Plenty of Fish Online Dating Site Leads to a Rape

By Steve Schmadeke; Chicago Tribune

On a cool fall night in 2009, a 38-year-old west suburban woman went out on a date with a public-relations executive she had recently met online.

The woman was supposed to meet up later that night with her younger sister. But after increasingly worrisome texts — including one that said "please help me" — the sister took a cab to the Lincoln Park neighborhood and with the help of staff finally located her in a hotel room, half naked and sobbing, according to testimony at a trial this week.

On Thursday, a Cook County jury took little more than 90 minutes to convict the executive, Ignacio Carrillo, who prosecutors alleged had drugged the woman before raping her.

Carrillo, 40, still faces trial for allegedly sexually assaulting another woman he met through the same dating site — Plenty of Fish — in 2011. He was charged in both alleged sexual assaults only after the second victim came forward.

Assistant State's Attorney Tom Prisco told jurors during closing arguments earlier Thursday that "under the guise of some sort of romantic evening, he would buy them drinks and then rape them."

"It's been a long five years," the victim told the Tribune after the guilty verdict was announced at the Leighton Criminal Court Building. "I'm glad that someone finally listened."

The victim had reported the 2009 assault at a Lincoln Park hotel to police, but she initially declined to move forward with the prosecution of Carrillo, according to trial testimony. However, she changed her mind when police contacted her after the second victim came forward.

According to trial testimony, Carrillo took the woman to two bars on Oct. 15, 2009, and then a hotel at 601 W. Diversey Parkway, but she remembered only bits and pieces of what happened despite drinking only a glass of wine and a single shot.

When the woman realized she was in a hotel room and tried to leave, Carrillo yanked her back inside and raped her, prosecutors said.

The sister eventually found the hotel she was staying at, grabbed her sister and ran as Carrillo lay "smirking" on the bed, according to testimony.

The victim's younger sister told the Tribune she had to scramble after getting the text that her sister needed help.

"I thank the taxicab driver, wherever he is, for getting me there," she said.

Carrillo, who faces 4 to 15 years in prison, showed no emotion but dropped his eyes when a judge ordered him taken into custody after the verdict.

His attorney, Daniel Radakovich, argued to jurors that the 2009 victim reported being raped because she was disgusted with herself after a one night stand with someone she didn't like.

Prosecutors were allowed to put on evidence at the trial about the alleged 2011 sexual assault to allow jurors to weigh Carrillo's propensity to commit the 2009 rape.

The alleged victim in that case, now 36 and a married mother of two, testified earlier this week that Carrillo ordered her a martini while she was in the bathroom at a Lincoln Park bar while they were out on a date.

She said Carrillo grew angry when she took only a sip from the drink. He poured what he said was olive juice into the drink, telling her to stir it in so she got "the roofie," slang for a date rape drug. The woman testified she thought at the time Carrillo was joking.

After going to another bar — where the woman drank only water — Carrillo raped her against the passenger side door of his Porsche convertible, prosecutors allege. He then wanted to take her to a hotel, but she insisted he drive her home.

"He said this could've been a nice evening, but I ruined it," she testified.

The next day the woman went to a hospital, reported being raped and a nurse called police.

Both women identified Carrillo through his profile on the dating site, prosecutors said.

original article found here

More Evidence Online Dating Sites are Dangerous

(U.S.A.) Army lieutenant Peter Burks was killed in Iraq in 2007 but that didn’t stop dating website True.com from swiping his picture and using it in ads to attract women to their website.

The picture was spotted on two ad spots at free dating site PlentyofFish.com with the words ”Military Man Searching for Love” and ”Soldiers Want You!”

The Burks family is now planning to sue both PlentyOfFish.com and True.com for their parts in using the photo without permission.

The family says Burks died just days after the photo was taken and that he definitely didn’t upload the photograph to the website. In fact the photo was being used on a website to help raise funds to provide supplies to troops in Burks’ honor which is likely where the picture was stolen from.

The Burks family also notes that Peter Burks was engaged when he died which makes True.com’s claims of “Soldier’s Want You!” nothing more than a scam to attract users to the site through the use of fake profiles.

In the meantime a representative for PlentyOfFish notes that the website displays ads from hundreds of thousands of advertisers and is not in charge of the ads for those websites. True.com ads were quickly blocked by PlentyOfFish.com after the Burks family notified the website of the issue.

In the meantime True.com’s potential members might want to look for a dating site that doesn’t create fake profiles in order to lure them in.

What might be the most tragic part of the entire ordeal is that True.com founder Herb Vest attacked other dating websites during a 2006 Forbes interview, as he put it at that time:

“We had to establish a wholesome environment for courtship. Internet dating is populated, to a large degree, by criminals and married people.”

It looks like True.com has turned into the exact type of company it hoped to fight against just five years earlier.

original article here

Online Dating? Never Again

by Claudia Connell

Tempted by online dating? You won't be after reading CLAUDIA CONNELL'S hilarious (and cautionary) account

(U.K.) Single? Starting to despair of ever meeting Mr Wonderful? Well, don’t — because, ladies, the world is full of handsome, charming men with six-figure salaries, who are all queuing up to commit to ­people just like you.

The virtual world, that is, not the real world — don’t be daft: men like that were all snapped up years ago.

I’m talking about internet dating, of course, where millions of singletons (and quite a few marrieds on the make) line up to be selected and rejected in a process that has become ­Britain’s most popular way for couples to get together.

Over half of all single people turn to the internet in their search for love. Apparently, some of them find it. I never did and I’ve never met anyone it has worked for either. In the long-term, that is. A stream of endless dates is ­guaranteed. But lasting love? I’m not so sure.

It was 14 years ago, when I was 30, that I first tried online dating. I was single and not in bad nick, but working long hours in a female-­dominated environment meant I never got to meet anyone. Too young for the dinner party set, too old to be hanging out at nightclubs, it seemed like a hopeless cause until a friend of a similar age took me out and confessed her dirty little secret: she’d started to meet men online. She imparted this information in hushed tones, without making eye contact, and then, on pain of death, swore me to secrecy. I don’t think she could have been more ashamed if she’d confessed to drowning puppies.

