Sunday 18 October 2020

Casanova Conman Swindled Online Dates During £440K Scam

A serial ‘romance fraudster’, who convinced online dates he was a successful Forex trader to swindle cash out of them has been jailed.

Vimal Popat, 41, of Salt Hill Drive, Slough, who also conned a male relative at a wedding with a similar ruse, received four years and four months imprisonment.

The relative lost £300,000 of a total of £440,824.50 conned out of the eight victims, which included a former work colleague and former neighbour.

Six of the victims were women, with four of them involved romantically with Popat.

He pleaded guilty at Harrow Crown Court of fraud by false representation.

Detective Constable Chris Collins, said: “This was a selfish and callous crime that parted trusting decent people from their savings.

So often victims of this type of offence don’t come forward, embarrassed by their own naivety, but fraudsters such as Popat work hard on their back story and are incredibly convincing in the telling of their tales.

I commend the victims in this case for coming forward. 

Their actions have put a stop to Popat’s crimes and have no doubt spared others from falling victim to his schemes. 

I hope that the sentence handed down brings them some satisfaction.”

Popat’s victims were mainly women, most of whom he met using online dating sites such as Bumble.

After striking up an online friendship, Popat would typically go on to form romantic relationships with his victims in person. 

After wooing them over a period of months and gaining their trust, he would persuade them to invest their money in a non-existent business.

In all cases, he duped his victims into believing he was a successful Forex trader and they were investing in his business with the promise of healthy profits gained through the purchase and sale of currencies.

In reality, when the victim’s money was transferred into one of Popat’s bank accounts, he would use it to finance his lifestyle or gamble it away in casinos.

When chasing their money, Popat would string along his romantic victims for months using a number of excuses for being unavailable to see them, such as being in a car accident, being hospitalised, being robbed and even attending a funeral.

He also created false banking documents to persuade victims that his accounts had a healthy balance and that their money was being invested.

His offending, which began in 2013, stopped during 2015-2016, but escalated to an extreme during 2019 where he duped four victims in a single year.

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