#FactCheck- Old Dubai Flood Videos Falsely Shared as Recent Storm Footage
Executive Summary
Amid reports of heavy rainfall and flooding in several cities of the United Arab Emirates, a video is being widely circulated on social media claiming to show recent scenes from Dubai. The clip allegedly depicts severe waterlogging at Dubai Airport and inside shopping malls, with users linking it to a “recent storm.”According to research by CyberPeace, the viral footage is not recent. The video is actually a compilation of three different clips stitched together and dates back to 2024, when Dubai experienced unprecedented flooding following heavy rains.
Claim
The misleading post was shared by an X (formerly Twitter) user named ‘Ruksar Khan’ on March 28, 2026, with a caption suggesting that Dubai had been submerged after just one day of rain. The post attempted to sensationalize the situation by portraying the visuals as current.
Fact Check:
To verify the claim, keyframes from the viral video were extracted using the InVid tool and analyzed through reverse image search. One of the clips was traced to a Facebook post by “9 News,” uploaded on April 17, 2024. The video showed waterlogged runways at Dubai International Airport following intense rainfall and flooding.
Further verification led to a report published by Hindustan Times on April 17, 2024, which featured similar visuals and confirmed that the footage was from the floods that hit Dubai in 2024.
Conclusion:
The viral claim suggesting that the video shows recent flooding in Dubai is false. The footage is nearly two years old and originates from the 2024 floods in Dubai. It is now being reshared with misleading claims to create confusion around current weather events.
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Introduction
On August 8, 2026, Hyderabad Police Commissioner V.C. Sajjanar posted an unusual warning on X: colourful posters offering a "handsome guy" to join you for coffee or a movie at 50% off: it was not a quirky dating startup but a calculated cyber fraud. Within hours, the "Rent Boyfriend" alert had gone viral, pulling back the curtain on a scam that blends India's growing loneliness economy, classic confidence tricks, and AI-generated imagery. Here is what's actually happening, why it works, and how to protect yourself.
A Trend Growing Fast: In India and Worldwide
Paid-companionship culture itself isn't new. "Rent a friend" services began in Japan and later China, where apps let people hire a company for a movie, a walk, or a family event without romantic or sexual expectations. The idea reached India as early as 2018, when Mumbai's "Rent A Guy" app began recruiting men for casual outings; by 2022, similar pages like "Toy Boy" and "Hire a Friend" had spread to Bengaluru, and Valentine's Day 2025 saw ₹389 "rent a boyfriend" posters plastered across the city. Fraudsters have now hijacked this recognisable, socially normalised idea and weaponised it: the Hyderabad ads promised specific packages, ₹499 for a coffee date, ₹1,249 for a movie, ₹1,999 for a wedding, and ₹4,499 for ten hours collected via QR codes and wallets, then vanished. The underlying numbers show why this template is so attractive to criminals. Complaints filed on India's National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal jumped from roughly 4.5 lakh in 2021 to about 2.3 million by 2026, and the country now logs an estimated 4,000-plus cybercrime complaints a day. Globally, romance and "confidence fraud" are some of the costliest online crimes: the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center recorded 23,159 romance-fraud complaints in 2025 worth $929.3 million, which is a 38% jump over 2024, while the UK logged over £102 million in losses and Australia and Canada reported tens of millions more. Crucially, IC3's 2025 report flagged AI as an accelerant for the first time, attributing roughly $19 million in romance-scam losses directly to AI-generated profiles, images and chat exactly the "AI-generated photographs" Hyderabad Police say the Rent Boyfriend network used.
Case Studies
The Rent Boyfriend network is one data point in a wider, well-documented pattern in India:
- Hyderabad, August 2026: Fraudsters ran Instagram, Telegram and Facebook pages using stock or AI-generated photos of "attractive men", collected advance payments and security deposits, and then blocked victims, the case that prompted this advisory.
- Jaipur, 2026: A honey-trap and extortion ring allegedly used AI-manipulated videos and images to blackmail a businessman out of nearly ₹90 lakh, with police examining how far synthetic media was used to fabricate compromising content.
