ONLINE CHAT LEADS TO MURDER

By Dan Burns

ROSELLE, NJ - When Judy Cajuste went to school at Abraham Clark High School she always wore shoes that matched her brightly colored shirts.

In the classroom, she worked hard in hopes of being a teacher, nurse or police officer when she grew up. Outside of class, she had a small army of friends who felt they could tell her anything.

"She was friendly to everybody, outgoing, down to earth, just a good person in general," Cajuste's friend Edly Victorin said.

"When you needed someone to speak to, she was there for you," fellow ninth grader Yasmare McKnight said.

On Jan. 13, the girl with scores of friends, dozens of dreams and only 14 years of life experience was found in a dumpster in Newark's Weequahic Park. She had been strangled to death, according to Essex County Executive Assistant Prosecutor Charlotte L. Smith.

Cajuste was reported missing in Roselle on Jan. 12. At about 3 p.m. the next day, Essex County Department of Parks workers called the police after finding Cajuste's body inside a dumpster in a maintenance garage. The garage is located in a parking area for the park, near Elizabeth and Grumman avenues in Newark.

"Cajuste was pronounced dead at the scene," Smith said. "Preliminary autopsy results revealed the cause of death was strangulation and the manner of death was homicide."

Police didn't learn the body they'd found was Cajuste's until Jan. 20, one week later. Judy's mother, Magalie Cajuste, identified the body.

Magalie Cajuste has been cordial to the press, but declined a request for an interview Tuesday, saying she was exhausted from the whole ordeal.

The word among students in the ACHS parking lot after dismissal Tuesday was Judy Cajuste met a man in his 20s on an online chat site. They believe the meeting was part of a chain of events that led to her death.

Cajuste's friend Pierre Noel, a 10th grader, believes this wasn't the first time Cajuste met the man. From what he knows about her, he doesn't think she would go meet a strange man for the first time without a friend.

"She felt comfortable with him," Noel said.

Many of Cajuste's friends were still shocked by her death Tuesday. Students who didn't feel well enough to take their exams were allowed to make them up at a later date. Fewer than 30 students opted to do that, according to English teacher Victoria Lih.

Guidance counselors set up shop in the auditorium and talked to any students who were especially upset, according to Principal Nathan Fischer.

After school Tuesday, students mingled in the ACHS parking lot and gathered around television news crews. Amber Braswell, a ninth grader, carried around a decorated box collecting donations from teachers and students, which she and other friends planned to give to Magalie Cajuste.

"We don't care if it's even just a little bit of change, anything you can give will help," Braswell said.

Cajuste's classmates received help from the ACHS guidance department to put together a memorial to the young murder victim in the school's main hallway. It is a trophy case full of balloons, flowers and teddy bears, with a picture of Cajuste in the center. About eight poster-sized cards signed by Cajuste's friends are affixed to the wall next to the memorial.

"When you walk past the memorial you feel like crying, but you can't all the time," ninth-grader Ayeisha Forbes said. "It's sad because her locker was right next to mine. I won't see her there anymore."

Every ninth-grader asked about Cajuste Tuesday either knew her personally or knew someone that knew her personally.

Eighth grader Jakoya Duggans walked to the store with her every day. Kevin Lucien and Landry Poosh, both 12th-graders, always kept a spot reserved for her at their lunch table.

"We used to sit with her in the lunch room. All the Haitians sat together," Lucien said. "Now you see all of us Haitians sitting together and you don't see Judy. That's messed up."

Chris Mohr, an 11th-grader, was one of the students who didn't know Cajuste directly, even though he lives around the corner from her.

"It's sad even if you didn't know her. They thought she just ran away for a couple days and was going to come back," Mohr said.

"Even if you didn't know her you still feel bad about what happened, feel bad for the family," he added.

Many of Cajuste's friends know her from her days in elementary school. "I remember her from Polk school. She played Harriet Tubman in a play once," said Stephen, an eighth-grader who declined to give his last name.

"She would always come over my house and we would eat Chinese food," ninth-grader Diedra Whetstone said.

Eighth-grader Garrett Brown articulated what seemed to be the sentiment of everyone who knew her since elementary school. "She was easy to be friends with. She would talk to you about anything and if you needed something she had, she'd give it to you," Brown said.

In between recalling fond memories of their friend, ACHS students showed their disdain for Cajuste's killer. Some called for the death penalty. "I think whoever did this is a sick person," eighth-grader Neosha Bails said.

Since Cajuste's death, several ACHS students have taken more precautions regarding who they talk to online, according to Bails. Some have taken their pictures down from pages with public access.

"I took my pictures down. Now only my friends can see them," Bails said.

Staff Writer Dan Burns can be reached at 908-686-7700, ext. 120

from our friend at WildXAngel

The Ex of a Cyber-Extortion-ist Speaks Out

A follow up on THIS POST regarding the extortion of a cybercheat!

This is from Jessica Wolcott's EX-husband. (Wolcott being the woman who attempted the extortion):

I wish I would have caught this all sooner. This poor soul, myself, is the ex husband of Jess. Divorced earlier this year. I've always known of her ways b/c when I was stationed overseas, she took my paychecks by threatening to ruin my career in the military only for me to return and find that she had also racked up $15,000 in loans and my name was in collections 5 times for unpaid utilities I had no idea about. Was that a run-on?

Anyways, I lost about $30,000 total while I was gone and now my credit is, well, it's bad and I'm still paying for the damage. I'm 25 and WAY behind where I should have been b/c of her. Nearly ruined my life.

She needs a psychiatrist and I'm not even sure if that will work. Maybe she needs to be heavily sedated. She's obsessed with using people to become rich. She's never had a legitimate job. This is how she makes her living and I'm so sorry people on here fell for her false hardships and promising hopes. She creates stories according to what she thinks you'll receive as the most heartfelt, and then play on your empathy for her. It's really sick. She'll even turn on the emotions to show her fake convictions, She'll create evidence to back up her claims. She's a professional fake. It took me 1 and a half years to realize it and 4 years to shake her off finally.

This is like a huge closure for me so it's good to see she finally spun so far out of control that other people got to see it. I'll never get back what she took from me, but the media and you guys are making up for that.

ORIGINAL POST HERE

Online Fraud & Scams Scare Many Americans

Americans scared of being robbed - online
by Frank Washkuch Jr.

A new study has revealed that most U.S. PC users are worried about getting held up by online predators and schemers as much as bullies and robbers on the street.

More U.S. users are now worried about becoming the victims of an online attack than victims of physical violence, an IBM study revealed Wednesday. The poll revealed that PC users have also adjusted their online behavior in response to well publicized threats, breaches and other incidents.

More than three times the number of respondents believe they will be the victims of an online scam as those who think they will be affected by physical violence, IBM said.

Despite the threats, 70 percent of those polled said they would shop online – but only at sites that they trust and which display a security protection seal.

David Mackey, director of security intelligence at IBM, said the survey is proof that people "are taking the necessary steps" to protect themselves from intent predators.

"It's pretty definitive that internet commerce will be here for a long time," he said. "Seventy percent (of respondents to the survey) will still buy from trusted websites. That's a pretty significant number."

Sixty four percent of respondents said they do not conduct online transactions on a shared computer, and 50 percent said they do not use shared wireless networks at places such as coffee shops or airports.

A large number of people expressed some hesitance to online financial transactions. Thirty-eight percent said they do not bank online, while 37 percent said they do not use credit card information online.

Twenty-nine percent said they have stopped reading credit or debit card information over the phone during the past year, while 27 percent stopped buying from unfamiliar retailers. Over the same period of time, 18 percent stopped paying bills online and 16 percent stopped playing online games.

Mackey said people are vulnerable to credit card schemes both online and in traditional marketplaces.

"I think that people are being a lot more wary about their credit card information," he said. "Those are scams that can really be exploited at any brick and mortar store."

Stuart McIrvine, director of security strategy for IBM, said that consumers are more aware of online threats.

