BEWARE: THE DANGERS OF ONLINE DATING

Beware Physical, Financial Dangers of Online Dating

Many look for love but find scams and threats

For many of the millions of Americans who have tried online dating, it is an exciting new way to look for the partner of their dreams. But there are potential physical and financial dangers lurking, too.

Cat Hermansen said her experience with online dating took a terrifying turn when she invited a man she met online to pick her up at home for their first date.

"I told him to have a seat on the couch and I sat down beside him," Hermansen said.

"And he pushed me back... and started pawing at me and everything, and what he didn't know is that I could reach down and I pulled my gun out and I put it in his face right between his eyes."

Hermansen said she feels she would have been raped if she didn't have her gun.

"He jumped up and ran out the door - didn't even say bye."

Millions Look for Love Online, and Many Find It
The latest research finds more than 1,000 dating sites on the Web, and nearly 9 million Americans say they subscribed to dating Web sites during the last year, according to analysts at Jupiter Research.

A few, such as True.com, try to do background checks on subscribers, but most do not. (THERE IS NO NATIONAL MARRIAGE DATABASE OR REAL WAY TO CHECK ON WHAT PEOPLE SAY ON DATING PROFILES! No matter WHAT they or the dating site tells you!)

True.com is lobbying state legislatures for laws requiring background checks or at least clear warnings that users are on their own. But some executives of other dating sites say meeting people the old fashioned way isn't any less risky.

Roses and Champagne for a Scam Artist
But experts warn online daters to look out for their financial as well as physical safety when using the sites.

After signing up for Yahoo.com's dating service, Julia Abrantes received an e-mail from a potential suitor telling her, "I can promise you my everlasting devotion, my loyalty and my respect for a lifetime." The man told Abrantes he was working in Nigeria and eventually asked to borrow money so he could wrap up his business and fly to the United States to be with her.

"I had roses in every room, a bottle of champagne in the fridge," Abrantes said. She waited for hours at the airport, but the man never showed up. "I got in a cab, and I came home and sobbed hysterically," Abrantes said.

When Abrantes started investigating the incident online, she discovered the discussion group Romance Scams. Founder Barb Sluppick says 243 members who responded to a survey said they had lost a total of $2.2 million - about $9,000 a piece.

Abrantes reported her scammer to Yahoo, and the company removed his profile. But when ABC News asked her to check for the man's profile again, she found the same Web site and the same pictures.

The pictures used by the scam artist were actually of a model in Hawaii who had been swiped from the model agency's Web site, Abrantes learned.

Yahoo personals said it acts aggressively when customers report scams. When Abrantes complained for a second time, Yahoo again removed the profile.

"We take offering the best online dating experience very seriously and we … provide a safe and secure environment for singles," Yahoo said in a written statement.

Play It Safe
Experts say that people who choose to date online should use caution:

• Plan first dates in public places.
• Make sure friends know when and where you're going on a date and arrange to call and check in at the end of the date.
• Get a disposable cell phone to use specifically for online dating. If a suitor starts to harass you, you can ditch the phone and get another.
• Ask a lot of detailed questions. Con artists won't have easy answers and will likely drop out of your life. Do a BACKGROUND CHECK and surf the net for their name, nickname and email address(es) and read ALL the pages!
• If they tell you, don't speak to "so & so" she's/ he's "obsessed with me, stalking me, scorned, rejected, a wacko", etc. -- MAKE IT YOUR BUSINESS TO SPEAK TO THAT VERY PERSON ASAP.
• Never send money to somebody you meet online. If someone asks for money, it's time to end the relationship.
• Don't forward checks or packages to people you meet online. Scammers may be trying to lure you into laundering bogus checks or stolen merchandise.

ABC News' Elisabeth Leamy and Allen Levine reported this story for "Good Morning America."

BEWARE: THE ROMANTIC PREDATOR!

