, for a total value of approximately $14,000.
How You choose the victim?
The public security department said in a statement that criminals study their victims’ fingerprints that they leave on the Internet.
“They follow users who flaunt their financial skills on social networks and organize a meeting at home, which is the ‘decoy’.
The BBC spoke to police officers, most of whom asked not to be identified, and digital security experts to understand how these gangs operate and what are the main signs that a date could be a trap.
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São Paulo city authorities say 94 similar cases of kidnapping have been reported so far this year
The management of Tinder, the main dating app used by abduction victims, according to the agents interviewed, was contacted for comment on the security tools and methods available on the platform to prevent these scams. He has not responded to the request at the time of writing.
A military police lieutenant working in the northern part of São Paulo explained that the victims are generally older and financially successful men.
The policeman said: “They are men over the age of forty, single and have some properties. Most criminals lure the victim through Tinder with attractive messages and ask them to meet as soon as possible.”
Criminals examine the personal information victims post on dating apps, such as their occupation. But they’re mostly looking for users who post photos of their international travel or luxury cars.
“Appointments are usually set up in remote quarters in the late afternoon and early evening,” the lieutenant explained.
“In one of the cases I’ve followed, a man tried to arrange to meet a woman in a shopping mall, but she claimed she was sick and felt sorry for not being able to leave the house and meet him, and ended up going to her, in the place from which he was kidnapped”.
Each gang operates according to the victim’s expectations, usually the men are not looking for a long relationship, but a casual encounter.
The policeman added: “The appointments usually take place a day or two after the first contact via the app. The man is convinced that the woman is ‘ready for that'”.
Unreported crime
Another police officer said he believes “many dating app kidnappings” go unreported for several reasons.
First, victims are often ashamed to go to the police to file a complaint.
Another important reason is that some men are married or have female partners and tell them they were victims of ordinary abductions to avoid revealing what they were doing.
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Police believe that many cases go unreported because men are ashamed of being cheated on or because they have cheated on their partner.
What surprised one officer was the frequent kidnapping of wealthy, educated men who had fallen into these traps because they agreed to travel to remote neighborhoods for romantic encounters.
In most cases, the victim is not reported missing until the relatives contact the police.
The police officer said: “One of the family members notices that the person is missing, so she worries about him. I didn’t find two victims being held in the same place, but the area was the same. Sometimes kidnappings happen in the woods. “
Guilherme Alves, a digital security specialist at SaferNet, a Brazilian cybercrime NGO, said dating apps are often used by criminals to commit scams outside the platform itself.
He added: “The important point is to understand the responsibility of the platform. What happens outside of it is beyond the scope of the company, but it is possible to request information from the profile of the scammer in court, if there is any crime.”
Alves also noticed that in some cases scammers don’t use fake photos and profiles, but real people to victimize. They send voice messages and real images of the person the victim is talking to.
But the expert drew attention to the existence of some common features.
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Experts recommend that meetings be held in public places with large crowds, such as shopping malls
“If it’s an online scam (where a fake identity is created on the internet), then the profile is already fake and the criminal may be trying to lure the person to another platform like WhatsApp.
Sometimes the scammer may claim to have deleted their profile from the platform under the pretext of wanting something serious.
Elvis has identified several warning signs of meeting someone else on a dating app and plans to arrange a face-to-face meeting.
The cyber security expert said: “Deleting the profile from the platform after the first meeting may indicate that the person wants to hide information. Another point is when people who want to organize meetings very quickly leave the chat platform and migrate to WhatsApp. Meetings should also be avoided. in private places.”
He recommends that people ideally keep a log of all conversations and hold meetings in public places where there are a lot of people, such as shopping malls. Alves also noted that scammers can start operations after a few meetings rather than a one-time meeting.
“In one of the cases I’ve seen, the victim was a woman. She met the scammer twice, but he robbed her and she disappeared the third time,” recalls Alves.