"They are also cognizant that they need to protect themselves from this emerging threat, in much the same way that they would protect themselves from the threat of a physical crime," he said. "As awareness of these new threats emerges, it is key that consumers, businesses and government agencies work together to ensure that everything from education to retail is protected to help alleviate public worry about cybercrimes."

The study, conducted by Opinion Research Corporation, reached 679 adult Americans 18-years-old and older.

IF YOU HAVE BEEN SCAMMED - POST YOUR SITUATION HERE.

LOVE & DEATH FROM THE INTERNET TO BRAZIL

Raymond James Merrill bestowed gifts, money and affection on his girlfriend. Authorities say he paid for it with his life.
By Patrick J. McDonnell

San Jose dos Campos, Brazil - IT WAS a dream of love, and a dread of loneliness, that drew Raymond James Merrill from his comfortable home in suburban San Francisco to this industrial city in southern Brazil.

Dumped by his girlfriend and approaching his 56th birthday, Merrill was aching for companionship. A "Latin singles" website led him to his new passion: Regina Filomena Crasovich Rachid, a 40ish divorcee with a seductive smile and some rough friends.

Merrill, a musician and carpenter with some money in the bank, jumped on a plane and was soon bestowing lavish gifts on Rachid, including $10,000 for the Botox clinic she ran out of her home here. He was besotted, even as her financial demands intensified and fraudulent charges mounted on his credit cards. Merrill made plans to sell his house, move to Brazil and marry Rachid.

Less than two weeks after arriving on his wedding trip to Brazil, police say, he was dead. His charred corpse lay unidentified in a pauper's grave for months, his fate an excruciating mystery for distraught loved ones. Finally, a misplaced handbag and a barroom boast helped break the case of Raymond James Merrill.

THAT Merrill was infatuated with Rachid seems beyond doubt.

The couple's voluminous e-mail conversations, in an eclectic, if often ungrammatical, jumble of English, Spanish and Portuguese, provide a chronicle of midlife romantic obsession - with a deep financial undercurrent. Mutual longing leaps from the screen in five months of greeting-card-style texts now being scrutinized by investigators.

"With each breath that I take, I love you more and more," Merrill wrote to Rachid on March 6, as he was preparing for his third, and final, trip to Brazil. "I have more kisses for you that there are stars in the sky."

Rachid appeared to reciprocate.

"I have more kisses and affection to give you than all the little drops of rain that stay on your window for an entire dark night," she replied. "And when day breaks, the little drops have the sunlight's most beautiful color. That's how my love is for you."

But the correspondence was not all sunlight and kisses.

Rachid and her English-speaking daughter, Ana Paula, 22, repeatedly sought cash from Merrill. Money woes were driving her mother to a heart attack, the daughter warned.

"Love doesn't pay my bills, doesn't pay the supermarket," Rachid wrote to Merrill late last year. "Love like this doesn't give me peace!"

Authorities also found an e-mail from Rachid to a photographer acquaintance, asking for fresh snapshots for two boyfriends - an American and a Brazilian.

"Don't worry about the money," she wrote. "The American will pay for all of them."

EVEN in his mid-50s, Raymond James Merrill cut a striking figure with his chiseled features, lean physique and bushy mustache.

"A combination of the Marlboro Man and John Lennon" is how an old friend once described Merrill, an accomplished guitarist who composed rock and blues numbers. To his regret, however, he was never able to break into the recording business.

Merrill spent almost a decade playing with rock bands in Buenos Aires, where he lived with his then-wife, a vivacious Argentine flamenco artist whom he met in 1979 in San Francisco. The couple parted amicably in 1998. Merrill returned to the United States and moved to Las Vegas with a new girlfriend, Barbara Cortez.

Though Merrill had an arrogant streak, Cortez recalled his moments of contentment, his bouts of generosity, his sharp sense of humor. "We laughed quite a bit," Cortez said.

Still, Merrill's demons were never far off. He had overcome alcohol and drug abuse, Cortez noted, and attended occasional Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Those close to him worried about his solitary, broody inclinations.

"My brother had a lot of things going for him, but like a lot of people with all those blessings, he had a lot of insecurities," said his sister, Marcia Sanchez Loebick, four years his senior. "He could be a bit of a recluse. He was a loner."

After breaking up with Cortez, Merrill sold his Nevada house and returned to his longtime home in San Bruno, south of San Francisco. But he regularly made the 10-hour commute to Vegas to woo a new girlfriend, whom he showered with gifts. He was distressed when she ended the relationship.

Merrill confided to some a dream of returning to Latin America, retiring on his investment income and finding the right mate.

"He was very intoxicated with the idea of love," said Loebick, his only sibling. "And feeling loved."

Merrill turned to the Internet. Deep in cyberspace, Regina Rachid was waiting.

IN THE February edition of a Brazilian skin-care magazine, an advertisement hypes the wonders of "dermopigmentation," a process of medical tattooing in which freckles or other skin alterations are created for aesthetic effect. Accompanying the text is a gauzy photo of a buxom Rachid in a low-cut rose dress that Merrill used as a computer screen saver. Despite her cultured ways and upper-middle-class lifestyle, Brazilian authorities say, Rachid had no license to perform medical tattooing or any other surgical procedure.

"Regina aspired to be something she wasn't," one Brazilian investigator said.

Rachid, according to police and her e-mail conversations with Merrill, was a woman bristling with resentments - about her lack of means to care for Ana Paula and her son, João; her inability to practice legally what she regarded as her craft; her bitter estrangement from her father, a successful Lebanese immigrant merchant. She seemed to feel that life had dealt her a low blow.

Even as Rachid wooed Merrill with steamy glamour photos - including one of her topless, her arms embracing her breasts, the top button on her jeans opened - she also liked to present herself as an upholder of traditional values.

"If we are going to be together, we have to get married," Rachid wrote to Merrill.

MERRILL first ventured to Brazil to meet Rachid in November 2005, a 12-day jaunt that left him smitten.

"When he came back from the first visit, he was very happy with the woman," recounted Eva Quinones, a longtime friend and neighbor.

But already there were some sour notes. On one stop at his home after the first trip, Quinones recalls finding Merrill struggling with bills and paper on his desk.

"What's all this?" she asked.

"Someone charged almost $8,000 on my credit card in Brazil," he said.

That didn't deter Merrill from going back Jan. 17. For slightly more than two weeks, he stayed mostly in a hotel, telling one friend that he didn't feel comfortable in Rachid's home. He later confided to the friend that Rachid hinted at a romantic complication. Known to his friends as frugal, Merrill lavished gifts upon Rachid, including a $20,000 SUV, a vehicle she later sold to pay her legal bills, police said. Upon returning to the United States, Merrill found that as much as $20,000 more had been falsely charged to his Citibank credit card.

The fake charges deeply troubled Merrill, but he refused to blame his beloved.

"I'm very tired of banks, cards, Master, Visa, Debit, accounts, payments, reales, dollars, swifts, pin numbers, online banking, managers, ATMs, withdrawals, transfers…. Enough!" Merrill wrote to Rachid on Feb. 21. "I would prefer to think of candies … and of you, Regina."

Quinones urged him to abandon his Brazilian reverie, but she said Merrill became defensive, responding, "You have to fight for what you love."

On March 21, Merrill left for Brazil. He told friends that his agenda included marriage - he had bought a $5,000 engagement ring - and a little "detective" work on the bogus credit card charges.

"Bill," Merrill told his oldest friend, Bill Rauch, as he left for Brazil, "it's showtime."

MERRILL didn't return to California as scheduled on April 4.

He had also extended his previous Brazilian trips. But both times, he had alerted Rauch. Merrill's sister was soon frantic. Their father, who had recently reconciled with his son after a lifetime of differences, was near death. Benjamin Eugene Merrill, 86, a Pearl Harbor survivor, died May 2.

On May 8, the sister and Rauch finally reported Merrill missing to the San Bruno Police Department, which notified the FBI. The U.S. Consulate in Sao Paulo made inquiries.
Backed-up mail showed tens of thousands of dollars streaming from Merrill's accounts. Unpaid bills were piling up, and the house was nearing foreclosure.

