Melton: Catfishing gang lures man via dating app, stabs him during robbery

A married man from Melton West was set upon, stabbed and robbed after meeting a woman on a dating app.

Police suspect an organised online catfishing gang might have lured a married man to an outer suburban housing estate in the dead of night, where they knocked him unconscious and stabbed him during a robbery.

But the case was closed when the then-36-year-old victim, from Melton West, refused to let police look through his online dating accounts to investigate whether the attack was linked to his affair.

“I don’t want my wife to know about this, I don’t want to go to court for this matter,” the man said in a statement to police.

The victim, who cannot be named, appeared briefly in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal last week where he unsuccessfully argued he should be paid victims of crime compensation despite not co-operating with investigators.

The tribunal heard the man left his home on the night of July 11, 2019, to meet “a friend” nearby.

He pulled over when he saw a woman in the street, where he was set upon and clobbered in the side of the head with a weapon.

“The next thing he knew, he woke up in the middle of a housing estate, bleeding from his eye socket, under his eye, on the right side of his face, and his lip, nose and ear,” tribunal member Elizabeth Wentworth said.

A 36-year-old Melton West man was stabbed in a online dating robbery.

Despite suffering a stab wound and being knocked unconscious, the man refused medical help because he wanted to go home to his wife (file photo)

“He did not know where he was, tried to get help by knocking on doors, and eventually got help from paramedics after he saw an ambulance driving down the street.”

The man told police and the ambulance crew he “wanted to go home to his wife” rather than be treated for his serious injuries.

“He thinks he was hit with some sort of weapon because his head was very swollen, and he was knocked out immediately.”

In the week after the attack, the victim told police he was “happy to not have anyone charged for this” if it meant he could keep his affair a secret.

Police later wrote to him saying the case was closed because, without his help, investigators could not pursue the most likely theory, that the ambush-style robbery was linked to his affair.

When the man was later refused compensation for failing to co-operate, he had a change of heart and claimed he wanted his attackers to go to jail.

The tribunal last week rejected the man’s bid for compensation, saying he had failed to co-operate with detectives, and that there were no “special circumstances”.

The man told the hearing it was the “second time that an incident like this had happened”.