Owner Of Online Dating Site Arrested For Fraud

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES - Mar 31 - Barrie Turner is alleged to be in connection with the operation of more than 200 web sites offering "executive dating" services. The accused is the owner of Executive Dating LLC, a company which offered online dating services through various linked websites such as Executive Catholic Dating, Executive Gay Dating and Executive Seattle Dating. Customers said they paid as much as $997 for a six month membership and were told the fee would pay for "two to seven introductions or 'matches' per month."  Most of them received the same "match" profile and sometimes fictitious ones, and when they attempted to date this person, the system replayed that the person had chosen to date someone else. Investigators estimate that Executive Dating received more than $1.2 million in mailed and wired payments.

The full article was originally published at International Business Times, but is no longer available.

Comments

[twitter.com/rosswilliams]

This is good news and I suspect it won't be the last. A lot of other companies need to clean up their act.

Ross

[Kathryn Lord]

I wrote about these sites in my blog in 2006 and have kept getting comments posted there describing others' bad experiences. My original post was quite cautionary. I'm glad to see that I was right.

[Filipina Woman]

I agree with Ross. This is really good news as more and more "dating sites" out there are just pure scams and are only out to swindle money from innocent people looking for the right person. Hopefully they get other equally malicious sites as well.

[Vicki]

I was a victim of this fraud and struggled to get someone to do something about it. I contacted the BBB, local news, and many other organizations who didn' seem to want to stop this man. I am so happy to see this has been prosecuted and hope he gets truly held accountable and not just slapped on the wrist. I received matches from people that he copied from other web sites and false letters that he sent from people who did not exist. It would be nice to get some money back but I'm just happy he cannot continue to defraud others.