Nowadays, the stigma surrounding internet dating has all but gone. So many people partake that it has became an acceptable way to meet the opposite sex.

But when I started it was a bit like train-spotting — you’d heard about it, you knew it went on, but the sort of people who did it were a little bit odd and not the type whose ­company you’d keep.

Today, there are hundreds of ­dating sites to choose from, catering for those with all sorts of criteria: ­vegetarians, Christians, single ­parents, sports fanatics, people who like pets. You name it, there’s a site where you can meet your perfect match who shares the same interest. But, 14 years ago, there were only a handful.

I browsed one site before signing up and handing over my money. I couldn’t believe my eyes when they matched me up with dozens of sexy, ­gorgeous hunks whose ­dazzling smiles beamed out at me from the screen.

Posing by their sports cars, keen to tell any prospective ladies that while they had two homes and earned a salary that could single-handedly pay off the national debt, they were still ­sensitive souls who liked to strum their guitars and do parachute jumps for charity.

They seemed too good to be true. They were.

After submitting my credit card details, the millionaire Brad Pitt lookalikes all mysteriously disappeared and no amount of searching ever uncovered them again.

They were, of course, plants, who were there to lure in naive punters. A man signing up for the first time (and I know this because I tried it) would have been greeted with ­pictures of ­Scarlett Johansson ­lookalikes, ­boasting about their ­cooking skills while posing in bikinis.

The first step when joining a dating site is to complete a profile. As I learned, this is a complete waste of time — especially for women. It doesn’t matter if you have climbed ­Everest in your lunch break and ­discovered a cure for cancer — no one will read it.

Some of the profiles are ludicrous. Match.com, the world’s biggest ­dating site, asks dozens of pointless questions that go on for pages and pages.

When I’m looking for a partner, there are certain things I’d like to know, but I don’t really care when he last went to the cinema or whether he likes biscuits.

I filled out my first profile questionnaire in painstaking detail. And, like everyone else online, I claimed to like travel, theatre and photography.

The truth is that I have hardly any hobbies or interests, but I’ve never yet seen a box I could tick that says: ‘Likes sitting in front of the TV, bitching about everyone on screen.’

One question some sites do ask is if you’d like to have children. What a mean trick. If you say ‘Yes’, you’ll come across as some baby-hungry bunny boiler, but say ‘No’ and you’re Cruella De Vil.

Any online dater will stand or fall on the strength of their photo.

And as the average person looks, well, average, they have to boost their chances of success by posting totally ­unrealistic images. So it was that on my first date, I found myself ­sitting opposite a very charming man called Patrick.

He’d claimed online he was 35. He certainly was 35, or thereabouts, in the picture he’d posted. But the man sitting opposite me was nudging 50. He had displayed a picture that was at least a decade old — one of the most popular online tricks.

I didn’t fare much better with the next guy. He looked nothing like his photograph — and there was a very good reason for that. It wasn’t him. It was just some ­random stranger whose image he’d scanned. When I questioned him about this, he snapped: ‘Well, I think we look alike.’

I must have had dates with six ­different men before I met someone I clicked with and who appeared to have been reasonably honest. We agreed to meet again and I went home to tell my flatmate, a ­fellow internet dater, that I had a good ­feeling about this one.

She replied cynically: ‘He’s ­probably back online now, lining up the next one.’ I checked his profile online — it was flashing, which meant that he was messaging someone else. She was right.

And that’s the huge stumbling block with internet dating: there’s too much choice.

There are on average seven women to every man, creating the kid in a sweet shop effect.

Why would a man give any woman a ­second chance when they know there’s six others online just ­waiting for his message?

If you’re a man, you can be as fussy as you want. Didn’t like her earlobes? Never mind. NEXT!

I also never made my peace with the fact I was looking for men via my computer. It felt a little bit grubby and, if I’m honest, desperate. Whenever I started to see someone on a regular basis, I could never bring myself to admit where I’d met him to my friends and ­colleagues. So I lied. They couldn’t believe my success in meeting men at the super-
market, the dry cleaners, on the bus, in the park. I even claimed to have met one man at the zoo. The zoo?! Why on earth did I think the idea of a childless woman cruising for men at the zoo was somehow less embarrassing than admitting the truth?

The longest relationship I had as a result of meeting on an internet dating site was seven months. ­During that whole time, I never went to his home; he always came to mine. He insisted this was because he had a flatmate and as I (by then) was living alone, we could have some privacy. It made sense, though I always had a niggling doubt. One day, my suspicions got the better of me. I searched the electoral roll and uncovered the real reason I never went to his home — his wife wouldn’t have liked it very much.

Of course, married men cheated before the internet came along, but online dating is like an adventure playground for philanderers.

Aged 34, I vowed to give up on internet dating for ever and take my chances in the real world. OK, I didn’t have a date every other night, but it was refreshing to meet people without having first to email each other for a week about our favourite films.

Then, a few years ago, I was lamenting my single status with a younger friend who suggested I join an online dating site. When I regaled her with my horror stories, she insisted that times had changed and I should give it another go. After nearly a decade away, she was right: things had changed. There were hundreds of sites to choose from, all with really ­positive, bouncy names that it must have taken marketing executives hours of brainstorming to come up with.

Names such as Soul Mates, Plenty More Fish, Love And Friends. I suppose Oddballs And Social ­Misfits is never going to attract too many customers, is it? The tedious questions were still there and all the men had user names such as Stud4U or Adonis82.

This time around I noticed that the pictures people had posted had taken a worrying turn.

WHO KNEW?

Around 4.7 million people visit dating websites each year in Britain — and one third of online daters admit to lying in their profile Rather than just smiling into the camera, all the men felt compelled to display images of themselves performing some Action Man-like task. Rock climbing and marathon running were particularly popular.

Meanwhile, the women have decided they must all be fun, feisty Sex And The City type gals and post pictures of themselves in little black dresses sipping brightly ­coloured cocktails with a ­coquettish look on their face. Don’t get me wrong — I don’t want to see pictures of men in their pants, picking their teeth with a takeaway menu. But surely a little bit of reality wouldn’t go amiss?