Prodded by U.S. authorities, Brazilian police interviewed Rachid in late May. She said Merrill had left in early April to visit a woman friend in the Brazilian coastal city of Paraty. The friend told police that Merrill never arrived.

Between Feb. 2 and May 12, authorities say, about $132,000 was removed from a UBS bank account that Merrill maintained in Las Vegas.

Eventually, UBS officials blocked further transfers. On May 24, branch officials received a grammatically suspect e-mail purporting to be from Merrill - using a Hotmail account in his name - seeking $50,000. The note demanded "respect" because Merrill was in mourning over his father's death.

"I ask you to reactive my card RIGHT AWAY," the e-mail insisted. "I am remaking my life in Brazil."

Investigators would later conclude that Merrill had been dead for almost two months by then.

Although strongly suspecting foul play, police had no body and no physical evidence of wrongdoing, just reports of a missing American whose savings were hemorrhaging.

EVEN as Merrill's loved ones worried that they would never know what happened, fate intervened in the unlikely guise of a botched robbery in an upscale shopping mall here in San Jose dos Campos.

A black-market currency dealer reported on June 2 that a man and a woman had assaulted him in his car in a parking lot. The woman had supposedly wanted to buy dollars and euros, he told police, but it turned out to be a setup. The money dealer said he managed to escape and that the man and woman fled in another car.

Inside the dealer's vehicle, police discovered a handbag. It belonged to Rachid; along with her identification, the bag contained Merrill's Citibank ATM card.

Rachid was arrested that day and has been in custody since on a robbery charge. Police think she is the woman who accosted the currency dealer.

A subsequent search of Rachid's home, police said, revealed that the house had recently had a complete makeover: new paint, furniture, appliances. An extensive handwritten "to-buy" list noted new televisions, DVDs, a refrigerator, a dryer, bedclothes, patio furniture, artwork, rocks for the front pond and an outdoor grill.

The buying spree, police said, included a new Peugeot, valued at $19,000, for Rachid's daughter.

Among the evidence seized at Rachid's house, authorities said, were packages of the date-rape drug Rohypnol and another sedative, Rivotril, both purchased with forged prescriptions. Authorities think Merrill passed his final days sedated while Rachid and an accomplice coerced him into providing passwords for the accounts that held his life savings.

In statements to police, Rachid denied wrongdoing. She said Merrill had given her everything - including his bank card.

THE investigation led to Nelson Siqueira Neves, Rachid's apparent boyfriend and a small-time grifter with a history of fraud, officials said. He was suspected as Rachid's collaborator in the alleged takedown of the currency dealer. But Siqueira couldn't be found.

Investigators checked the Internet, wondering whether Siqueira might have represented himself on orkut, a website where thousands of Brazilians post personal histories. The hunch panned out.

Siqueira introduced himself on the Internet as a rock 'n' roll bon vivant who loved women, booze and the good life. Several photos showed him living it up at a beach resort in the weeks after Merrill's disappearance.

Police presented the photos of Siqueira to the currency dealer. "That's him," the victim said, pointing to an undated photo of Siqueira partying with friends. But he wasn't referring to Siqueira; he fingered a pock-faced man at the side of the frame. That man was Evandro Celso Augusto Ribeiro.

EVANDRO, as police here call him, was a small-time loser with a long history of drug use and petty crime, authorities said. His connection to Rachid and her boyfriend possibly linked him to the disappearance of Merrill. But like Siqueira, Evandro had dropped out of sight. The case stalled.

But Evandro had a tendency to shoot his mouth off - and a weakness for draft beer. "I killed a gringo," he bragged at a chopperia, or bar, in the beach town of Cabo Frio.

A tipster called police about Evandro's boasts. Authorities swooped in. With the help of cellphone records, Evandro was arrested Sept. 23 at his beachside shack. "You know me, and I know you," a police officer warned Evandro, according to one investigator. "The woman is talking, and she's blaming everything on you." Evandro opened up like a faucet, authorities said.

A TEARFUL Evandro led police to the dirt road where, he said, the body had been dumped.

He told police that his longtime friend Siqueira had promised him about $6,000 to help dispose of the corpse. Police suspect Evandro may have been involved in the slaying, though he denies it.

According to Evandro, he and Siqueira helped carry the already dead Merrill from Rachid's house to a rented car on the evening of April 1. Siqueira found the April Fools' Day date auspicious.

"No one will believe it!" Siqueira joked, according to Evandro.

Rachid drove about 25 miles outside town to an isolated dirt road, with Merrill's body in the front passenger seat, a seat belt holding the American in place and Evandro and Siqueira sharing the rear, Evandro told police. The body was dragged from the car, Evandro said, doused with diesel and set ablaze.

Authorities checked records. A charred body, copper wire around its neck, had been found April 2 at the site. A grisly photo of the corpse even ran in the local newspaper. Officials had buried the remains as an unknown indigent in the cemetery of the nearest town, Cacapava.

With the mission accomplished, Evandro demanded his payout, he told authorities. The ill-fated assault on the currency dealer, police said, was meant to obtain the cash owed to Evandro.

BASED on Evandro's statement, authorities here exhumed the body and took DNA and dental samples. Dental records conclusively confirmed the body was Merrill's, police said last month. Police said Merrill had been strangled.

Rachid and Evandro remain in custody on the robbery allegation and will be charged with murder, along with Siqueira, who is still a fugitive, said Ana Paula Medeiros Monteiro de Barros, deputy police chief here.

The investigation, which includes six volumes of e-mails, cellphone records, photos, declarations and other evidence, should be completed this week and presented to prosecutors, Medeiros said.

"We have the elements to prosecute the three suspects for Merrill's murder," Medeiros said.

Merrill's family and friends are planning memorial services in California and Buenos Aires. Cortez, his former girlfriend, paints a portrait of a man whose flight from the anguish of solitude blinded him.

"Raymond believed in a dream, and I think that's why he met his demise," Cortez said. "He didn't see the warning signs, didn't pay attention. He just believed in his dream."

patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com

Teacher visiting online dating site fired

Mark Zaretsky

A male substitute teacher at East Haven Academy was escorted from the school and removed from the town's pool of substitutes Friday after allegedly being seen in class using a school computer to peruse a "mail-order brides" Web site, school officials confirmed Monday.

Authorities identified the Web site as www.loveme.com, which represents a company that arranges "romance tours" and introductions to would-be foreign mates. The site, "A Foreign Affair: Introductions and Tours," bills itself as a "Russian, Latin, Asian Women Dating Service - Mail-Order Brides.

It describes itself as "the world's largest and most respected introduction and tour service," and lists its corporate headquarters as Phoenix.

The substitute teacher was not immediately identified.

School officials, reacting to initial reports that the sub, a Kelly Services temporary worker who was presiding over a sixth-grade art class, had been looking at a pornography site, reported the situation to police Monday.

But Youth Officer Mike D'Amato said that after looking at the computer record of sites the substitute visited and discussing it with a member of the state's attorney's office, no charges were filed.

"I looked at it myself and I checked with the prosecutor's office, and they said that it was not illegal and not pornographic," D’Amato said. "I mean, obviously, he was misusing the system over there. He also was checking his e-mail, he was checking job listings in other states."

East Haven Academy, in the old high school at 200 Tyler St., houses East Haven's gifted and talented student program, including more than 230 students in grades three through eight.

Board of Education Chairman John Finkle said Principal Angela Speck, who started in September, "was told of the incident" and "within minutes of her being told … he was escorted out of the building."

Finkle said it didn't matter that the site wasn't a sex site. "Whether it was pornography or not, it was definitely inappropriate," Finkle said. "Poor judgment. Definitely bad judgment."

Finkle and Frank Meoli, the schools' administrative director and former technology director, both said Internet access in all town schools is filtered by the state and by the school system.

"On its face, right now, as best as we are able to figure it, he went to no pornography … but to ensure that, it has been turned over to the Police Department to find out for sure," said Finkle.

"Somebody would have to be pretty savvy to get to a pornography site from those computers. … You couldn't even get to MySpace from our computers, let alone to pornography."