The Don Juan motif has fascinated artists and thinkers for centuries. As far back as the 17th Century, Tirso de Molina created the archetype of the hero as proto-trickster, promiscuous manipulator, sublime lecher. Mozart's Don Giovanni is an elaboration on the theme, an opera that overwhelms the senses with the sheer vitality of an entity who can only be described as a raw force of nature. Moliere and Lord Byron, among others, bring him to life. Bernard Shaw, in an interlude in his play, Man and Superman, consigns him to an honorable place in Hell. In the modern era, cartoonist Jules Pfeiffer wrote the successful play, Harry, The Rat With Women, depicting the sad/funny shenanigans of an otherwise ordinary guy using women for recreational sex. The film Alfie, dating from the same period, enumerates the many "conquests" of a Cockney truck driver. The seducer remains the hero of song and saga, at least of the pop culture media.

The sexual predator, that dark and mysterious figure, the "stranger", unpredictable, hinting at danger, tinged with violence... what is there that so attracts women to him? Truly, there seems something almost magical about those few men who seem able to mesmerize women at will. What secret do they possess that gives them this power, this intensity, this animal magnetism?

Users and manipulators is the key phrase. Such men have learned to spot and sniff out vulnerable women, the "wounded birds", the ones most susceptible to their particular brand of sorcery. They have mastered the art of "pushing the emotional buttons" of their fellow humans, exploiting the feelings and weaknesses of hurt people (and is not most everyone hurt?), playing women like a musical instrument. In their single-minded pursuit of pleasure, of self-gratification, they leave behind them a string of victims. These are haters of women, exploiters of human weakness, parasites, sociopaths*. (CYBERPATHS)

These . . . fancy-grade hit-and-run drivers leave numerous
victims in their wake . . .
Roger Shattuck, Forbidden Knowledge

This little deviation into the dark alleys of the criminal mind and the underside of human nature yields insight into the sad emptiness of the career seducer. There is little to envy in these creatures. They lead meaningless lives, and each successive "conquest" does nothing to fill the screaming, hungry void within. There is little to admire, considering the pain and wreckage they leave behind.

What a chimera, then, is man! What a novelty, what a monster, what a chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! A judge of all things, feeble worm of the earth, depositary of the truth, cloaca of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe.
Blaise Pascal: Thoughts, chap. x.

Behold the man, the man of action, the ruthless hero of myth and saga, society's darling. Here is this rugged doer of deeds, the rough-and-ready "go getter", the one who grabs what he wants without pausing to think... the aggressive stranger, the cowboy, the soldier, the gangster. Contemptuously, he shoves past that quiet guy in the corner, the shy one, the one ridiculed by family and friends as a "wimp", a "mouse", a victim, as perhaps something less than a man.

According to the latest sociological dogma, females are genetically wired to be attracted to "alpha" males, those who are most assertive and aggressive. This seems all too true of some women. Aggressive men seem to get women, to attract women, many women, because of their semblance of strength, the swagger of the domineering male. Yet, what type of women are these? Fragile, unsure of themselves, swayed by instinct, emotionally damaged, running on autopilot . . .

Only a nuance, a subtle shade of difference separates aggressiveness from its less respectable cousin, aggression, the use of force to gain one's ends. With this in mind, understand aggressiveness as a sign of immaturity, of fear . . . of weakness, of blind stupidity. It is the crudest mode of social interaction, the blunt instrument, the bludgeon.

It is the "bull in a china shop" syndrome, a behavior pattern that gets its practitioners typed as boors, thugs, and worse. There is an immediacy about them, a brutal spontaneity, for they recognize no tomorrow. Unfeeling, unbridled, unburdened by remorse, they loot, despoil, and ruin. Behind them, they leave poisoned relationships, broken trust, betrayal, and despair.

from: HOW TO MEET WOMEN

ONLINE "COLONEL" SEEMED LIKE A CATCH!

STAY AWAY FROM ONLINE DATING! - EOPC
Con artist uses Marine’s identity to scam women
By Kimberly Johnson

Wendy McKay thought she had met someone special when the Marine colonel deployed to Iraq started chatting with her on the online dating Web site.

Someone claiming to be Col. Richard Bartch told her he was in Iraq for the first time after volunteering for duty. And like her, he was divorced. Chats quickly led to e-mails and within a day he sent her photos of himself in uniform.

In one, he stood in his woodland digital-patterned utilities, proudly holding up his Bronze Star citation and medal. In another, he’s lounging in desert cammies in a chair, with his service pistol holster pulled taut across his broad shoulders just next to his name tape.

