All About The Male Escort Scam

The Mumbai Male escort scam was rampant 15 years ago. Several well-to-do men fell for it. Not many of them ever approached the police, for obvious reasons. Another reason was that the amounts involved were not mind-numbing like the lakhs and crores that we see now. For many of these men, it was an adventure that went wrong. Probably, they revealed that they were victims of the scam to close friends over their favourite tipple some months later.

However, the scam escalated a few years ago, when such scams became rampant on social media networks. The conmen started targeting people of the lower strata and added some misogyny to it. That scam made headlines in the newspaper at the time. Sites reported about victims of such scams, including this one, which details the arrest of a scammer.

The Mumbai Male Escort Scam

The modus operandi of the Mumbai male escort scam, a prominent Mumbai crime, was straightforward and always open to evolution. The scamsters contacted gullible young men and told them of friendship clubs. Apparently, these had women just waiting to get into the throes of passion. All they would need to do is pay a registration fee—a relatively small amount, such as a few thousand dollars.

Therefore, this was, in its essence, an advance fee fraud, which also evolved into the fake share trading app scam. A decade and a half ago, if the man had paid these fees, the fraud would have been successful. Once the victim transferred the amount, the contact would go silent, the man would realise the con, and he would grin and bear it.

However, since 2020, this flagrant Mumbai scam has evolved. The scamsters now attempt to extract more money from the person using various ruses. These can include having them purchase expensive gifts or book hotel rooms. Of course, there’s the promise that the money will be refunded once the physical aspect of the transaction is completed. The interesting part was how the scamsters contacted these gullible men back in the day, when internet penetration was very limited and social media was virtually non-existent. The answer – classified ads.

That’s correct. The scamsters would place ads for Friendship Clubs in small-town newspapers, primarily tabloids. These classified ads are generally here-today-gone-tomorrow content. So, by the time someone understood that these were scams, the conmen would make the money and shift to another newspaper—or better still, another city.

Just last year, the BBC reported how men on social networks were falling for the ‘pregnancy scam’. This scam was an evolution of the male escort scam. In this one, the men would be paid a handsome amount of money if they would impregnate women looking to become mothers, and their husbands were unable to conceive. This scam was pretty infamous for a while. But it doesn’t show up on any timelines, as of 2025.

Classified Ads aren’t that popular today, and print newspapers are losing their sheen. But back in the day, some enterprising conmen made quite some money, using the oldest fantasy in the book to hoodwink men – the alpha men who were in for a good time.

How to Stay Away from the Male Escort Scam

Stop thinking that women who want to have fun will be part of a shady conglomerate that enables it. Any woman can get what she wants with something called casual dating. The same goes for impregnation. That used to happen in the Middle Ages. We have IVF today.

The Vigilant Blog

Covers the crime beat, spreading awareness about crimes, scams and everything dastardly.

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