SINGAPORE: To lure singleton victims, a criminal syndicate recruited female workers from KTVs and bars as “matchmaking decoys” to spark interest on dating platforms.
The ruse worked: 128 people were swindled out of more than 2.5 million yuan (US$342,000).
The case is part of a worrying trend in fraud cases related to matchmaking and dating platforms, highlighted by China’s top prosecutorial body as it sounded the alarm over scams exploiting the country’s growing singles market.
From January 2024 to March this year, 1,546 individuals were prosecuted in criminal cases linked to the matchmaking industry, revealed the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) in a statement published last Thursday (Apr 17).
“In recent years, demand for matchmaking services has steadily grown – but so too have related illegal and criminal activities,” said the SPP. There are no other statistics available showing whether there has been a rise in such cases.
China saw its biggest drop in marriages on record in 2024, with just over 6.1 million couples registering for marriage. It was a 20.5 per cent drop from 7.68 million the year before, according to China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Almost 30 per cent of 30-year-olds in the country were unmarried in 2023, according to the China Population and Employment Statistical Yearbook 2024 – up from 14.6 per cent a decade earlier.
Against this backdrop of shrinking marriages and a swelling pool of singles, illicit matchmaking operations have found fertile ground.