- Mumbai: A gang was arrested for cheating a woman out of ₹16.18 lakh in gold and cash after promising to "reunite" her with a lost partner, a variant that exploits the same emotional vulnerability through a different pretext.
- Gujarat, 2025: A social media influencer with over 10 lakh followers was arrested for allegedly honey-trapping and blackmailing a builder, illustrating how organised such rackets have become.
These sit alongside a global backdrop where FBI data shows confidence and romance fraud disproportionately drains people over 60 (63% of US losses in 2025) even as India's version increasingly targets young women and students, a sign the tactic is being localised for different demographics rather than disappearing.
Why It Works: The Psychology of Loneliness and Grooming
Researchers who study romance-fraud victims consistently find that loneliness, a tendency toward idealised romantic beliefs, and a need for social connection are the strongest predictors of victimisation. Scammers exploit this through a well-rehearsed grooming arc: rapid, excessive flattery ("love bombing") to create instant intimacy; mirroring the target's interests and values to seem like a perfect match; gently discouraging outside opinions so doubts don't surface; and only then introducing a financial ask, framed as something small and reasonable — a booking fee or a security deposit precisely because it feels low-stakes compared to a direct cash demand. The "package" pricing in the Rent Boyfriend ads (₹499 for coffee, scaling up to ₹4,499) mimics legitimate e-commerce, which lowers a target's guard further. Once payment is made and blocked, many victims feel too embarrassed to report it — a shame response researchers and police repeatedly flag as the biggest reason such scams are under-reported.
Red Flags and What To Do?
Red flags to watch for:
- Companionship or dating offers with attractive stock/AI-style photos and steep "discounts"
- Contact only through DMs, with no verifiable business identity, address or reviews.
- Requests for advance payment, "security deposits", or booking fees via UPI/QR code before any service is delivered.
- Reluctance to do a video call or a video call that looks slightly off (a common AI/deepfake tell).
- Pressure to move fast, share personal photos, or keep the interaction secret from friends and family.
Precautions:
- Never send money to confirm a booking with an unverified individual or page.
- Avoid sharing personal photographs, phone numbers, addresses or financial details with strangers online.
- Don't meet anyone in person whom you've only interacted with through such ads.
- Parents should stay engaged with what their children see and who they talk to on social media.
If you suspect a scam or have lost money: Don't panic and don't pay more to "fix" it. Stop all contact, save screenshots and payment records, and call the 1930 cybercrime helpline or file a complaint at cybercrime.gov.in immediately — reporting within the first "golden hour" significantly improves the chance of freezing transferred funds before they're withdrawn.
The Government, Platform and Legal Angle
India already has legal tools for this, though enforcement lags the pace of the fraud. Cheating by personation online is punishable under Section 66D of the IT Act, 2000 (up to three years' imprisonment plus fine), often paired with Section 66C on identity theft; the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita's cheating provisions (replacing IPC Sections 420/419) apply where money is dishonestly induced. Under the IT (Intermediary Guidelines) Rules, 2021, platforms like Instagram, Facebook and Telegram must appoint a grievance officer, acknowledge complaints within 24 hours, and take down unlawful content within 36 hours of a court or government notification obligation. Hyderabad's cybercrime wing can invoke to force the removal of these ad networks. Larger "significant social media intermediaries" carry added duties around traceability and proactive monitoring.
The gap is upstream: platforms currently do little to verify who is running a commercial-sounding page before it reaches thousands of users, and AI-generated "profile" images are not systematically flagged. A stronger response would combine faster platform-side KYC for pages soliciting payment, proactive detection of AI-generated advertising imagery, and continued expansion of the 1930 golden-hour fund-freezing mechanism paired with public advisories like Hyderabad's, which remain one of the fastest ways to blunt a scam before it scales.
Conclusion
Loneliness is not something anyone should be ashamed of, but it is exactly what these networks are built to exploit. No genuine companionship service needs an advance QR payment before you've even met the person.