But no one on an internet dating site is ever allowed to be just an ordinary Joe (or Josephine). The impressive sounding ‘psychological and compatibility matching’ is something that’s become big in internet dating since my time away.

It’s particularly favoured by newcomers eHarmony, who vow that their unique formula will match you with your ideal partner. But given that no one online ever tells the truth, how is that going to work? You might as well match up Pollyanna with ­Hannibal Lecter. In the end, none of these changes mattered because I was breaking one of the cardinal sins of internet dating. I was over 40.

In my younger days, an average 70 men would look at my profile in a day. And that was before online dating was massively popular. Aged 42, I was lucky if I got two. Even men ten years older than me clearly stated in their profile that 39 was their cut-off age.

As I’ve already said, they could afford to be selective. If the same man tried to approach a girl in her 20s in the real world, he’d probably be sent packing but, online, well, he might just be in with a chance.

I quickly realised that when it comes to online dating, there are three age brackets: 18 to 29; 30 to 39; and 40 to 110. During my three months online, I didn’t go on a single date and the only interest I had was from men over 60. I did briefly flirt with the idea of signing up to a site that targeted the more mature dater, but something in me balked at the idea.

I am no spring chicken, but I’m not ready for a life of early-bird ­suppers and cosy nights in watching re-runs of Murder She Wrote. So I logged off and I haven’t looked back.

And unless I hear that George Clooney has joined Match.com and is looking to shack up with a ­British woman over 40 with ­absolutely no hobbies or interests, then I doubt I’ll be tempted back.


original article found here

Divorced Accountant Scammed by Online Dating Sites

by Antonia Hoyle

After her marriage broke down, Jenny Beard knew finding love again wouldn’t be easy. Not only was she 42 and the sole carer of her six-year-old son Will, but her demanding career as an accountant left her with precious little time to socialise.

Nonetheless, she didn’t want to be alone forever, so when she heard about an internet dating site for single parents like herself, she joined without a second thought, Jenny told Channel 4 News in a programme.

Describing her interests as ‘going to the theatre and restaurants, enjoying country walks as long as they feature a tea shop’, she was hopeful she would meet mature, like-minded men who understood the difficulties of bringing up a child alone.

What she didn’t expect was to find herself posted as a ‘hot date’ on cheesy lads’ magazine sites, and bombarded by spam emails from people who didn’t even exist — or if they did, had anything but a country walk in mind. Jenny Beard was shocked to find her pictures, submitted to a singe-parents dating site, on sleazy lads¿ mag sites

Jenny Beard was shocked to find her pictures, submitted to a singe-parents dating site, on sleazy lads' mag site. Over the course of the four years Jenny has been on the site, not one of the men she met has been a member of justsingleparents.com where she originally posted her profile. Not one of them had even heard of it. Alarmingly, half were not parents at all and only one had a child the same age as her son.

Worse still, her picture and profile have been plastered across tawdry dating websites belonging to ‘lads mags’ such as Nuts and Loaded that are more associated with scantily-clad girls in semi-pornographic poses than professional, middle-aged women like Jenny.

She is just one victim in an extraordinary dating scam exposed by two industry whistle-blowers.

Unbeknown to Jenny, justsingleparents.com is run by a parent company called Global Personals — a legitimate company most members never will have heard of, but which passes members’ details freely between the 7,500 sites it owns, meaning they are inundated with unwanted and inappropriate advances.

The company has also created ‘fake’ profiles, by lifting photographs off the internet, and ordering staff to flirt with unsuspecting members, outrageously flattering them into renewing their subscriptions.

Disturbingly, their deception has proved an unqualified success. Global Personals — whose headquarters are in Windsor, Berkshire — makes £40 m a year, employs 130 staff and is believed to take a 40 per cent cut of every membership subscription, with the remainder going to the spin-off company.

But it is at the expense of women like Jenny, now 46, who is astounded by the way in which she has been duped.

‘Internet dating seemed the best way of meeting people,’ she says. ‘But I’m shocked by how many sites I’ve ended up on. It’s upsetting and annoying. I’m nobody’s idea of a Nuts hot date. It’s the last place you would expect to find me and a waste of time and money. I’m not surprised they’re making up people. I’ve received no end of emails from men who say they like my smile, but clearly haven’t seen my profile. I won’t be renewing my subscription.’

Certainly, Jenny’s experience serves as a cautionary tale to those tempted by the increasingly popular world of online romance, said to be worth £2 billion globally. She first started internet dating in September 2008, eight months after her seven-year marriage ended.

‘I have a serious job. My options for meeting men are limited,’ she says. ‘This seemed the best way.’

She began by joining a site called Plenty of Fish, but, within weeks she realised it was unsuitable.‘It’s hard to say without sounding snobby but I’m a professional person with a degree,’ she explains. ‘It was very good for meeting dustmen, builders and mechanics who are perfectly nice but not right for me. Apart from anything else, it’s free and attracts people with less money. I thought finding a paid service would be more appropriate.’

So she researched online and came across justsingleparents.com. With membership costing £20 a month and members all purportedly having experienced single parenthood, she was more likely to meet like-minded people, she reasoned.

‘I wanted to meet people with children because they understand that anyone else in my life won’t be my top priority,’ she says.

Her son Will, who’s now ten, also was keen to see his mum with someone nice ‘to look after her’

But what Jenny didn’t realise was that when she joined justsingleparents.com that she would be exposed on websites she’d previously never heard of.

Worryingly, the practice, while misleading, is perfectly legal. It is called ‘white-labelling’ and happens when a product produced by one company, such as Global Personals, is rebranded by other companies — in this case dating websites.

Who knew? Internet dating amongst those aged 50-plus has risen by 40 per cent in the last year

Also, in a bid to boost their revenue, the company was specifically employing staff whose sole job it was to set up and run fake profiles on the dating sites, to keep members interested. Within weeks, Jenny got her first warning signal: She’d begun emailing a fellow single parent from her area and the pair had swapped phone numbers:

‘I texted him and said “it’s Jenny from Just Single Parents” and he replied “what?”’ she recalls. ‘He’d never heard of the agency. I was put on the back foot and so flummoxed I didn’t contact him again.’ It was another member, Jenny recalls, who explained that their details were passed around various dating sites: ‘I felt put out and rather stupid,’ she says.