His e-mails were romantic, echoing the sentiment of a schmaltzy Hallmark greeting card:

“I went to sleep last night with a smile because I knew I’d be dreaming of you ... but I woke up this morning with a smile because you weren’t a dream,” he wrote to the 52-year-old British woman Oct. 21, just one day after they made introductions online. “Though miles may lie between us, we’re never far apart, for friendship doesn’t count the miles, it’s measured by the heart.”

The e-mails quickly picked up intensity.

“[T]he feeling is getting stronger and stronger,” he wrote the next day, Oct 22. “... think it will not be hard to LOVE you huh!”

By Oct. 23, his e-mails reflected he was sure it was love.

“You awakened a part of me that had lay [sic] dormant all of life. [A]lthough [I] had loved and been loved before, never had it been so intense and so deep as what we feel for each other. [T]his much [I] am sure of, we share a love so true that [I] have never before experienced the true joy of complete empowering, soul-felt love as we share,” he said.

McKay almost bought it. That is, until she realized doing so was really going to cost her.

Bartch — or more accurately, the con artist who had stolen the identity of the real Marine officer, from a family-oriented military Web site — wanted her to send him $5,000.
Red flags

On Oct. 20, McKay logged onto a U.K.-based dating Web site, “when I was contacted by a person who seemed to like me and we started to chat,” she said in an e-mail, explaining the initial encounter. At the man’s request, she gave him her e-mail address so they could exchange pictures.

“He sent me [four] photos and he told me he was called Colonel Richard O. Bartch and was a retired USA Marine,” she said in her e-mail to Marine Corps Times. “These pictures were of himself and some of his family when he returned from Iraq and another one was of one of his sons who is also a Marine.”

The photo exchange gave way to a feverish wave of online chats. Some of the photos were older and predated his divorce, he told her, in an effort to explain away the wedding ring he was wearing in some of the shots.

He had three sons, the fake colonel said. Two were natural born, but the middle child — Albert — was adopted after his mother, a Spanish neighbor who lived down the street, died suddenly when he was nine years old.

“The story was so intricate,” she said, in a phone interview from Peterborough, England.

The fake colonel was having trouble contacting Albert and was concerned about him, he told McKay, explaining that a military security regulation prevented him from making or receiving calls from Iraq. He asked her to call Albert on his behalf to check on his welfare, and gave her a phone number with an area code for Atlanta, which he said was his hometown.

McKay called.

Recalling the brief conversation, she said the young man who answered the phone had a thick foreign accent — presumably to corroborate the story of a Spanish mother. He sounded as if he was in his early 20s, she said. In hindsight, McKay now believes he was the scammer himself.

“I think he wanted to see how I’d fallen for it,” she said.

There were other red flags, from the beginning, McKay noted, such as mistakes in grammar and military references. In an early e-mail explaining photos of his sons, Bartch wrote: “Nathan and her mum welcomed me when [I] went back to the states ... and that’s me with the bronze reward.”

Other clues were more subtle. During a chat session, she sensed he was carrying on more than one conversation at the same time. Another time, he told her he had to go out into the field, but asked her to wait. He was only away from his computer for a short time before he returned. To McKay, who once was married to a man in the Royal Air Force, the brevity of his trip “to the field” seemed curious.

On Oct. 30, however, he confided in her that he needed her help urgently. He was in the process of packing up to leave Iraq, but somehow his bag had been intercepted in Ghana. His “diplomatic tag” had run out; he couldn’t pay to renew it while in Iraq and needed £2,500, about $5,000, she said.

“The minute he said that, I logged off,” she said, realizing it was a scam.

“He asked for the money in pounds,” and not in American currency, she said. “He said ‘I’ll pay you back when I come and see you.’”

Seeing red
McKay is not the only woman the faker tried to dupe, but she wants to be the last. She gave copies of the e-mails and the Atlanta telephone number to U.S. military police based in the U.K. and sent a letter to the Marine Corps.

“I wanted [Bartch] to know that someone is impersonating him, and how easy it is,” McKay said.

The photos of the real Col. Richard Bartch are believed to have been copied from the Web site MarineCorpsMoms.com, said the site’s founder, Deborah Conrad. It’s a Web site focused on family morale during military deployments.