Finkle later said that there was nothing on the site more racy "than what you would see in a Victoria Secrets Web site" and "nothing that puts the kids in any danger."

The Foreign Affair Web site has dozens of pages of photos and short descriptions of women in foreign countries, some as young as 18 but many in their 30s or 40s and a few as old as 64.

While some of the women in the photos are clad in sexy lingerie, most are more modestly clad.

While the school system has the ability to tighten its filters for sexual content, violence and hate sites, the danger is that a student trying to do research on the Holocaust, for example, might not be able to get through, Meoli said.

Mark Zaretsky can be reached at mzaretsky@nhregister.com

YOU'VE GOT TAIL

While the rise of Internet dating may have brought about a new era of sexual freedom, most sites still cling to at least the pretense of courtship. Not this one.


* By Amy Sohn

Not all single people are looking to settle down, and the ones who aren't have finally found their heaven: the Casual Encounters page of online bulletin board Craigslist. If Missed Connections is the side of the dance floor where the wallflowers stare moony-eyed at the popular crowd, then Casual Encounters is the dank, smoky basement where the druggies and sluts party till dawn. Casual Encounters users post ads seeking sex, usually that same day, with come-ons like LET'S GET NAKED IN W'BURG or MUTUAL J/O TO STR8 PORN. Despite all the risks of trolling for sex on the Internet - disease, violence, a spouse who hacks into your e-mail - fans say they're thrilled, relieved to have found a place where a paramour can be at your door in less time than the Shun Lee delivery guy.

Craigslist launched Casual Encounters in New York in April 2002, sensing that people looking for a quick fix needed a haven. 'We only introduce new categories when we guess there's a critical mass for them, ' says founder Craig Newmark. "A lot of people are a lot more interested in something casual than I ever imagined," he says. 'And that's okay with me as long as no one gets hurt. Unless they want to be."

Judging by the numbers, interest is soaring. The monthly postings in New York have gone from about 1,000 in April 2002 to 14,400 in March, and the monthly page views have reached 3.2 million.

Not surprisingly, over three quarters of the posts in New York on a recent day were "m4w," men seeking women, with the next most popular group "m4m" (about 10 percent). Until recently, many of the female posters used phrases like "sensual massage" and "happy ending" to indicate that they wanted quid for the pro. In response to repeated complaints that the site was being corrupted (apparently even sex maniacs have limits), Craigslist started a category last month called Erotic Services, for 'professionals' and the men who 'love' them.

Now most of the female posters are "civilians." Debbie, 33, has slept with a few guys she's met on Casual Encounters and likes the efficiency. "It's the lazy man's bar," she says. "I can come home, put my feet up on the couch, go through a couple ads, and have someone in my house shortly. I answered one guy because he was eight blocks from my apartment looking for company, he sent me a photo, and was really cute! Those are the things that matter, that someone's close to you and cute."

Does she feel unsafe with strange men in her apartment? "I have dogs," she says.

She describes herself as "not the most beautiful woman in the world," but says she never had trouble getting laid the old-fashioned way. What she likes about CE is that people's motives are on the table. "What's more hurtful is when you think someone wants more than sex and then you find out they don't."

She’s been surprised by how normal the interludes seem. "The guys will come over and have a drink and sit and talk. It’s not as awkward as you would expect. And except for the fact that I'll come home late and have casual sex with men I met on the Internet, I'm relatively normal, too."

Lee, 24, a production assistant, began browsing CE posts last summer. One day he saw a post from a woman in the music industry who was looking for a friend. He works at MTV and thought she could be a good contact. She sent a photo, and though he didn't have one, she suggested they meet at Hooters. After beer and chicken wings, they went for a walk in Central Park and wound up on the stage of the Delacorte, where, he says, "it became a stereotypical casual encounter."

He's met four other women on CE, though Shakespeare in the Park's the only one he slept with. One time after posting an ad, he got a few e-mails from a woman named Adrienne. He gave her his phone number and a little while later it rang. "It was a guy. I asked who it was, and he said, 'I'm Adrian.' I said, 'Oh. I was expecting someone female.' He said, 'I'm bisexual, I hope you're not offended by that.' I told him I was looking for a woman, and he said, 'Well, you should at least give it a try.' I said, 'I'm sorry, my door doesn't swing that way.' "

Neil, a 54-year-old divorced father, first used Craigslist to sell an old Mac. After he posted, he started reading Missed Connections and Casual Encounters for the fun of it. One night he spotted an ad marked "w4m" in which the poster expressed a desire for oral sex and nothing more, and he saw that she lived not far from him, just outside the city. They exchanged photos, and he was happy to find she was attractive and over 40.

Over the next few days, they exchanged explicit e-mails. "She was very clear that all she wanted to do was have cunnilingus performed. I said I had to have kissing too, and she said she wasn't sure. The e-mails were whimsical, humorous, and sexual." They spoke on the phone and arranged to meet at a cocktail lounge. He requested she not wear underwear. She obliged.

"She was smart, charming, and gorgeous," he says. "After drinks, we went to the car. There was a lot of heavy touching, and there were orgasms involved." They've gone out twice since then. "I have yet to do what she asked, but only because it's not that easy in a car."

When Neil asked why she agreed to meet him, she told him he was among the first responders. His proximity helped, too. "She had answered a few others, and they had turned out to be jerks, but the thing that really interested her was that I lived so close. I told her I thought she was brave, and she said she based it on instinct." He thinks they'll continue to see each other, though neither is looking for a relationship.

Neil partied a lot in the eighties, and even went to Plato's Retreat a few times, but says this casual encounter was very different. "We are both adventurous and cosmopolitan people, but we are not people who are living on the edge. We have responsible lives, we did this, and it was fun. We're not wild. She's a single working woman, and I'm a single working father of two."

Do his kids know he's dating someone he met in a place called Casual Encounters? "They know I met her on the Internet," he says. "To them, it's totally normal."

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

EXTORTION OF CYBERCHEAT (A PEPSI EXEC)

A pretty, young swindler who first met a top Pepsi Bottling Group executive online later anonymously shook him down for $125,000 by threatening to tell his wife, children and bosses he was trolling the 'Net at work for women', shocking court papers reveal. (telling is, in our opinion - GOOD - however EXTORTION is illegal!!)

"I'm sure this will be an unpleasant surprise. I'm sure when your wife finds out that you've been looking for a fill-in for her . . . it will be unpleasant for her, too," Jessica Wolcott, 22, e-mailed multimillionaire exec Gary Wandschneider, 54, in August. Wolcott - who had met the exec face-to-face five months earlier - hid her identity in the threatening missive by using the e-mail account "cheater_eater@hotmail.com."

"After all these years of being married, this is how you repay your vows?" Wolcott asked Wandschneider, a father of three and executive V.P. for worldwide operations at Westchester-based Pepsi Bottling. "You are disgusting . . . you are pathetic," Wolcott continued in the August e-mail.

Wolcott warned Wandschneider he would end up known as "just another hated Peter Cook" - supermodel Christie Brinkley's cheating hubby - if he didn't pony up the cash.

And when Wandschneider tried to stall by asking for time to gather the $125,000, she warned, "Here's hoping your life is still a living hell and worrying every day that your name will be in the news or on a TV movie for what you've done to your wife."

Wolcott eventually got the funds transferred to her online account - but only after Wandschneider alerted the FBI, which provided the money and set up a sting to nail her.

The feds discovered her identity by determining she sent the e-mails from various locations in Pennsylvania.

When Wandschneider learned her name from FBI agents, he told them he had met her last February through the craigslist.org Web site. A month later, after exchanging e-mails and photos, he met her at a Mount Kisco bar.

The Ridgefield, Conn., man also copped to giving her $30,000 shortly after that meeting because she told him she needed to pay debts.

Although court papers do not identify Wandschneider by name, his identity was confirmed by Pepsi Bottling.

Wolcott pleaded guilty to the extortion scheme in White Plains federal court last week. She was ordered to repay the swindled $125,000 and surrender her computer.