Nonetheless, as the months passed, she was sent three emails a day from unlikely suitors, who ranged in age from 22 to 73. ‘I deleted them before reading,’ she says. ‘I can’t remember any being particularly crude, but maybe they were and I never saw them.’  Jenny says she quickly suspected some of the identities were fake. ‘I know I got emails that weren’t from real people,’ she told Channel 4 News. ‘You’d ask a man a question, such as how many children he had, and would get a reply tell you how happy they are they’ve met you.’

She adds: ‘You don’t realise to start with that these companies they have “ice breaker” messages saying “I like your profile” or “you’ve got a lovely smile” that are sent to all the women in East Sussex between the ages of 35 and 55. You’d reply and wouldn’t hear back. After a while you realise a lot of the messages you get are sent to hundreds of people, not just you.’

Yet Jenny — fuelled by hope that she would meet someone genuine — carried on using the site. At times, however, she became so exasperated with the process that she cancelled her membership.

‘Cancelling was a faff — you couldn’t do it online and would have to call someone in working hours,’ says Jenny, who spent hundreds of pounds on subscription fees.  ‘I remember one email I got that persuaded me to re-join was from a good-looking, wealthy single father who ran his own building business,’ says Jenny. ‘Part of me suspected it was too good to be true, but I replied anyway.’ And, surprise surprise, she never heard back.

Over the course of four years, she met up with just eight men in person. Not one of them was from justsingleparents.com, half didn’t have children at all.

‘I only met most of them once, for a drink,’ she says. ‘One, a store manager, had joined a website called Old Flirt. He was my age but, had I known the site he was on, I would have hauled him out on the grounds that it was a ridiculous name. ‘Another was a bus driver. There were two retired people. They came from geographical and rock music dating sites. One came from a site called Derbyshire Singles. One didn’t even know I had a son, which was the whole point. It made me think my profile might have been edited. I was perplexed.’

As Jenny had suspected, she was not the only one being duped — and not the most vulnerable.

Channel 4 News investigators spoke to whistle-blower Ryan Pitcher, who joined the company in 2008 and a second, unnamed, employee, who detailed the suspicious way in which they were recruited, when they were warned they were not to discuss their duties with family and friends.

Finding fake profiles was a secretive and calculated process, with the team scouring social networking sites and stealing people’s photos to use on their fake profiles: ‘You’d take Helga from Iceland and make her into Helen from Manchester and write a profile,’ says Ryan. ‘You’d use her features and invent a whole new person.’

The role of the fake profiles — or ‘pseudos’ as they were called by employees — was to email members flirtatious messages to entice them into continuing their subscriptions. Up to 400 messages an hour were sent by the team who frequently coerced their victims into intimate text conversations.  ‘You’re talking about thousands of messages which means millions of pounds in subscription fees,’ says Ryan. It seems they were targeted specifically at the sites’ most vulnerable members.

‘A lot of the people on the site aren’t the most attractive people,’ he admits. ‘If they’re not getting replies from real people after a month, they’re going to sign off. The pseudo team could string along a girl or guy for up to 24 months. It is all about money, all about greed. With fake profiles you can get 50 per cent more revenue, sometimes even more.’

If the member wanted to pursue a relationship with a pseudo, or even have a telephone conversation, they would be brushed off before being replaced by another pseudo.  ‘It’s all about stringing them along on tenterhooks with that pretence that eventually they’ll meet up or swap telephone numbers,’ says Ryan.  ‘But as soon as that comes into play you move on. There were loads of cop-outs you could use. Most people were talking to more than one pseudo. Some people were only talking to fake people.’

All of which is incredibly unpalatable. Ryan admits the deception started to trouble his conscience:

‘After a while you’d see the same old men and women; widows, for example, who wanted to find love. You’re just stringing them along to get money out of their pensions. That did play on my mind.’

Meanwhile, his bosses grew richer and ever omnipresent in the dating industry. They have a database of 2.2 million people — every one of whom is believed to be accessible across its network of sites.

It is the sheer variety of websites Jenny has been made available to that shocked her the most when Channel 4 contacted her a fortnight ago to tell her their findings — and which finally persuaded her to cancel her subscription.


A spokesman for Global Personals told the Mail: ‘When members subscribe to one of our sites, they are advised in the terms and conditions that their details will be made available to members of different sites on the relevant shared database.  ‘Our job is to get our members in front of as many other members as possible. Members on any of these sites can apply filters to ensure they are not contacted by anyone they don’t want to be. Global Personals was one of the first online dating companies to stop using pseudo profiles. ’

But Jenny doesn’t believe sufficient warning was given. ‘It should be made a lot clearer how many sites you’re getting in to,’ she says. ‘It’s upsetting and annoying that you don’t know where your picture is going to end up. Clearly someone who is reading Nuts is not going to be interested in me, just as I am not going to be interested in them. You should be able to opt out.’

Trading Standards in Windsor say they have ‘on-going dealings’ with Global Personals regarding their alleged use of fake profiles. Yet the company remains unrepentant.

They told the Mail: ‘Global Personals was one of the first online dating companies to stop using pseudo profiles. Global Personals scaled down pseudo profiling throughout 2009 and all pseudo profiles were removed by February 2010.’

For Jenny, it is too little too late. Still single, she has cancelled her subscription with justsingleparents.com and will be more cautious about internet dating in future.

‘You’ve got to be emotionally strong as you’re set up for an enormous amount of disappointment,’ she says, adding: ‘I don’t know how I’ll meet a man. The odds are stacked against it.’ 

 original article found here

Click here to learn more about the Class Action against Match.com

Another Woman Raped by Person She Met Online

By Leon Watson

Internet daters have been warned after a legal secretary was raped by a man she met on a popular dating website.

