Jail for burglars who used Grindr dating app to dupe victims

Two burglars who utilized the Grindr dating app to instrumentality victims into letting them into their homes person been jailed.

Rahmat Khan Mohammadi, 23, and Mohammed Bilal Hotak, 27, would put to conscionable victims astatine their London properties, and transportation them to supply their telephone passwords by asking to play euphony connected YouTube.

The Afghan refugees past stole the devices and near earlier making online oregon contactless payments, arsenic good arsenic occasionally transferring funds to themselves.

Mohammadi targeted 11 victims successful his five-month transgression spree betwixt 24 October 2024 and 24 March 2025.

Hotak offended aggregate times betwixt 24 October 2024 and 23 December 2024.

Mohammadi was jailed for 5 years and Hotak for 3 and a fractional years astatine Isleworth Crown Court connected Monday.

Sentencing some men, Judge Adenike Balogun said: "I person taken enactment of the intelligence trauma arsenic good arsenic the inconvenience caused to the victims, and the distress that each of them person expressed astatine allowing you into their homes - into their backstage abstraction - lone to beryllium violated."

Prosecutor David Patience had alleged that the men were targeted due to the fact that of their sexuality and the offences could successful effect been seen arsenic hatred crimes.

The justice said: "I've considered that substance precise cautiously and it seems to maine that the presumed intersexual predisposition of the victims presented an accidental for you to perpetrate the crime, and successful that respect I bash find that the victims... were targeted due to the fact that of their perceived vulnerability."

However, she said they were not picked due to the fact that the 2 men held "hostility" towards the victims' sexuality.

Rather, it was due to the fact that they knew that Grindr - an app utilized for cheery introductions - was "an accidental to summation casual entree into the homes of the victims".

She added: "I fishy you were - and I enactment nary higher than that - banking connected the victims not reporting the crime."

Frequently utilizing a Grindr illustration with nary photo, they would nonstop 1 of idiosyncratic other if an representation was requested by a imaginable victim.

For respective meet-ups Mohammadi would inquire to bring a person which would beryllium Hotak.

Once inside, they would inquire the unfortunate to crook connected music, usually connected YouTube due to the fact that the telephone could not beryllium locked portion a video was playing.

Distraction tactics to promote the unfortunate to permission the country included taking a ablution earlier sex, making a portion and showing 1 of them wherever the toilet was.

John Kearney, defending Hotak, told the tribunal that the men chose Grindr due to the fact that "there is nary comeback".

He said: "The exertion itself has enabled wholly anonymous radical to beryllium invited arsenic implicit strangers into the homes of the victims".

One unfortunate spoke astir the "severe intelligence trauma" of being targeted, and the interaction of losing photos of deceased household members stored connected his phone.

He said: "The suspects utilized Grindr, a cheery dating app, arsenic a hunting ground."

Another unfortunate described being led into "a acheronian bedewed parkland precocious astatine night," and encouraged to undress earlier his telephone was taken from him.

He called the theft "invasive and degrading," and says helium remains acrophobic to day radical helium has met online.

A assemblage recovered Mohammadi, of Weald Lane successful Harrow, north-west London, blameworthy of 10 counts of burgling a dwelling, 9 of fraud by mendacious practice and 1 of theft.

Hotak, of Richmond Road successful Hackney, eastbound London, was convicted of 5 counts of burgling a dwelling, 5 of fraud by mendacious practice and 1 of theft.

Mohammadi was acquitted of a further 10 charges and Hotak of 13.

Superintendent Owen Renowden, the Metropolitan Police's hatred transgression lead, called their crimes "callous, calculated, pre-planned".

"Their actions had a devastating interaction connected their victims," helium said. "Nobody should beryllium made to consciousness unsafe successful their ain homes and they volition person to unrecorded with the trauma these men person caused them."