Sources
- Deccan Herald — Hyderabad Police Commissioner cautions young women over 'rent boyfriend' offers
- Republic World — 'Rent Boyfriend' Offers On Social Media?
- Newsdrum — What is 'Rent Boyfriend' trap?
- IndiaSpend — How India's Cyber Crime Incidence Is Rising
- FBI IC3 2025 Annual Report Brochure
Executive Summary
A news graphic is being widely shared on social media claiming that Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan will resign on July 22. The graphic quotes him as saying, "Respecting the sentiments of the country's youth, I have taken this decision." CyberPeace Research Wing ’s research found the claim to be false. The probe revealed that no official announcement has been made regarding Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation as Union Education Minister. However, demands for his resignation have intensified from opposition parties and student groups over alleged irregularities in NEET and other examinations, leading to protests in Delhi and other places. The research also found that the viral news graphic circulating on social media was likely created using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Claim:
A social media user on Instagram shared the viral news graphic on July 21, 2026, claiming that Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is set to resign on July 22. The post also claimed that Pradhan said during a press conference, "Respecting the sentiments of the country's youth, I have taken this decision."
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbEMoRtgLfT/?igsh=c3g3dzZxZ2U3YW01
Fact Check:
To verify the authenticity of the viral claim, we conducted a Google search using relevant keywords. However, we did not find any credible media reports confirming that Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is resigning on July 22.Further, we examined the official X (formerly Twitter) account of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. No official announcement or post related to his resignation was found on his account.
https://x.com/dpradhanbjp?lang=en
Upon examining the viral news graphic, we noticed several indicators suggesting that it could be AI-generated. To verify this, we analysed the graphic using the AI detection tool AI or Not. The tool’s analysis indicated a 94% probability that the graphic was generated using AI.
We also scanned the viral graphic through another AI detection tool, WasIt AI. According to the tool’s results, the probability of the graphic being AI-generated was found to be 87%.
Conclusion:
CyberPeace Research Wing ’s fact check found the viral claim to be false. No official announcement has been made regarding Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, and reports claiming that he will resign on July 22 are incorrect. The research further revealed that the viral news graphic circulating on social media was created using Artificial Intelligence (AI).
Executive Summary
A graphic carrying the logo of Tamil news channel Sun News is circulating widely on social media, claiming that veteran South Indian actor Rajinikanth has been appointed as the new Governor of Kerala. The viral graphic features a photograph of Rajinikanth along with congratulatory messages, creating the impression that his appointment has been officially announced. However, the claim is false. An research by the CyberPeace ’s Research Wing found that the viral graphic is digitally manipulated and falsely attributed to Sun News.
Claim
A graphic bearing the Sun News logo is being widely shared on social media with congratulatory messages, claiming that actor Rajinikanth has been appointed as the new Governor of Kerala.
https://www.facebook.com/andisamy.puthur/posts/1456280999637808/
FactCheck
The CyberPeace ’s Research Wing investigated the viral claim and found no official notification or credible media report confirming Rajinikanth’s appointment as the Governor of Kerala or as the Governor of any other state. We searched relevant government sources and credible media reports but found no announcement regarding such an appointment. We also checked the official platforms of Sun News, but found no report confirming that Rajinikanth had been appointed as the Governor of Kerala. Further research revealed that the photograph of Rajinikanth used in the viral graphic is actually from a press conference held on March 12, 2020. A video of the original press conference shows Rajinikanth speaking about his political plans. During the press conference, he had clarified that he was not interested in becoming the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.
The original video of the press conference is available on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vni3pxjWSR8
The research further found that the viral graphic has been digitally altered and falsely attributed to Sun News. The graphic was also found to have been created using an artificial intelligence (AI) tool.
Conclusion
The claim that Rajinikanth has been appointed as the new Governor of Kerala is false and misleading. There has been no official government announcement or credible media report confirming his appointment, and Sun News has not published any such report. The viral graphic is digitally manipulated and falsely attributed to the news channel.