Peter Ramsey, 26, beat the woman to the ground, ripped off her tights and had sex with her when she refused him a goodnight kiss at her front door. Ramsey punched the 27-year-old repeatedly knocking out one of her front teeth and left her with 21 injuries. Her facial wounds were among the most shocking detectives investigating the case had ever seen.

The sex attacker was caught after using the victim's Oyster travelcard to board a nightbus within minutes of the attack in Clapham, south west London.

Ramsey and the woman had spent four days chatting on plentyoffish.com site which claims on its homepage to be 'responsible for more dates and more relationships than any other dating site'. They arranged to meet for drinks in Brixton town centre at 7pm.

She later said: 'He seemed like a nice guy. The date was going very well. I thought we had a lot in common.' In the early hours of August 27 last year they went for something to eat before climbing into a cab to her flat near Clapham Common. She believed he was going to walk her to her front door but when he lent in for a kiss and she pulled back, he 'switched'.

In the communal entrance to the block, he pinned her against the wall and rained down punches on her face until she slumped to the ground. When she screamed for help he used one hand to cover her mouth and pinch her nose shut, while continuing to hit her with the other fist. 'I thought I was going to die,' she told Inner London Crown Court.


A 'SEVERE RISK' TO WOMEN

Outside court DC Huggins praised the SOIT role which was crucial in securing the conviction. He said of the result: 'I feel relieved that somebody like Ramsey who had access via the internet to so many women, is now safely behind bars.

'He posed a severe risk to other women on that internet site, which he had been using for a number of years. I would urge people using dating websites to thoroughly vet the people they meet and before they spend time alone. I would also like to thank my SOIT officer, who had the initial contact with the victim. I would like to reassure other potential victims that there are people who are willing to listen to them and take their allegations very seriously in order to bring the perpetrator to justice.

'The victim in this case is relieved about the verdict. She was also concerned for other women and that if he had walked free, there would have been other victims. This woman was unrecognisable after the attack, compared to the woman who gave evidence. Fortunately she has recovered from her physical injuries. I have been in the police for 14 years and these were some of the most shocking facial injuries I have ever seen.'

Ramsey, who has several previous convictions for shoplifting and assaulting police officers, but none for violence or sexual offences against women, then stole the bleeding woman's bag.

As he left she staggered to her feet and called to a passing man, a Muslim on his way to Ramadan prayers, and he came to her aid. The victim's mother, who had heard the screams, also rushed out to find her disfigured and traumatised daughter.

In a further insult, before Ramsey fled, he said to the pedestrian of the two women: 'Don't worry about them - they're crazy.' The rapist then used the woman's stolen Oyster card on a passing N35 bus.

The following day he left two voicemails on the victim's mobile telling her he was sorry and had now sobered up. He said he was left feeling something had happened that 'wasn't good'.

Soon after her ordeal the woman was interviewed by a specialist SOIT (Sexual Offences Interview Technique) officer from Lambeth's Sapphire Unit. PC Damien Hutton-Baber worked closely with the victim to get her detailed account, an interview which was filmed and played to the jury to reduce her time in the witness box.

Ramsey was arrested a week after the attack when a DNA match appeared to have snared him. But when he lied he had not even met the woman on that day, officers were forced to dig deeper. DC Richard Huggins, the officer in charge of the investigation, examined CCTV footage from the bus which showed him on board near the scene.

Ramsey continued to deny the rape, changing his story at trial. He put forward the defence he had consensual sex with the woman but left her rowing with another man who must have beat her.

Ramsey boasted said he had been out with 'hundreds of women' and did not need to rape because he could get anyone he wanted. But he was found unanimously guilty following a trial.

Ramsey, of no fixed address but who had been staying with friends in Forest Hill, south east London, was convicted of rape, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and theft.

Following the verdicts Judge Patricia Lees said: 'I would like an assessment of the defendant's future risk that he may pose to women. It seems to me the violence meted out was frankly horrific and wholly unnecessary to commit the offence of rape.'

Remanding him in custody ahead of sentence on April 27, Judge Lees warned him: 'You face an extremely lengthy sentence of imprisonment.' The court heard Ramsey has been diagnosed as biopolar while on remand.

original article here

Married Con Man Uses PlentyofFish for Affair

By Patricia Kane

(U.K.) As Victoria Fraenzel logged on to the internet dating site for the first time, she was uncertain what response she would receive to her request for a man who would offer her ‘truth and honesty’. Yet within hours of keying her details into the popular website Plenty Of Fish, the 35-year-old was not disappointed with the response.

Darren Upton, a wealthy accountant in his late 30s, quickly got in touch and within days had charmed his way into her life and, soon after, her bed. They had an 18-month affair as he lavished expensive gifts on her, including a £3,000 Cartier watch, designer dresses by film-star favourite Amanda Wakeley and a Mercedes sports car.

Last week, however, Upton was finally exposed as a conman and jailed for six years for stealing hundreds of thousands of pounds from his clients so he could live a life of luxury.

Today Victoria tells how she foolishly fell for Upton’s lies, of the lifestyle they both enjoyed during their fling and her feelings of betrayal at discovering he was not single, as he had claimed, but married. His wife even had a daughter by him during their affair.

Victoria also reveals her shock at the extent of his fraud and of her anger at being labelled ‘greedy’ as the main beneficiary of his embezzled funds. She said: ‘I’ve been made out to be a terrible hussy who had thousands of pounds lavished on her by a married man. But I am not that sort of person. I’m not grasping or greedy. I didn’t ask him for anything. I just wanted to be with him. It was never about the money or the sex.’

Close to tears, she added: ‘After a series of bad relationships, I just wanted someone who wanted to give me a hug and love me. Darren appeared to be that man. I had finally found someone who seemed to genuinely care about me and made me feel special. He was kind and caring. That’s all I wanted – but it was all a lie.’

In total, the accountant cheated 33 clients by not passing to the taxman £500,000 they had paid him. On Thursday, at Leeds Crown Court, he admitted 15 fraud offences between January 2010 and June last year. He also asked for 23 similar offences to be taken into consideration.

Passing sentence, Judge Sally Cahill QC said the crimes were committed for ‘pure selfish greed’. She told him: ‘You were thoroughly dishonest and motivated by greed. This was a gross breach of trust, it was planned from the offset and fraudulent from the offset. I consider this to be professional offending at a high level.’

