Dr. Harry Robot or The 'Nigerian Prince' Scam Gets a Dating-App Twist: How a Man Lost Rs 1.46 Lakh

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A YEAR AGO, a 23-year-old man left his village near Bareilly for Delhi, chasing the kind of fresh start a big city promises. He settled into a rented room in Vasant Kunj, threw himself into a sales job in Gurgaon, and, as a queer man, had Grindr on his phone but rarely the time to open it. In March this year, he finally did. Within three days, a stranger he'd never met in person had talked him out of his entire life savings, Rs 1.46 lakh, using a con that has been fooling people since long before dating apps existed: the "Nigerian prince" scam, reimagined for the swipe-right generation.

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Dr Harry Robot Turned Three-Day Romance Into A Lie

It began with a message from someone calling himself Dr Harry Robot, claiming to write in from the US. He said he barely used the app and suggested switching to WhatsApp, so the Delhi-based man handed over his number without a second thought. Harry's display photo showed a tall, fair, well-built man with a full head of hair, and the texting was constant. He was patient about the man's imperfect English, avoided calls, and seemed to genuinely admire India, the kind of small, flattering detail that makes a stranger feel real.

By day three, Harry announced he was flying to Delhi to meet him. Because there was no direct flight, he said, he'd first land in Mumbai. Having never set foot in an airport himself, the man had no reason to question it. Harry even sent a photo from the terminal to prove he'd arrived, only he had no local currency, so could his new friend send Rs 25,000 for a connecting ticket? He did.

Then came a new obstacle: converting his dollars to rupees supposedly required a "Money Declaration Certificate" worth Rs 75,000. Then customs wanted Rs 1 lakh, later "negotiated down" to Rs 50,000. Each demand arrived dressed as the final one. By the time it was over, he had wired Rs 1.46 lakh across several UPI IDs and bank accounts that Harry insisted belonged to police officers. The final ask, another lakh to release a parcel of cash and gold Harry claimed to have bought him, was what finally made him pause. He scrolled back to that airport photo and ran it through a reverse image search. It wasn't Mumbai. It was Delhi. The moment he confronted Harry, the picture vanished from the chat, and so, in effect, did Harry.

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Scamming Around Three States Puts Him As A ‘Hot’ Suspect For The Cyber Police

His complaint at the Southwest Delhi Cyber Police Station set off an investigation that stretched nearly 1,500 kilometres. Officers traced the money trail from a mule account in South Delhi to Telangana's Jayashankar Bhupalpally district and on to Andhra Pradesh, arresting three men accused of renting out bank accounts to launder the funds for a commission. But the trail's real destination was in Visakhapatnam: a 22-year-old Nigerian woman named Simeon Miracle Chinonso, who had entered India in 2023 on a student visa.

Investigators allege Chinonso was trained by an Indian woman in Delhi who coached foreign nationals in running these scams, teaching accents, messaging tactics, and how to convincingly pose as either gender. As "Dr Harry Robot," she is accused of also impersonating immigration and customs officials on WhatsApp calls to sustain the fiction. Police say the wider syndicate has netted roughly Rs 94 lakh from at least seven identified victims so far, with the probe still ongoing.

Officers investigating the case note that the "Nigerian prince" email, the decades-old promise of a fortune trapped behind one last fee, never really disappeared; it simply found a more intimate delivery method. Where the old scam relied on greed, this one relies on something harder to guard against: loneliness and the wish for connection. As one investigator put it, that's precisely what makes fraud on dating apps so difficult to catch before the damage is done.

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