She faces up to two years in prison at her February sentencing, but remains free on bail.

Wandschneider - who admitted to the feds that he used Craigslist and other Web sites to meet other women - could not be reached for comment.

But his wife, Dana, said, "I can't wait for her to be sentenced. You know, extortion is a bad thing." (what about what the HUSBAND did??)

A Pepsi Bottling spokeswoman said the company - the world's largest bottler of Pepsi beverages - learned of the scandal only yesterday and has launched an internal investigation.

Wolcott told thesmokinggun.com Web site, which first reported the case, that she did not have a "relationship" with Wandschneider.

Her lawyer, Susan Brody, told the Web site that Wolcott was "a young girl who has not had an easy life."

When Wandschneider first received an anonymous threatening e-mail on his office computer from Wolcott, she told "Gary" that she knew he had used his work e-mail account on a Web site that catered to wealthy men trying to meet attractive women, court records say.

"I'm sure [Pepsi Bottling] would be very proud to have an employee with such high morals," she wrote. "I don't like cheaters, not at all, men like you become my profession . . . You think you can just [throw] money at some young girl . . . who needs it because you are in a better position and use it to get sex?"

Admitting that what she was doing was extortion, Wolcott told Wandschneider she had no criminal record, so that even if she got caught, "I will get a slap on the wrist."

dan.mangan@nypost.com

For the story of another corporate executive who used his work computer to find women - and was also CAUGHT but never charged - scroll through this month - LINK. And for a FEDERAL GOVERNMENT employee who used his work computer to find women - scroll through this month - LINK.

New Yorkers turn to private eyes for help with romance

Preparing for a date in New York can be labor-intensive. Right perfume or cologne? Check. Smart clothes? Check. Report from private investigator? Check.

In the city's hot-and-heavy dating scene, the latest trend for singles is to check exactly who they are meeting for dinner with the help of the city's famed private detective agencies.

Many New Yorkers are no longer taking their romantic prospects at their word, instead running extensive background searches that cover criminal records, education, previous jobs and address history.

Sitting in his private office on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Skipp Porteous runs Sherlock Investigations. He gets numerous requests from wealthy clients to run background searches on their potential dates.

He charges US$500 for a comprehensive background check or US$195 an hour for a two-person team to carry out a surveillance.

It can be worth it. One recent client's date had claimed to be a published author and a college professor. Porteous proved he was lying. Another woman's prospective husband was eager to join a free dating service until he realized that the "woman" who had been e-mailing him the generous offer was in fact Porteous, using a false name.

The explosive growth of online dating in the US is responsible for the increased use of background checks. Whereas online dating is still seen as slightly desperate in much of Europe, in the US it has become a normal part of life. It has also made it easier for people to create fake identities and to invent jobs, homes and lifestyles that they simply do not have.

Some online dating Web sites now conduct background checks on those who sign up to weed out people who are potentially violent or dangerous.

from THE OBSERVER, NEW YORK

JUDGE RULES IN FAVOR OF CON ARTIST & AGAINST FREE SPEECH!

Lovefraud has just published the most recent mind-boggling chapter of the Phil Haberman saga. Haberman, you may recall, has a tendency to exaggerate his meager military service to women he meets on the Internet, plays the wounded soldier when he suffered no injuries, and defrauds people such as his ex-wife, Kristen Rhoad.

Haberman's story was originally published on September 1, 2005 by the Dallas Observer. It was then picked up by at least five different websites and blogs, including Lovefraud. Rhoad launched her own blog in July, 2006.

Haberman had tried to coerce and threaten the other websites into removing the information about him. No one did it. But when Rhoad launched her blog, she became a target that Haberman could strike. He took Rhoad to family court, claiming domestic violence through cyberstalking.

Judge Robert B. Bennett Jr., of the twelfth judicial circuit in Sarasota, Florida, believed Haberman. He ordered Rhoad to remove her blog, and make sure all other Haberman stories were removed as well.

PLEASE READ ABOUT THIS WHOLE TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE HERE!

ORIGINAL POST - ALSO A MUST READ!

Pushing the Wrong Buttons: Men’s and Women’s Attitudes toward Online and Offline Infidelity

PUSHING THE WRONG BUTTONS
Men & Women's Attitudes toward Online and Offline Infidelity
Despite current researchers’ interest in the study of online sexual addiction, there is a dearth of research available on what constitutes online infidelity. This paper attempts to redress this balance by comparing 1,117 participants’ attitudes toward online and offline acts of infidelity.

A factor analysis was carried out that yielded three components of infidelity: sexual infidelity, emotional infidelity, and pornography. More importantly, this study revealed that online acts of betrayal do not fall into a discrete category of their own. A MANOVA was performed and revealed a statistically significant difference on the combined dependent variables for the interaction of gender by age, age by relationship status, and Internet sexual experience.

The hypotheses were, in part, supported. However, counter to what was predicted, in the main younger people were more likely to rate sexual acts as acts of betrayal than older individuals. It is concluded here that individuals do perceive some online interactions to be acts of betrayal. In contrast to some researchers’ claims, it is suggested here that we do need to consider how bodies are reconstructed online. Moreover, these results have important implications for any treatment rationale for infidelity (both online and offline).

Click Here to Read the Rest of this Article

FROM CHAT TO CRIME

Connecticut man wooed, fondled 15-yr.-old girl: cops

BY JOHN LAUINGER -- DAILY NEWS WRITER

A Connecticut man courted a 15-year-old Long Island girl on the Internet for a year before sexually abusing her inside his Mercedes, Suffolk police said.

The alleged Internet predator, Louis Fappiano, 24, of West Haven, Conn., agreed to surrender to authorities in Suffolk County Tuesday following a month-long police investigation, police said.

Fappiano, who works for Yale University as an administrative assistant, met the then-14-year-old girl in an Internet game room in 2005, said Detective Sergeant John Cowie, commanding officer of the Suffolk Police Department computer crimes unit, which conducted the investigation.

Cowie said that Fappiano and the girl communicated for more than a year via telephone and Internet chat rooms such as myspace.com and Yahoo.com.

"They both knew each other's real ages," Cowie said.

Fappiano arranged for a Long Island rendezvous on July 22, 2006, when the girl was 15. He took her to Famous Dave's Bar-B-Que in Smithtown, and then they went bowling at Sports Plus in Lake Grove.

"He wined her and dined her ... and then he tried to have his way with her," Cowie said. Fappiano fondled her inside his silver late-model Mercedes in the Sports Plus parking lot, Cowie added.

When the girl "fought off his attempts," Fappiano halted his advances, Cowie said. The girl told her parents about the incident three months later, and police were notified.

Cowie said detectives obtained several subpoenas to track Fappiano's Internet conversations with the girl.

After surrendering to detectives Tuesday, Fappiano was arraigned in First District Court on one count of first-degree sexual abuse - a class D felony - and one count each of third-degree sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child, both misdemeanors.

He pleaded not guilty, and Judge Paul Hensley released him on his own recognizance. Cowie said Fappiano wasn't charged with more serious crimes because he didn't do "anything beyond touching." "Fortunately for her, he didn't go far enough to raise [the charges] to attempted rape," Cowie said.

Fappiano is due back in court Nov. 27. If convicted of first-degree sexual abuse, he could do up to seven years in prison. It was not known whether Fappiano has hired an attorney.

Representatives of Yale University could not be reached for comment.

Original article here

A LITTLE HUMOR FOR ALL OF US

ONLINE DATERS BEWARE!

Scam artists are tapping into the online dating market, and in two cases in Hampton Falls, have stolen thousands of dollars from women who thought they had a romantic relationship.

The Hampton Falls Police Department is investigating two cases of online fraud.

The local women were duped out of thousands of dollars they'll likely never recover, Police Chief Robbie Dirsa said.

It could happen to anyone, said Dirsa, whose officer, Jeremy Tetreault, spoke at an identity theft seminar in Hampton this past Thursday.

Dirsa described both victims as professional women scammed by expert salesmen.

One case began in January 2002, he said, after one woman met a man online through the Yahoo Personals. She loaned him, over the course of more than a year, $109,000 for his alleged trucking business, Dirsa said.