For Victoria, now 36, the last eight months since discovering the truth have been filled with remorse and self-reproach at being duped so easily. She thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with Upton, with plans to ‘retire’ to the Bahamas in October, where he claimed to have a beachside property.

‘He told me we would get married and we would be happy there together,’ said Victoria. ‘I had no idea he already had a wife and a daughter who had been born during our relationship. I was shocked beyond words when I finally discovered the truth. I’m still struggling to take in the extent of his lies. Nothing in his behaviour ever made me suspicious. I feel very stupid now but I believed everything he said.’

This was not Victoria’s first ‘bad experience’ with men. One of her former partners was Bryan Garvey – who had shared an £18.5 million National Lottery jackpot with four other winners before she met him. ‘My relationship with Bryan ended acrimoniously and it took nearly four years before I thought of looking for someone else,’ she said.

‘Once bitten, twice shy, so it was a really big decision for me to start dating again, and I thought an internet site might help me find someone more compatible. It was my first time on the site and on my posting, I remember saying I was looking for “truth, honesty… a real person”.

‘I cringe now looking back because hindsight is a wonderful thing. Darren got in touch within hours and after a couple of days of online chat, we agreed to meet in a pub in Preston. I remember him sending me a photograph at one point and I saw a wedding ring on his finger. When I said, “That looks like you’re married,” he replied that he’d been engaged but it was now over.’

Meeting him for the first time, however, was a shock for 6ft Victoria – who was a model in her teenage years. She explained: ‘I’m not unattractive and I’m used to dating good-looking men, so it was a bit of a shock to meet Darren in the flesh. My first impression was that he was ugly but his banter and charm made me see him in a different light and in the end I agreed to meet him again.’

They met a few days later, again in Preston, and this time, keen to impress, he picked her up in his Bentley with personalised number plates DJU. The court would hear that Upton had also already bought his wife, Tina, a Maserati. He had also splashed out on a £10,000 box at Leeds United Football Club and even spent £3,000 on a model railway.

Within a few dates, Upton would whisk Victoria off to his £500,000 penthouse flat in an upmarket area of Leeds, overlooking the River Aire and the city skyline. Exquisitely decorated with white leather sofas and state-of-the-art home-entertainment equipment, including a large plasma TV, Upton told her he lived there alone.

As the relationship became more intimate, Upton’s gifts became more lavish. He bought her a Cartier watch, as well as diamond earrings, and several thousands of pounds worth of designer clothes and accessories from Harvey Nichols, including a number of Mulberry handbags. In one shopping spree alone, he blew more than £2,000 on two dresses by Amanda Wakeley – a favourite of Charlize Theron, Scarlett Johansson and Kate Winslet.

From October 2010, he also began paying £800-a-month rent on another apartment in Salford, Greater Manchester, where Victoria would sometimes stay with him when she was not at her own home in nearby Altrincham. He gave her a bank card with a £500 limit to buy anything for the flat.

The couple ate at the best restaurants in Manchester, such as San Carlo and Rosso, favourites of Premier League footballers. They had been dating for about six months when a smitten Upton bought Victoria a black Mercedes sports car.

She said: ‘He had been talking about it for some time. I was gobsmacked at his generosity but if he said he would get me something, he always did. He had the car delivered to my home. I just jumped into the car in excitement and went for a drive. Now I know he was a conman but at that time I loved him more than ever.’ For Victoria it was not an entirely new lifestyle, having grown up with indulgent, wealthy parents on a sprawling farm near Blackburn.

At an early age, she had learned to ride horses and was a competitive showjumper before turning her back on the sport in her teens. When her father committed suicide eight years ago, he left Victoria independently wealthy and with no need to rely on Upton’s generosity. She said: ‘It really angers me that people might think I was desperate for him to spend all this money on me and that I was in the relationship to gain financially. I didn’t need him to buy me any of those things. It was nice, of course, and he wanted to do it. But if I’d known it was all paid for with stolen money, I would never have touched him or his gifts.’

As her relationship with Upton deepened, he began to be more careless, even taking her along to his offices – while his wife was off work nursing their baby daughter – for sex sessions during working hours.

She recalled: ‘The staff all knew who I was yet they never said a word to his wife. We had sex pretty much everywhere in his office: on the desk, on the floor, anywhere we could make it exciting. I was so happy to be with someone who was so caring and considerate. He never mentioned a wife and certainly not his new baby daughter. One of the memories that turns my stomach now is when we were out one night at dinner and he produced some photographs of a baby girl. He told me she was his new niece – but in fact it was his own daughter, who was just a few months old. Later he sent more photographs of her to my phone. That makes me really angry now to think that he would deny his own daughter as well as betraying his wife.’

Victoria would remain in ignorance until June last year when, unable to get through to Upton on his mobile phone one day, she rang his office.

‘I asked if Darren was there and a secretary said, “I’ll let you speak to his wife” and transferred the call. I felt numb with shock. Tina Upton [who was also the company secretary] answered and told me Darren was being questioned by police over financial irregularities. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Not only was I having to take in that he had a wife I hadn’t known anything about, but he was in some sort of financial trouble. Then, without asking me outright if I was Darren’s mistress, Tina suddenly said that she’d suspected her husband was having an affair for some time but “had not pursued it”.

‘I felt distraught and hung up. Soon afterwards, I got a visit from police at the apartment in Manchester. They confirmed what I now knew – that Darren was married and had committed fraud. My Mercedes was taken away and the apartment lease terminated. It was a nightmare of unimaginable proportions and the man I had thought better than all the others who had gone before, turned out to be the biggest b*****d of the lot. How could he do this to a woman who had just given birth to his child? I would never have started seeing him if I had known the truth. It’s despicable.’

‘I felt very foolish. How could I have been so hoodwinked? Life had come crashing down and I found out this wonderful man who had made me feel so complete was already married with a child and had cheated those poor people out of hundreds of thousands of pounds. It was horrendous. Not only did I feel sorry for them but I felt very sorry for his wife. She’s the true victim. How could he do this to a woman who had just given birth to his child? I would never have started seeing him if I had known the truth. It’s despicable.’

