Seeking suitable match for Canadian born Jat Sikh non- smoker, non-drinker, 6’-2”, 32, handsome, clean shaven, athletic boy. Currently employed with power company in. Preference will be given to Sikh, convent educated, professional, tall, beautiful, slim girl, age between 24-28, in Medical, Engg., IT or Computer Prog. Interested candidates please respond back with picture and bio-data.

Looking for Canada based/Indian girl for fair, handsome 30/5’- 7’, Doctor boy. Working as Medical Officer in Punjab Civil Medical Services.

Bride wanted for M.Com., Chartered Accountant, 5’-8”, 28 years, fair, slim, well builtup, upper middle class, status family boy. Excellent Academic Records (Rankholder).

These are just some of the thousands of ads on Indian matrimonial websites which provide a modern day matchmaking service for the Indian Diaspora worldwide.
But just how many of them are genuine?
Indian police believe up to half of these ads are false put up by Casanovas and cheats who troll the internet looking for women to con.
Indian Cyber sleuths say the cyber cheats are running rampant, and that five out of 10 profiles on matrimonial sites are fake.
‘‘There is no way to check each and every profile, because anybody can put up a profile after paying a nominal fee. There is an urgent need for matrimonial sleuthing in India. To start with, the sites need to start verifying the credentials of the people registered on their sites,” an officer of Delhi Police was quoted as saying in the Times of India.
Cyber experts also advise people to be careful while chatting on the internet, particularly on matrimonial websites.
‘‘People tend to throw caution to the winds when it comes to online dating. It is best to first meet and then take the relationship forward,” said Sanjeev Deswal, chairman of Aaider Detection and Protection Pvt Ltd.
One such case, involving a Indo-Canadian doctor looking for love was recently detailed in the Indian media.
Thirty-eight and single, Deepika Das turned to an internet dating site to look for love. She thought she’d found it, but instead ended up losing about C$25,000.
Das, an NRI doctor based in Canada, started chatting with a man identified as Abhinav Goyal who she found on a matrimonial site.
He claimed to be from Rajasthan, a divorcee, and said that he owned a palace in Jodhpur.
Das at one point was thinking of marrying him. But instead, after she gave him the money, he began ignoring her.
Goyal initially told Das that he had an antiques business and that his family owned a house in Greater Kailash.
When Das visited India in December 2009, she stayed in a hotel with Goyal because Goyal told her his family was against him marrying an NRI.
Goyal told Das about the differences between him and his family, and that he wanted to start a business for which he needed money.
Das gave him 800,000 rupees.
Soon after that, Goyal started avoiding her calls and eventually switched off his cell phone. For Das, to live abroad and chase Goyal was too much of a headache. She went to the cops.
A probe into Goyal’s activities revealed that he has been duping women settled abroad and looking for Indian suitors. He was allegedly found to be involved in two similar cases, in which he had duped one American woman and one German woman.
Unlike Das, the other women did not file any complaint and Goyal got away with it. Operating from a one-room apartment in Vasant Vihar, Goyal has created fake profiles on matrimonial sites.
 In his profiles, he claims he is a divorcee.
A similar case was reported from Delhi a few months back in which a woman — Renu,32, — who’d returned from the US was duped by a man she met on a matrimonial site.
The 47-year-old man had put up a flattering profile of himself on the matrimonial site. ‘‘He fooled Renu by telling her that he needs Rs 1.5 lakh for treatment of his father who had met with an accident,” said Deswal, who the woman approached for help.
According to police, the man who duped Renu was working with an IT company in Gurgaon and was completely different from the profile he had put up on the site.
‘‘We managed to track him through mobile surveillance. He was found to be involved in several similar cases in which he had duped people using the same modus operandi. He was found registered on three different matrimonial sites,” said an investigating officer.
Police say they have managed to rein in such offenders and that there has been a decline in the number of complaints about fake profiles, but that at the same time not all victims wish to register complaints.
Dr Vivek Gogia of Delhi police told TOI, ‘‘We have received nearly 1235 complaints of various natures related to cyber crime as compared to 822 in 2008. Apart from fake profiles, there was a rise in e-mail hacking and Nigerian scams.”
An owner of a matrimonial site said, ‘‘Whenever anyone approaches us for information on our members, we tell them to hire private detectives. There are so many users and it is not possible to verify each and every one.”
The emergence of internet dating has also been a key factor in fuelling the demand for private detectives. The management of Shaadi.Com, one of the largest online sites – shaadi is Hindi for wedding – say that people about to commit to a marriage with someone they meet online should ensure that an investigation is carried out on their prospective partner as a matter of course.
The country’s Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs also recommends such an inquiry in order to counter the estimated 30,000 brides abandoned every year, usually by husbands living abroad.
“When people meet over our site, we strongly recommend a private detective to get all the background when you have a potential bride living in, say, Bangalore and a groom living in Hyderabad,” Shaadi.Com’s founder, Anupam Mittal, told The Washington Post.
“Our country and culture is changing at warp speeds. We are dispersed all over our own country and all over the world. The private detective has now become just another part of India’s vast wedding industrial complex.”