Attempts to reach the fake colonel for comment, using both his e-mail address and the Atlanta-area telephone number, went unanswered.

“He has posted under this identity on at least four different dating sites that I am aware of,” said Conrad, who launched MarineCorpsMoms.com in 2004, when a friend deployed to Iraq for the second time.

“I first learned of this a few months back when a woman contacted me to let me know that she had been corresponding with a man she met through an online dating service and had become suspicious when he told her he had a son who was a [sergeant] in the Navy,” Conrad said in an e-mail. “[Whoever] it is, he doesn’t do a very good job of military customs and courtesies.”

The original photos of the real Bartch were given to Conrad for the Web site by his wife, Mary Helen Bartch, when he was deployed to Iraq in 2004, Conrad said. The recent misuse of Bartch’s photos is the only instance Conrad’s aware of where material found on her Web site has been used for a scam, she said in a phone interview.

“I don’t know of any way to stop things like this from happening, other than to never post anything to the Web,” she said.

“One of the things I want my Web site to do is share the successes of wonderful things Marines are doing around the world,” Conrad said. Adding layers of protection, such as locking the personal photos to prevent copying, wasn’t something she had thought she would need to consider.

The whole point of the site is to share, she explained. Some Marine families, for example, have seen photos of their loved ones on deployment for the first time on her site, she added.
Tall tales
The real colonel has heard several of the wild stories, the adventures concocted in his name that also lured in women from Denmark and the state of Georgia.

“Supposedly I had saved a diplomat,” and there was a suitcase with $5 million in reward money waiting for pickup somewhere in Africa, Bartch said in a telephone interview. One woman was preparing to travel to Africa to pick up the money, Bartch said. The impostor told another that his son had been injured, prompting mounting medical bills, and that the impostor needed money for travel expenses.

“It’s a pure Nigerian scam, and unfortunately I got involved with my name in it,” Bartch said.

Marine Corps officials notified Bartch, who they say is listed as being in the Individual Ready Reserve and living in Spokane, Wash., who then notified his banks and law enforcement officials, including the FBI, as a precaution.

The nature of the identity theft — only a name, and a handful of personal photos — limited his options.

“No one can do anything about it. Just because the guy’s using my name, there’s not any real recourse,” Bartch said. “It is a violation, but it’s not like being broken into.”

After word of the scam emerged, Conrad removed Bartch’s photos from the site and things have quieted down.

“I would like to see it dropped,” he said.

Liar, liar
While Marine impersonators are not new, the case highlights a unique area where the persona — and not the personal information, such a Social Security number — of a real person was used in the attempt to scam money.

Hard statistics about online fraud remain vague, but online digital identity theft is on the rise, said Marsali Hancock, president of the Arlington, Va.-based Internet Keep Safe Coalition.

There are simple ways to help guard against online identity theft, she said. Don’t post a person’s name below photos. Use privacy settings on social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook.

“The Internet is forever,” Hancock said. “Whatever you post, you can never fully remove. Once you put your picture up [on the Internet], it’s up there and you lose control over it.”

Internet postings pose potential risk for those in the military, she added.

“It seems like military officers could be at risk because the information they share with their families might not be information that they’d want to share with the world,” she said. “It puts their family at risk,” as well as themselves, she said.

That’s not to say military morale Web sites and blogs should go silent — they should just try to be a little more savvy, she explained. “They can share good news without sharing specific names,” Hancock said.

McKay said she has learned a valuable lesson, but admitted the incident has been a setback. The divorcee of six years said she had only resumed dating within the last couple of years.

“Women are on that [dating] site because they’re looking for a partner, they’re looking for a relationship,” McKay said. “[Scammers] think women on there are divorced, got a good settlement off their husbands and have got money to play with.”

She is no longer using the online dating site.

“I’m very, very wary,” McKay said. “I don’t know if I could trust them again.”

SOURCE

OTHER MILITARY PHONIES WE HAVE COVERED:
Phil Haberman
Nathan Ernest Burl Thomas, Jr.

JANUARY 2008 PREDATOR OF THE MONTH: JOHN GASH

JANUARY 2008 PREDATOR OF THE MONTH:
JOHN GASH

We are starting the year out with a classic tale of cyberpathy. John Gash chatted up women out of town & out of the country from his computer and then traveled to meet and sleep with these women.

