Not everyone gets lucky when they take their relationship-seeking to the online realm, especially for 30-year-old Indian national Kanthimathi Ramachandran Sreedhar who fell victim to a youth he met online.
Kanthimathi met 18-year-old Naveenthiran in June last year on the Grindr smartphone app — a social networking app geared towards gay, bixesual and bi-curious males. After working his magic, Kanthimathi convinced Naveenthiran to meet at the former’s rented bedroom in Woodlands to have sex, The Straits Times reports.
Prior to sexual meeting, Naveenthiran met two of his friends, 22-year-old Kishor Ramesh and 20-year-old Vinod Velasamy at a coffee shop, where they devised a plot to blackmail Kanthimathi out of his money.
Naveenthiran would carry on to have sex with Kanthimathi, but he would discretely take a video during the act. He would then notify his friends to arrive at Kanthimathi’s apartment, through text message. Upon arriving, Kishor and Vinod would claim to be Naveenthiran’s elder brothers. They would claim Naveenthiran was underaged and threaten to report the incident to the police, unless Kanthimathi gave them some money.
Kishor and Vinod insisted for $10,000 from Kanthimathi. Kanthimathi said he did not have that much money on him, and instead handed over two foreign bank debit cards, a Lenovo tablet and cash that totalled up to $150 and 6,000 Indian Rupees.
A urine sample taken two days the extortion when Naveenthiran was arrested, showed positive results for methamphetamine. He was sentenced to reformative training.
Kishor was given a 2 year jail sentence with three strokes of the can. Vinod is awaiting sentencing, pending a report on his suitability for probation and reformative training, which can last up to 18 and 30 months.
Photo: Grindr website screenshot