The couple had a few dates, Dirsa said, though police are investigating whether the man she dated is the same person she met online or someone sent to get the money. The man she dated is described as a white male, in his 50s. She said he lived in-state.

Police know very little about him, even though they have a name and an e-mail address.

THREE LOOKS AT CYBER-ROMANCE & CYBERSEX ADDICTIONS

THREE LOOKS AT CYBER-ROMANCE & CYBERSEX ADDICTIONS
Understanding Addictive Cybersex (excerpts)
By Jennifer P. Schneider, M.D., Ph.D. and Robert Weiss, LCSW, CAS

The Internet is profoundly transforming our culture and our world in ways similar to the introduction of the telephone 100 years ago. In addition to its function as a source of information, the Internet is leading a revolution in the delivery of sex and sexual content. Cybersex, which is any form of sexual expression accessed through the computer or the Internet, is now a major industry. Currently, over 60 percent of all visits on the Internet involve a sexual purpose.

These days cybersex activities include not only viewing and/or downloading pornography along with masturbation, but also reading and writing sexually explicit letters and stories, e-mailing to set up personal meetings with someone, placing ads to meet sexual partners, visiting sexually oriented chat rooms, and engaging in interactive online affairs which include real-time viewing of each other using electronic cameras hooked up to the computer. Many people allow themselves to engage in sexual behaviors online (S&M, cybersex with adolescents or children, presenting themselves as persons of the opposite gender) which they would never do in the real world. Spin-offs of cybersex activities are phone sex with people met online, and online affairs that progress to real or offline affairs.

For most cybersex users, the Internet provides a fascinating new venue for experiencing sex. Some users become hooked on cybersex and experience significant life problems as a result.

For those hooked on cybersex, the negative consequences can be divided broadly into two categories: those resulting from the many hours the user spends on the internet, and those which specifically relate to the sexual content of the user's activities.

The former group include:

* User's life becomes constricted and lonely. Many hours are spent alone with the computer, involved in fantasy sexual activities, while real-life friendships and social contacts fall away.

* If the user is married or in a relationship, the partner feels lonely, ignored, unimportant, neglected, or angry because the user prefers to spend so much time on the net rather than with the partner and family.

* Children are neglected or ignored because of the parent's involvement with the computer.

Consequences which result specifically from the sexual nature of the computer use include:

* If online sex leads to real-life sexual encounters, the user risks acquiring HIV and other oral/genital sexually transmitted diseases.

* If the user downloads Internet pornography on the work computer or engages in cybersex on the job, he or she risks job loss.

* Cybersex participants who engage in sex with minors risk arrest and imprisonment.

* Many users lie repeatedly about the sexual activities; in response, their partners feel distrust and betrayal.

* The devastating emotional impact of a cybersex affair is described by many partners as similar, if not the same, as that of a real or offline affair. This is equally true when the cybersex user has also had "real" affairs. The partner's self-esteem may be damaged; strong feelings of hurt, betrayal, abandonment, devastation, loneliness, shame, isolation, humiliation, and jealousy are evoked. Cybersex activities were considered particularly destructive in that a) they took place right in the home and b) were so time-consuming.

* The couple's sexual relationship suffers, not only generally because the user stays up much of the night, but specifically because the spouse (and often the user) compares her body and her sexual performance to that of the online men and women, and believes she/he can't measure up and/or the user or partner loses interest in having sex with each other. Many couples have no relational sex in months or years.

* Online sexual activities may be followed by physical contact with others; the partner may retaliate or seek solace in extramarital affairs.

* Children may be exposed to pornography and may develop unhealthy attitudes towards sex and women.


Internet and Cybersex Addiction: Signs, Symptoms, Effects and Treatment
Michael G. Conner, Psy.D
The Internet is especially addictive because [it] is endless, interactive, social and exploding with never ending images and information. Being on the Internet can be an escape from reality... For some people, a painful or disgusting fantasy is preferable to a less painful or disgusting reality.

The term “addiction” used to be exclusive to chemicals such as alcohol, drugs, or nicotine. With recent research on the brain and its processes, we now understand that many behaviors can become as chemically addictive as a substance. Extreme overuse of the Internet is such an addiction.

Internet Addiction Disorder
Like all other addictions, Internet Addiction Disorder is a psychophysiological disorder involving:

* tolerance (the same amount of usage elicits less response; increased amounts become necessary to evoke the same amount of pleasure)

* withdrawal symptoms (especially, tremors, anxiety, and moodiness)

* affective disturbances (depression, irritability)

* interruption of social relationships (a decline or loss, either in quality or quantity).

What are the signs, symptoms and patterns of Internet addiction?
At this time, there is no official diagnosis of Internet Addiction Disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, which defines mental health disorders and establishes criteria to be used by mental health professionals. However, since the patterns so closely match those of Pathological Gambling (which was included in the most recent update of the diagnostic manual), many in the addiction field expect Internet Addiction to be added to the next edition. If it is included, it is likely to require that a person meet three or more of criteria such as these during a twelve month period:

* The need for increasing amounts of time on the Internet to achieve satisfaction and/or significantly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of time on the Internet.

* Use of the Internet as a way of escaping problems or relieving feelings of helplessness, guilt, anxiety or depression (those with psychological disorders are particularly prone).

* Feelings of restlessness or irritability when attempting to cut down or stop Internet use.

* Lying to family members or friends to conceal the extent of involvement with the Internet.

* Giving up or reducing important social, occupational, or recreational activities because of Internet use.

* Risking the loss of a significant relationship, job, educational or career opportunity because of excessive use of the Internet.

* Two or more withdrawal symptoms developing within days to one month after
reduction or cessation of Internet use (i.e., quitting cold turkey), which cause distress or impair social, personal or occupational functioning, including: tremors, anxiety, and voluntary or involuntary typing movements of the fingers.

* Use of the Internet to relieve or avoid withdrawal symptoms.

What causes or precipitates Internet addiction?
While it may appear that addictions are pleasure-seeking behaviors, the roots of any addiction can usually be traced to a wish to suppress or avoid some kind of emotional pain. Addiction is a way to escape from reality, from something that is either too full of sadness (such as an abusive relationship) or too devoid of joy (an emotionally empty life). Emotional trauma in early life may be at the source of many addictions.

Internet addiction offers a fantasy world in which there are endless people who appear to be interesting to - and interested in - the person. Young, sexually inexperienced people, especially males, may find it easier to engage in Internet “relationships” than risk the face-to-face rejection of a real person. As the addict becomes more immersed in this shadow world, denial takes hold and he or she comes to view these these “friends” and “partners” as more real than the actual spouse or family.

What is cybersex addiction?
Until recently, men dominated the overall use of the Net but women are now online more than men. Both men and women use the Internet for "cybering" (cybersex). Cybersex is defined as the consensual sexual discussion online for the purpose of achieving arousal or an orgasm.

In addition to viewing and/or downloading pornography along with masturbation, Dr. Jennifer Schneider says that cybersex activities also include:

* reading and writing sexually explicit letters and stories

* visiting sexually oriented chat rooms

* placing ads to meet sexual partners

* e-mailing to meet and attract a potential cybersex/cyber-romance partner; set up personal meetings with someone

* engaging in interactive online affairs sometimes using electronic cameras for real-time viewing of each other

While some people will eventually move away from the Internet back to the real world, others will escalate their involvement, arranging meetings with online contacts for in-person sex. For some, this increased danger in real life grows out of viewing dangerous content online, what Dr. Michael Conner calls “danger downloading.” Often, their cyber screen names reflect this view toward risky or c behavior.

What are the effects of Internet addiction?
Like most addictions, Internet addiction disrupts relationships with family and friends and tends to replace education and other positive activities. A spouse or partner who discovers this behavior usually feels “cheated on,” as real a betrayal as any infidelity, and one that can lead to a break-up. In addition, Internet addiction creates risks and losses in the workplace. For example:

* Nearly 55% of workers exchange potentially offensive messages at least once a month (PC Week).