Of course he made professions of love and so on... without telling anyone he was married or had more than one woman on his hook.

His victim's story:

My story started in 1999 and lasted 3 years until October 2002 at which time I had discovered his affair with a work colleague, that he is married and that he had, for the whole of our "so called" relationship been communicating with and possibly meeting, other women online.

He is STILL targetting women online. Meanwhile, 5 years later I am still picking up the pieces and coming to terms with the devastation he caused me. This man almost destroyed me and for 2 years I was simply unable to function, work or practise my career. (because of predator mind control & brainwashing. CLICK HERE and HERE for more information on that. Our victims commonly tell us they were unable to function, distracted, sleepless, couldn't focus or think straight or felt like there was a 'wet blanket' on their head)

John is a smooth operator in real life. He was Director of Programs for a well-known aircraft manufacturer for 40 years and has done very well in his career. At face value he seems to be a smart and successful businessman living in San Jose, CA. In reality he is a liar, cheat and predatory con man.

ONLINE NICKNAMES

• Jdgash99
• cooljohn99
• wheelies03
• wheelies06
• ufo_flying_the_sky
• stanford2426.

These are all in Yahoo chats & groups

I also found a bunch of ICQ numbers for him but unfortunately have now deleted them.

He hangs in 50's/60's chat and romance rooms in Yahoo and plays bridge on Yahoo and MSN.

I have sufficient evidence here to put before any Court in the event he would want to sue and like Miss Lewinsky I even have his DNA as he left his hairbrush here so the possibility of court action really doesn't phase me at all.

When I discovered what he had done to me and challenged him he refused to talk to me or discuss it. He changed his home phone number, emailed me to say that if I ever came to California NOT to visit him or he would have me arrested!!! This from the man who for three years had been a part of my life and professed to love me. (very typical - they become ENRAGED when you catch them. )

It's time he was exposed for who he really is and what he does online.

Well SAID!

We will be posting chats Gash had with one of his victims throughout the month.

And as always, if Mr. Gash wishes to contact us for a referral to long term counseling for his predatory exploitation of innocent women and/or for his obvious sex and love addiction, he can do so at our email address at the right.

John Gash, here's your PREDATOR award:

OUR PREDATOR OF JULY 2006: Richard (Rick) Kudlik

Man arrested after Internet-Girlfriends out him as fake U.S. marshal

NEW YORK (AP) - To some, Richard Kudlik possessed the macho allure of a deputy U.S. marshal on a manhunt.

They say he had the badge, raid jacket, flashing lights on his Dodge pickup truck, even a gun. But the real U.S. marshals -- and a chorus of angry women -- say Kudlik was only acting.

Kudlik, 43, was arrested at his Port Jefferson, N.Y., home Wednesday after several ex-girlfriends outed him earlier this month on a Web site featuring a wanted poster. The site calls him a "lying, cheating U.S. Marshal impersonator" and reveals his true identity as a long-married maintenance man.

He pleaded not guilty to possessing a counterfeit U.S. Marshals Service badge and was released on $5,000 bail. His attorney did not return a phone call Wednesday.

Pamela Brown said she began dating Kudlik last year until she received an anonymous e-mail warning: "The man you‘re dating is not who he says he is."

She tracked down Kudlik‘s wife, who told her in a phone conversation they had been married 17 years.

Brown began networking online with other women who said they had been wronged by Kudlik, and on May 14 she launched the Web site http://www.off2hunt.com with photos of Kudlik. She estimates he used his phony persona to lure at least 10 other women into relationships in the past decade.

"I don‘t want another woman to go through what I went through," she said. "I hope this taught him a lesson and makes him get help. He‘s a sick person."

(Right on Pam!!! Pam's site used our links section left and we applaud her for outing this cyberpath! Check out her site listed in the article above.

ALSO this sort of fraud could be avoided with a NATIONAL MARRIAGE DATABASE - There is NO central database for marriage licenses in the US!! Please sign the petition!

If you want to see some of our other PREDATORS OF THE MONTH - please peruse our archives (right margin) - Fighter)

FOLLOW UP:

THE ACCUSER'S TROUBLES

BY ZACHARY R. DOWDY AND CHRISTINE ARMARIO

The Mattituck whistleblower who exposed a man accused of serenading and then breaking the hearts of women with a ruse that he was a U.S. marshal has a criminal history herself, records and law enforcement sources said.