The subsequent investigation discovered the total value of Upton’s fraud was £532,000. The firm had about 800 clients, mainly small computer companies, and instead of paying his clients’ corporation tax to the taxman, Upton diverted the cash into his own account. His clients even ended up having to pay penalties for unpaid tax when his crimes were exposed.

Upton had previously been investigated and forced to pay compensation for an unauthorised investment scheme but had continued to commit offences when he was on bail.

Victoria did not attend court last week, having now washed her hands of Upton. She said: ‘I couldn’t bear it. It has brought back too many painful memories. But I want people to know I am not to blame for any of this. I didn’t make him do any of it. He lied to me too.’

The prosecution said many of the clients he deceived felt betrayed as they regarded him as a friend. Other victims said their businesses had been left close to collapse and they had suffered ill health.

Upton’s defence team claimed he made a legitimate annual profit of £250,000, but began offending because he was forced to repay £840,000 to the Financial Services Authority in monthly instalments of £10,000 over the earlier investment scheme, which had not led to criminal charges. Not prepared to cut back on his lifestyle, he then started to misappropriate clients’ funds.

Victoria was never investigated by police, who accepted she had no knowledge of where the funds were coming from. Heartbroken by Upton’s deception, she has attempted to move on, and has thrown her energy into building up her own beauty business. She also had brief relationships with two international footballers since her relationship with Upton ended. Despite everything he has put her through, however, Victoria cannot bring herself to hate Upton.

She said: ‘He hasn’t done me any real harm – he was always a true gentleman to me and I will always remember that about him. He has been described as arrogant but I never saw that side of him. But what he did to his clients, as well as his wife and daughter, was unforgivable. He deserves to be in prison for what he did to them.

original article here

Husband stole $200,000 from Women met Online Dating

(Boston, U.S.) A married man met four other women online, romanced them over several years and then stole more than $200,000 from them by feigning financial and medical problems, authorities said.

Albert Lovering, of Waltham, Massachusetts, was indicted Tuesday on 23 counts of larceny, pleading not guilty on Wednesday.

Lovering, 54, met the women through various dating websites and deceived them into believing he was romantically attached to them, Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said.

The women loaned Lovering money – including one who gave him more than $100,000 after meeting him just once – with the expectation he would repay them, but he never did, Mr Leone said.

'These allegations are extremely troubling and the defendant's lies spanned several years, targeting numerous victims who were conned into believing the defendant cared for them,' Leone said in a statement.

Lovering's lawyer, Daniel Flaherty, revealed his marital status as he asked a judge to release his client on personal recognizance as he awaits trial. He said Lovering has lived with his wife in Waltham since 1999.

The judge rejected the request and set bail at $10,000 cash.

Mr Flaherty did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the accusations, the Associated Press reports.

Lovering allegedly met the first woman in 2006 after they both placed dating ads on Yahoo.com.

The woman agreed to loan him $1,000 after he told her he had placed a bid on eBay on an item he had to purchase immediately, prosecutors said. He allegedly then told the woman he needed more money for several purchases and that he needed her to co-sign a loan.

When the loan was approved, he used the money for himself and did not repay the woman, Mr Leone said.

Lovering met the second woman in 2008 through a personal ad on Craigslist and courted her with 'romantic dinners and professions of warmth, affection and physical attraction,' Mr Leone said.

He also convinced her that he needed $28,000 to complete an eBay purchase, authorities said.

The woman never saw Lovering again, but he continued to communicate with her electronically, telling her he had to stay in hospital in New Hampshire for a serious medical condition, Leone said.

He allegedly told her that his health insurer would not pay several of his medical bills and that the hospital would not release him until those bills were paid.

'Based on his need, her affection for him and his promises of repayment, she sent a series of checks payable to him to a post office box,' Leone said. In total, the woman loaned him more than $70,000, he said.

Prosecutors said Lovering met a third woman in 2009 through Craigslist.

When they met for the first time, Lovering allegedly told the woman he owed the Internal Revenue Service back taxes and asked for a loan.

The woman loaned Lovering $7,200 and never saw him again, Mr Leone said. Lovering met the fourth woman through Plentyoffish.com, authorities said.

They met only once, but Mr Leone said Lovering led the woman to believe he was romantically interested in her and told her he needed a loan to pay back taxes. The woman gave him two checks totalling $1,500 on the promise that he would repay her, authorities said.

Mr Leone said Lovering told the woman in January 2009 that he was hospitalized in New Hampshire and unable to get discharged until all his medical bills were paid.

The woman repeatedly sent money to him through a post office box, investigators said. All told, she loaned him more than $100,000, they said.

original article found here

Online Dater Threatens to Rape Women

Cyberbully Nigel Wilson has been jailed for abusing women he met on a dating website.

A court heard Wilson identified vulnerable women, including several from the city and East Devon who cannot be named for legal reasons, who he then intimidated and abused over the internet and by phone.

Wilson had met and had brief flings with some of the five women and when they split up he poured "venom into their wounds" said a judge.

Wilson started a two-year jail term yesterday after he admitted one charge of harassment and four counts of sending grossly offensive, obscene, indecent or menacing messages.

Prosecutor Ann Hampshire submitted a report to Exeter Crown Court which said Wilson "desired to have sex with the women" and felt jealous and possessive towards them, and that turned to "nastiness".

David Evans, in mitigation, said: "He went on the website, Plenty of Fish, searching for love and a relationship but found the reality fell far short of the picture he allowed himself to paint in his mind."

Wilson, from Winkebury, Hampshire, pestered the women and then "put them in fear" by making vile comments about "raping them, hoping their children would die" and describing the women using offensive terms. He asked a young victim if she had a "high sex drive" and whether she "liked a lot of sex". When she rejected his advances, he used a racially offensive term to describe her. The victim was in court and was in tears as she gave evidence.

He also abused another woman when their "fling" came to an end, threatening to "stab her" and "rape her" which left her extremely frightened.

Mrs Hampshire said all the victims were members of the Plenty of Fish dating website and Wilson used different usernames to dish out "appalling abuse".

