THE SETUP
On January 5, a 22-year-old cloud engineer — identified by police only as Nishanth, of Ejipura, Bengaluru — matched with a profile calling itself “Ishani” on the dating app Happn. The conversation moved quickly to WhatsApp. The messages were warm, personal, and apparently convincing.
Ishani was not a person. According to Bengaluru’s central cybercrime police station, investigators believe the “woman” on the other end of the conversation — and on the subsequent video call — was an AI-generated persona, built with generative AI tools and operated by a sextortion ring.
The fraudsters behind Ishani did not build her to fall in love. They built her to record someone.
THE TRAP
The same day as the match, Nishanth received a video call from Ishani’s WhatsApp number. During the call, the AI-generated woman spoke intimately and persuaded him to undress. He was recorded without his knowledge. The call ended. The threats began within minutes.
The fraudsters told him the recording would be sent to his friends, his contacts, and made viral if he did not pay. Panicked, he transferred ₹60,000 immediately. The demands continued. By 4:30pm the following day, he had sent an additional ₹93,000 — in multiple transactions, to a bank account and two UPI IDs provided by the scammers.
Total extracted: ₹1,53,000. Roughly $1,830 USD. The scammers then continued to demand more.
Nishanth finally told close friends, who advised him to go to the police. A case has been registered under the Information Technology Act and Section 308 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita — extortion. An investigation is underway. The accused have not been found.
THE AI ANGLE
Here is what the AI did in this story: it provided cover. A convincing deepfake persona — a realistic face, a plausible video presence — that would have required an actual human actor in a prior era. The technology lowered the barrier to this crime substantially. It is not a trivial contribution.
Here is what the AI did not do: it did not decide to run a sextortion ring. It did not open a bank account to receive the funds. It did not threaten a frightened young man and demand he pay or be humiliated in front of everyone he knows. Those decisions were made by humans — unnamed, currently uncharged, still at large — who chose to weaponize a generative AI tool against a person who was simply hoping to meet someone.
A Bengaluru police officer noted that sextortion cases originating from dating apps are increasing, and urged users to exercise caution with strangers online. Useful advice. Less useful than catching the people running these operations. But we take what we can get.
THE VERDICT
Nishanth was not naive. He was targeted by a sophisticated criminal operation that deployed AI specifically because it is convincing, scalable, and cheap. The fraudsters are the story. The AI is the weapon. The distinction matters, because the people running these rings will keep running them whether we blame the technology or not.
Ishani never existed. The ₹1.5 lakh is gone. The sextortion ring is still operational.