* Personal e-mails – 47% of employees send up to 5 per day, 32% send up to 10 daily, and 28% receive up to 20 per day (Vault.com).

* Almost one in five people go to cybersex sites while at work (MSNBC poll, June '98).

* 68% of companies characterize messaging misdemeanors as widespread, with losses estimated at $3.7 million per company a year (Datamation).

* Recently a major US computer manufacturer installed monitoring software and discovered that a number of employees had visited more then 1,000 sexually oriented sites in less than a month. Twenty people were fired for misusing company resources (USA Today).

Can you break addiction to the Internet?
Treatment for people who have been diagnosed with Internet addiction is very hard to find:

* Not all psychologists or physicians acknowledge that the disorder is real.

* Many psychologists do not know how to diagnose, treat, and follow-up for these patients.

Spouses or other family members who become aware of the addiction may try to intervene.

Just as an alcoholic’s spouse or child may pour contents of bottles down the drain, the Internet addict’s family may try to monitor computer use, put blocks on chat rooms, or make frequent calls to the person to interrupt computer activity. While these interventions may have brief effect, the only lasting change will occur when the addict fully realizes the costs being paid for his or her behavior: loss of family, job, money, status, reputation, etc.

Treatment alternatives include:

* 12-step group programs to help participants gradually reduce the addictive behavior

* other methods analogous to the treatment of alcohol or drug addictions

* psychotherapy with an addiction specialist

* professional counselors offering chat and telephone counseling at reasonable rates to provide immediate assistance for individuals, partners, and parents in crisis

* clinics specializing in treatment of computer/Internet addiction, such as those at Proctor Hospital in Peoria, IL and at Harvard Medical School’s McLean Hospital in Belmont, MA.



SEX ADDICTION (the underlying problem with some Cyberpaths)

1. WHAT IS SEX ADDICTION?
Sex addiction is a way some people medicate their feelings and/or cope with their stresses to the degree that their sexual behavior becomes their major coping mechanism for stresses in their life. The individual often can not stop this sexual behavior for any great length of time by themselves. The sex addict spends a lot of time in the pursuit of his or her sexual behavior/fantasy or they may have a binge of sexual behaviors.

2. WHY DO PEOPLE BECOME SEXUALLY ADDICTED?
This is different for every sex addict but generally speaking there are biological, psychological, and spiritual reasons. The following is a short explanation of each reason why someone can become a sex addict.

The biological addict is someone who has conditioned their body to receive endorphins and enkephlines (brain chemicals) primarily through reinforcing a fantasy state with the ejaculation that provides these chemicals to their brain.

Psychologically, the need to medicate or escape physical, emotional or sexual abuse can demand a substance, the early addict finds the sex medicine usually before alcohol or drugs.

Spiritually, a person is filling up the hole in them with their sexual addiction. The addiction is their spirituality, it comforts them, celebrates them and is always available and present. Then there is the sex addict who can be two or even three of the above reasons. This is why a specialist in sex addiction is the best route for recovery with sex addiction.

3. WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SEX ADDICTION AND A HIGH SEX DRIVE?
I have heard this question on almost every national talk show or radio show I have been on over the years. A person with a high sex drive is satisfied with sex. It's not about a fix for something; when their partner says "NO" it doesn't make them go off the handle thinking their partner is totally rejecting them and have to leave the house or act out in some other way. If you can relate to this the chances are there may be an addiction issue. You may benefit from any of the following books or tapes:

4. CAN YOU BE ADDICTED TO MASTURBATION?
Yes, this is by far the most common sex addiction that I have treated in working with sex addiction. This usually is the first sexual behavior many of us will have on a repeated basis. This is usually where the sexual compulsion starts with sex addicts and this behavior, regardless of other acquired behaviors, usually stays active.

5. WHAT ROLE DOES PORNOGRAPHY PLAY IN SEX ADDICTION?
Pornography for many sex addicts combined with regular masturbation is the cornerstone for most sex addicts. Many sex addicts have great difficulty getting sober from this combination of behavior. The pornography with fantasy creates an unreal world that the sex addict visits throughout their adolescence and other developmental stages and creates an object relationship that conditions their emotional and sexual self to depend upon these objects and fantasies to meet their emotional and sexual needs hundreds of times before having sex with a real person.

6. CAN SOMEONE BE A SEX ADDICT AND NOT BE SEXUAL WITH THEIR SPOUSE OR COMMITTED RELATIONSHIP?
YES! In this stage of sex addiction, the addict prefers the fantasy world and fantasy sex with themselves or others instead of relational sex with their spouse or partner. The addict avoids relational sex and hence this couple has sex infrequently.

SCAM ARTISTS TARGET THE ONLINE DATING MARKET

(HAMPTON FALLS, N.H.) Police here are investigating complaints of online dating fraud.

Police Chief Robbie Dirsa said scam artists stole thousands of dollars from two women who thought they had a romantic relationship.

Dirsa said one woman met a man online in 2002 through Yahoo Personals. He said she loaned him $109,000 over the course of a year for an alleged trucking business.

Dirsa said they went out on a few dates though police aren't sure if the man she dated is the same person she met online. He didn't repay the money and the woman hasn't heard from him.

This spring, another woman began e-mailing a man she met through an online dating service. She never met him in person. He told her he was an American citizen working in Nigeria. He asked for money and she sent him $10,000.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE HERE

Be careful of what you find on the Internet!!!

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP, 1997) - Margaret Anne Hunter had been a bride four months before she discovered just how big a mistake she had made: Not only was Thorne Wesley Jameson Groves not Mr. Right, he wasn't even a mister.

Thorne Groves - whom Ms. Hunter first met through an America Online "chat room" - was really Holly Anne Groves, a woman who claimed to have AIDS to avoid intimacy in the bedroom and who bound her breasts with elastic bandages because of what she said were chest injuries suffered in a car accident.

Ms. Hunter said that when she confronted Ms. Groves with her suspicions - confirmed, once and for all, by a look at Ms. Groves' passport photo - the woman admitted the deception but gave no explanation.

"He wasn't after my money, because I don't have much," said Ms. Hunter, who still refers to her husband as "he." "I know that what he did was incredibly hurtful and cruel and fiendish. As to why he did it, I don't know. I don't think Thorne knows, either."

Ms. Hunter is seeking an annulment. She also filed a $575,000 fraud suit against her husband to recover, among other things, the cost of the lavish wedding her parents put on last spring.

"I was not the only one deceived. My parents, my friends, all the guests at the wedding. We all feel taken," she said.

Ms. Groves' mother, Janis Groves, called the lawsuit "lies" but said neither she nor her daughter had any further comment.

No criminal charges have been filed.

Ms. Hunter, 24, and Ms. Groves, 26, met online in 1995. Ms. Hunter said Ms. Groves used the name Thorne Groves and described herself as a man versed in travel, foreign languages and other interests Ms. Hunter shared. Lengthy daily e-mail became daily telephone calls and then a rendezvous in New Mexico.

By the time they met, Ms. Hunter said, she was already in love.

After investing so much time getting to know someone online, she said, "you have no real reason to question whether what they are telling you is true. You certainly have no reason to question their gender."

Her lawyer, Seth Guggenheim, put it this way: "If you met someone in a bar and he said he had a Jaguar and you go outside and there's no Jaguar, you might be suspicious. That cannot happen online."

In the wedding photo, the groom's strapping physique yields no clue that Ms. Groves is a woman.

How could she share a bedroom with Ms. Groves for four months and never discover the truth?

Before they met face to face, Ms. Hunter said, Thorne Groves told her he had AIDS. He proposed a quick marriage because he had only a short time to live. Thorne Groves was so concerned about transmitting AIDS that he restricted intimacy to petting and fondling over his clothes and went so far as to wear a prosthetic penis to further the ruse, according to the lawsuit.

Ms. Hunter never met any of her husband's friends, and no one from his family attended their wedding at a suburban Washington hotel.

A few times during their marriage, mail or telephone messages appeared for Holly Groves, Ms. Hunter said. Thorne Groves said Holly was his twin sister, but Ms. Hunter and her family became suspicious.

