The company’s shares rose nearly 5% in premarket trading. (File)

During the day, he works as a recruiter at a private company in Uttar Pradesh’s Noida. At night he turns into a US-based model on a soul-searching trip to India. His day job offered him security, and his nocturnal activities brought in the money through manipulation and blackmail. Tushar Singh Bisht, 23, was arrested from the Shakarpur area of East Delhi on Friday for defrauding over 700 women by posing as a model on dating platforms. 

A resident of Delhi, Tushar has a bachelor’s degree in business administration (BBA). For the past three years, he had been employed as a technical recruiter at a private company in Noida.  

His father works as a driver, his mother is a homemaker, and his sister is employed in Gurugram. Tushar, despite holding on to a stable job, descended into the world of cybercrime, largely motivated by greed and lust for women. 

Modus Operandi

Using a virtual international mobile number procured through an app, Tushar created fake profiles on popular dating and social media platforms such as Bumble and Snapchat. He posed as a US-based freelance model visiting India, using a fabricated persona with photos and stories stolen from an actual Brazilian model. His targets were primarily women aged 18-30, whom he befriended through these platforms.

Once he gained their trust, Tushar would request their phone numbers and intimate photos or videos under the guise of friendship. Unbeknownst to his victims, he saved the visuals on his phone. Initially, these activities were conducted for personal amusement, but over time, they evolved into a systematic scheme of extortion, police said.

According to the police, Tushar used these visuals to blackmail women into giving him money. If a victim refused his demands for money, he would threaten to upload their explicit content online or sell it on the dark web.

The Victims

According to police findings, Tushar engaged with more than 500 women on Bumble and over 200 on Snapchat and WhatsApp. He accumulated a trove of intimate content, which he used to blackmail his victims. One such case came to light when a second-year Delhi University student filed a complaint with the Cyber Police Station on December 13, 2024. Her ordeal began in January of the same year when she connected with Tushar on Bumble. He introduced himself as a US-based model and initiated a friendship that later transitioned to private chats on WhatsApp and Snapchat.

During their exchanges, the victim shared personal photos and videos with him. When she requested to meet in person, he consistently avoided her under various pretexts. Soon after, he sent her one of her private videos and demanded money, threatening to leak or sell the material if she did not comply. Initially, the student succumbed to the pressure, paying a small amount while explaining her financial constraints as a student. However, Tushar’s incessant demands pushed her to confide in her family and lodge a formal complaint.

The Investigation

The Cyber Police Station of West Delhi formed a team under the supervision of ACP Arvind Yadav. A combination of technical analysis and intelligence gathering helped the team trace Tushar’s activities and identify him as the accused. A swift raid in Shakarpur led to his arrest.

During the operation, the police recovered a mobile phone containing incriminating data, a virtual international mobile number linked to his criminal activities, and 13 credit cards from various banks. The police also retrieved over 60 WhatsApp chat records with women from Delhi and nearby regions. Preliminary findings revealed that apart from the complainant, at least four other women had been similarly extorted by Tushar.

The investigation uncovered two bank accounts linked to Tushar. One account contained entries of payments made by his victims, while details of the second account are still under probe.

Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder of the dating app Bumble, said that artificial intelligence (AI) could revolutionise the way people connect online.

Speaking at Bloomberg Tech in San Francisco, Ms Herd said that the women-focused dating app is embracing AI. She added that the use of AI is necessary “to help create healthier and more equitable” dating experiences.

Talking about why the involvement of AI is necessary, Ms Herd said that “dating is exhausting” and she wishes Bumble to be “the best place on the internet for women”.

She also gave an insight into how modern dating could look like with the growing use of AI. Ms Herd also admitted to the fact that a person could be talking to an “AI dating concierge” in future.

Ms Herd added, “Loneliness is actually killing us. And social media, while it has its benefits, it is not social media. It is anti-social media. So I think there is something really powerful about the technology that we are building to really connect us, go online, to get offline. And that is going to be absolutely critical for the next generation, the current generation, and for bringing us closer together.”

Talking about women making first move through Bumble, Ms Herd said, “What we heard from over 70 per cent of the women that we spoke to was ‘we love making the first move, but we don’t love how we make the first move.’ Sending a message to 70 matches is exhausting. Women already have so much work every day. We kept talking to all these women of all ages. They are like ‘Dating is exhausting’.”

Ms Herd said, “So we heard from them that we wanted to preserve the safety and the original inspiration behind making the first move, which was to put women in the driver’s seat and also to remove a lot of rejection from men. Dating was a broken system.”

She added that Bumble’s new CEO Lidiane Jones will help in making way for AI integration in the app.

Ms Heard added, “We are obsessed with our customers. For several years, I read every single email. They went to my phone. I was the feedback person. So no one realised that the CEO was responding to them. I was essentially the first line of communication. And we still do that. And so what we are doing is we are leaning into the things people don’t like, the things that are stressing them. And we are saying, how do we be the best place on the internet for women? So with Lidiane’s expertise in AI and her unbelievable technology background, we are just going to innovate.”

On Bumble’s future with AI’s involvement, Ms Herd said, “If you want to get really out there, there is a world where your [AI] dating concierge could go and date for you with other dating concierges.”

She added, “No. No. Truly. And then you don’t have to talk to 600 people. It could scan all of San Francisco for you and say, ‘These are the three people you really ought to meet.’ And so that is the power of AI if harnessed the right way.”