Out of the closet, what is a popular nightclub in Andheri West Mumbai, is the hub of exploitative ‘scam dates’ that dupe several men emotionally and”, monetarily as well as leaving them with bruised egos.
Godfather Club, located in the busy suburb, is also among the bars being investigated after activist Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj’s social media post exposed this evil practice.
As Ms. Bhardwaj stated, the fraud begins on leading dating sites such as Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and OKCupid, where selected females show interest in male members and demand a one-night stand.
The place for these meetings is usually The Godfather Club or an equivalent one in proximity. They stated that when they get to the scene, the women order all sorts of costly items, such as high-profiler alcoholic drinks like whiskey, liquor, and hookah, among other related accessories, with the meals, but none of them are displayed on the menu.
Properly showing the ways the films’ eager-to-impress male characters are the victims of their misplaced charm, callow ignorance, and greed, the sets end up as the tab for the night on more than one occasion.
The amounts these frauds attract are very large, and when Ms. Bhardwaj shared the receipts, the amounts ranged from the high ₹23,000 to the high ₹61,000. But let’s not even stop there because the nightmare continues. When the men protest or fail in their obligations to pay the bill, they are attacked either by the club staff or bouncers. They are made to pay through coercion and shame.
This exploitative scheme, however, is not limited to The Godfather Club alone but is done by many other companies. Ms. Bhardwaj’s post suggests that many other nightclubs in Mumbai are involved in similar activities and that the clubs employ PR persons who lure men through fake female profiles on social dating apps.
Again, it’s not a unique case, and such incidents are rather frequent all around the world. Such incidents have in the past been observed in the major cities of India, such as Delhi, Gurugram, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. More recently, the national capital lured a civil service aspirate to part with over one crore rupees. 2 lakh.
The disclosures have led to anger and demand that the perpetrators of these ‘scam dates’ be protected. The authorities are working on the matter while the men are left to deal with the consequences of this exploitative pyramid that has …