Judge Stephen Wildblood QC jailed Wilson and also made a Sexual Offences Prevention Order and Restraining Order for an unlimited period.

original article here

N.H. Sexual Predator Uses Online Dating to Find Victims

Information sought on Hampton, New Hampshire sex-assault suspect
(from 2008) Following a probable cause hearing involving sex assault suspect Thomas Currier on Wednesday, prosecutors involved in the case are urging anyone who may have had contact with the Hampton Falls resident to contact police as soon as possible.

Currier, 34, of 6 Marsh Lane, is currently being held without bail at the Rockingham County House of Corrections and has been charged with aggravated felonious sexual assault.

The charge alleges that Currier drugged a female dinner guest and then sexually assaulted her at his home Aug. 3.

At his Wednesday hearing held in Hampton District Court, Currier waived probable cause through his attorney, Olivier Sakellarios.

Sakellarios argued the issue of bail during the hearing, stating his client should have the right to post some type of cash bail and not be held without even the possibility of release.

Deputy County Attorney Tom Reid petitioned the court to maintain Currier's bail status during the hearing and told the court the alleged sex assault may not necessarily be an isolated incident.

Reid said that according to several women who have come forward since his arrest, Currier has displayed a course of conduct over the past several months that leads Reid to believe Currier is a danger to the community.

Currier is alleged to have met the women through various online dating services, such as Match.com and PlentyofFish.com, and allegedly made attempts to get women to meet him at his residence.

Reid also revealed Currier is currently being investigated on another outstanding charge of criminal threatening and theft.

According to the deputy county attorney, on Aug. 7, Currier is alleged to have invited another woman over to his house and after she refused to engage in some type of relations with him, he threatened to shoot her and then stole her purse and money that was inside of it.

All of the individuals that have come forward have reported Currier getting angry when they refused to meet him at his home alone, said Reid.

Another disturbing factor, Reid said, is that Currier's 11-year-old daughter was present during some of the encounters.

Reid said that if the court chose to amend bail, he would ask for it to be set at $500,000 cash.

"The community is in too much danger from him," said Reid.

Sakellarios argued Currier is an upstanding citizen and father and should be given the opportunity to work and provide for his children.

The Manchester attorney even presented a witness at the hearing and stated that she was familiar with Currier and he never made any sexual advances toward her when she spent the night at his house.

Since Currier was arrested, two other women contacted Foster's via e-mail with similar stories of having nearly met up with Currier at this home.

The women were directed to police, who later confirmed the woman relayed similar information to law enforcement.

During the hearing, Reid maintained that all of the women that have come forward so far have no relation to each other and no motive to bring forward such allegations.

Ried urged anyone who may have had contact with Currier online or in some other form to notify police.

Following the hearing, Judge Francis Frasier said he would take the bail arguments under advisement and make a ruling at a later date.

Original article

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Two men are in custody in New Hampshire on rape charges, in a case in which police say women were drugged, then raped after meeting the men through an online dating service.

After the arrest of 34-year-old Tom Currier of Hampton Falls this month, authorities said they heard from other women who reported online contacts with Currier. He is being held without bail on two rape charges.

Saturday, police announced another man, 32-year-old Shawn Hutchins, was arrested on two counts of rape and one of acting as an accomplice to Currier. Hutchins is being held on $500,000 bail.

Meanwhile, police want to hear from anyone who has had online contact with Currier or Hutchins. They say Currier met women on Match.com and Plentyoffish.com. They say he went by the name AWalkToRemember08 on Plentyoffish.com.

Second article

PlentyOfFish User to Do Jail Time for False Charges

How many times do we have to tell it? STAY AWAY FROM ONLINE DATING! (Christian, Single Parents, supposedly "safe") - its all BAD NEWS!! - Fighter)


Kellye Stephens, 22, laughed and joked with friends in the Barre District Courthouse Wednesday. She was there to learn when she may be going to trial for felony perjury-- accused of creating false evidence that sent an innocent man to prison.

We gave her a chance to tell her side of the story.

Reporter Brian Joyce: I interviewed Mr. Anderson this morning by phone from Illinois and I'm here to ask you why you did this to him for a story tonight on Channel 3?

Stephens turned away and did not tell us why she allegedly framed 22-year-old Rick Anderson a year ago, sending him to prison for three months.

By telephone Anderson told us he is still uncertain why she did it.

"When I asked my lawyer about that he said, he said irrational hatred. So I'm just gonna stick with that," Anderson said.

Anderson says he met Stephens through the online dating service PlentyofFish.com a year ago. He says they went out four times but it didn't click and he saw her for the last time in April. So he was shocked two days later when she went to Northfield Police and claimed he was stalking her and sending her death threats via the internet. Anderson was arrested, charged with making death threats and stalking, and packed off to the St. Johnsbury prison.

"It was literally living hell... No one knew where I was at so I couldn't get a change of clothes," he said. "Why am I here? I'm innocent. That's what I'm thinking the whole time. I never did anything wrong."

Anderson couldn't afford the $10,000 bail so he languished in prison for 92 days.

That's when police computer investigators finally figured out that Stephens had written the threatening e-mails on her own computer and framed Anderson.

"It's a small unit and their workload is such that it wasn't at the top of their list. They had other items to examine before they got to this one," Washington County Prosecutor Tom Kelly explained.

Anderson was freed immediately.

"I got down on my knees and I thanked God the good Lord above," Anderson said.

Stephens was charged with felony perjury and reporting a false crime. Prosecutors say they will seek a sentence of at least 92 days in prison for her -- equaling Anderson's prison time.

"What she did really hurt my feelings. Especially because all I ever was was nice to her," Anderson said. "That it hurt my feelings. That's all I'd like to say that's all I have to say to that woman."

Now, Anderson resides in Illinois with his grandmother and he is unemployed. He has retained a lawyer and may sue Stephens.

Northfield Police were unavailable for comment Wednesday, but legal experts tell us there is little likelihood of success suing the police because they simply did their job.

No trial date has been set for Stephens, but it appears it would come in May at the earliest.

SOURCE