"We weren't thinking he was a woman. That wasn't it. We just knew things weren't adding up. Something was wrong, and I couldn't put my finger on it," she said.

By August, the couple had broken up. The marriage had gone sour because of Ms. Groves' refusal to get a job, and she returned to live with her parents in Bryant, Texas.

Eventually, the Hunter family obtained a birth certificate and other records for Holly Anne Groves - including her passport photo.

"I recognized my husband. And then it just all clicked. I finally understood," Ms. Hunter said.

Ms. Groves apparently no longer has an account on America Online. As recently as late November, a Thorne Groves was still active on America Online and using the nickname "KingSicko."

The Associated Press

Sometimes Patience is Needed to End the "Affair"

He/She Won't Stop Communicating with the Other Person: Needs "Patience"

My husband admitted to the affair, but yet he still continues to contact this person and has asked me to be patient. He said he will need to get her "out of his system" and to give him some time. How do you handle that?

My Response:
Ending the relationship with the Other Person is often a gradual process.

For example, in the kind of affair I describe (i.e. I want to be close to someone...which means I can't stand intimacy), ending the affair often takes time. Yes! No! On again! Off again is the scenario.

Affairs also lollygag for those who are "in love"...and just love being "in love" or My Marriage Made me Do it.

So, in particular kinds of affairs, expect a roller coaster ride. You don't have to like it. But be prepared. Breaking off an online affair relationship, as in no more contact, may take weeks.

So, let's assume this is your case. Here are a few things to do:

1. You are entitled to set some limits. Keep clarifying the limits, but don't make them ultimatums. You don't want to paint yourself into a corner, especially with this kind of affair. Experiment with phrases such as: "This is extremely difficult for me. I refuse to share you with another person. And, I know it is difficult for you. But, at some point I will draw a line in the sand."

2. "Get at" the specific issues. Ask, "What does it mean to "get it out of your system?" What are a couple or three things you need to "get it out of your system?" (If he/she is open to this exploration, the prognosis is good.)

3. If he/she is reluctant to go there, throw out suggestions. "Is he/she controlling you?" (very often the case). "Does it feel good to be wanted by two people?" "Waffling like this seems to be theme in your life?" "Are you afraid to face the hurt? Are you afraid to lose something?" Allow your voice to trail at the end. Do not be dogmatic. Open the door for discussion.

4. See this as his/her problem. (I know! I know! Easier said than done!) Define your standards. Get your personal needs met. Begin to design the future for you. And tell him/her, "I would like to make it with you, but if not, I will certainly create something wonderful for me."

5. Notice the changes in your relationship. Do you see a movement toward what you really want? Are patterns changing? Is there more effective, in-depth, heart-felt communication? Or are you blaming and shaming them? Sometimes the larger picture is comforting.

6. Surround yourself with people who accept and listen to you. Friends/family often blurt out: Get rid of the #$%#$! They fail to understand the complexity and long-term process.

Remember, affairs are exceedingly complex and don't go away easily. You will never forget, although the pain and memories fade over time. As well, it takes, on the average, 2-4 years for most couples to work through effectively the trauma, if ever.

HIG TECH INFIDELITY

INTERNET, CELL PHONES MAKE IT EASIER TO FIND
AND MAINTAIN ILLICIT AFFAIRS

By Mark de la Vina -- Mercury News

Call it crazy, paranoid or cynical, but the next time you peruse the personals on Craigslist or scan profiles on MySpace, consider this: There's a good chance you just ran into a cheater.

Just as purchasing concert tickets or checking baseball scores has become as simple as logging onto a computer, infidelity is a simple keystroke away.

Cheating is on the rise because technology eases the search to find a willing partner, according to therapists, researchers and relationship experts. The unfaithful no longer have to scour bars or cultivate workplace relationships. Cheating has increased along with the growing use of text messaging and cell phones, chat rooms and online dating sites, some exclusively targeting the polygamous.

"The Internet has greatly removed the barriers,'' says Ruth Houston, founder of Infidelityadvice.com and author of "Is He Cheating on You? 829 Telltale Signs'' . "If you are a married person who wants to cheat, you can now go online and maintain an affair even while your spouse is in the room. Everything has changed.''

Jill, 45, an elementary school teacher from Mountain View who asked that her last name not be used, learned of her partner's infidelity when she came across his open e-mail account, which he had failed to log off on their home computer. She was shocked to read that he had done "everything from soliciting hookers to making dates with others'' via the Internet, she says. "I saw that he does this all day at work. I even posed as someone he had been conversing with, and he e-mailed me 30 times in one day!''

When Jill revealed her identity, he downplayed his online trawling, which "ruined our romance,'' she says.

No reliable figures exist on the increase in cheaters who use technology, but computer forensics expert John Lucich says the rise is undeniable. The president of Network Security Group, a firm in Union, N.J., hired for computer-related legal issues, says that 95 percent of the cases his company handles involve men and women who set up secret e-mail accounts for the purpose of cheating.

Online dating sites play a key role in connecting people searching for extracurricular activities. While mainstream services such as Match.com and Yahoo Personals ban married people from posting profiles, the dating sites can't stop users from lying. Other companies are happy to pick up the slack.

Private Affairs an online dating site based in Toronto, targets users looking for what it calls EMRs, or extramarital relationships. Another service, Ashley Madison Agency, boasts 1.03 million members in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. With its tag line "when monogamy becomes monotony,'' the company, also founded in Toronto, has seen its membership double annually, says operations director and founder Darren Morgenstern.

"We're finding that it's just not going away,'' he says. "People are looking at the plausibility of using the Internet to have an affair, and it just works for them.''

Once the connection is made, technology also helps the affair to thrive. Cell phones and PDAs give cheaters the chance to communicate privately and coordinate with their side dish.

Caryn, 37, a West Valley College student from Morgan Hill, knows this all too well. Like many wired people in Silicon Valley, she used to contact a former boyfriend almost exclusively on his cell phone.

"After several months, I found out he was married,'' says Caryn, who also asked that her last name not be used. "Much later, he even informed me that on several occasions I had even paged him during his marriage counseling sessions.''

Statistics on cheating vary widely because of the way pollsters word questions, says InfidelityAdvice.com's Houston. The data also is muddied by dishonest responses. And as people debate the definition of sex, they similarly debate the definition of cheating.

Sexologist Shere Hite in 1988 shocked Americans when she reported that up to 70 percent of women married five or more years have sex outside of marriage. Other surveys have concluded that anywhere from 38 million to 53 million men in the United States have cheated on their wives at least once, Houston says.

But such "studies,'' as well as research reported in popular magazines and advice columns, often inflate figures, according to Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. His 2004 study, "American Sexual Behavior,'' which polled more than 10,000 people over 22 years, found that 22 percent of married men and 15 percent of married women have cheated at least once.

Technology has helped the cause, prompting the curious to make the jump from fantasy to philandering, says Brian Person, a marriage and family therapist in Los Altos.

"Some people, given the proper social boundaries, would be less likely to cheat than they are now,'' he says.

Network Security Group's Lucich is convinced that the rise in advertising and e-mail spam that hype cheating sites entice people to cross those boundaries, he says.

"I truly believe that there are people out there who have not thought about infidelity and then get spam messages or hear about online cheating and dating sites on the radio,'' says Lucich, whose book "Cyber Lies'' details how to easily check a partner's cell phone or computer to discover if he or she is cheating. "In a weak moment, they say, 'Let's just take a peek.' Then they start going further and further, and the next thing you know, they're cheating.''

There is some small consolation in the rise of high-tech infidelity, Houston says, because cheaters are often unaware that they have left evidence of their affairs on their PCs or cell phones. E-mails are reportedly how Christie Brinkley found out her spouse was cheating on her with a local teenager.

"There are programs you can put onto a computer so you can see everything your mate is doing online,'' Houston says. "You can even put a GPS device in your mate's car to find out where they are going. It might be easier to cheat, but it's also a lot easier to get caught.''

mdelavina@mercurynews.com