Pamela Brown, 39, started a website to tell how she was conned by her experience with Rick Kudlik, arrested Tuesday by real U.S. marshals on charges of possessing counterfeit marshal gear. But she herself served 106 days in Nassau County jail in 2004 for a forgery conviction, a sentence violation and failure to pay, records show.

In late 2003, court documents show, she wrote bogus checks to herself totaling over $3,500 when she served as assistant controller for Legend Nissan in Syosset.

Two months after her April 30, 2004, release, she was re-arrested on a grand larceny charge., Information on the case outcome was not available yesterday.

That's not all.

Brown, who chided Kudlik for dishonesty, has used two aliases, jail officials said. She was convicted of forgery the first time in 1995 and received a one-year conditional discharge, and forgery and petty larceny in 1997 for writing $4,000 worth of checks to herself from her former employer, Zeppelin Electric of Holbrook. She later violated her three-year probation sentence, records show.

She also has civil court judgments against her, one stemming from an incident in which she refused to pay rent on a Selden apartment and another where she skipped medical payments to a Port Jefferson physician, records show.

But Brown‘s attorney said her past has nothing to do with her good deed: exposing an accused law enforcement impersonator.

"It seems like these people are trying to mix one thing with another and blame this woman for doing something admirable," said Michael Lamonsoff, of Manhattan. "The bigger issue is how this guy is able to walk around with fake badges for a federal agency... and all this paraphernalia in a post-9/11 world."

Lamonsoff said that Brown acknowledges her past misdeeds and is remorseful.

One former friend who contacted Newsday said that he credits Brown with turning in Kudlik, but accused her of conning him out of money.

"I commend her for reporting him for impersonating a U.S. marshal," said Vincent Lawrence of Huntington. "Well, Pam cons men out of money. She and I were friends. She told me she needed to borrow $600 to pay her rent at the end of 2004. Come August, I still didn‘t get the money from her. Finally, I took her to court. I‘m still waiting to get paid."

African Internet Bride Scam Victim Returns Home

A South Australian farmer held hostage in Africa for 12 days in an internet bride scam has returned home, saying he's lucky to be alive.

Des Gregor, a 56-year-old from Hoyleton in SA's mid-north, arrived at Adelaide Airport tonight after being freed from his African captors who were ultimately duped by police.

Mr Gregor travelled to the landlocked west African nation of Mali last month to meet his supposed bride and collect a dowry of $100,000. (NZ $114,521) in gold.

But on his July 27 arrival, he was kidnapped by an organised scam gang, beaten, stripped, had his cash and credit cards taken, and was held hostage at an apartment in Bamako, the capital of the third world country.

The wheat and sheep farmer was told he would have his limbs hacked off with a machete unless he arranged a $100,000. ransom.

Mr Gregor was freed last Thursday when Australian Federal Police (AFP) persuaded the kidnappers there was money to be collected by their captive from the Canadian embassy in Bamako.

The conmen briefly released Mr Gregor, and police rescued him.

"I especially thank the Australian Federal Police for the effort that they put in and also the Mali police, they did a fantastic job in conjunction with the AFP, and if it wasn't for them, I reckon another couple of days and I wouldn't have returned," Mr Gregor said.

Asked if he had learnt his lesson, Mr Gregor replied: "I think so."

Mr Gregor arrived in Adelaide with none of his possessions and issued a warning to others seeking love over the internet.

"Just be careful, make sure you check everything out 100 per cent," he said.

Earlier, his brother Phil Gregor said Des was "absolutely blinded by the fact it was a scam".

"You see this in a movie, you read about it in a book – it happens to someone else, not you. But it does, I found that out," Phil Gregor said.

"I really hope that the message gets out to people that they look after their family and if anyone talks about internet relationships, that they can be open and share the mail with them to get an objective opinion.

"When you're in that relationship, it does seem that the reality of the scam doesn't show up to the person that is in it.

"I want people to be prevented from having to go through what we did.

"It's not a nice thing and it can be avoided with some family participation."

SOURCE