Top four online dating disasters

24 April 2014 - 12:59 By Bruce Gorton
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Image: Gallo Images

Dating websites don’t always work out for the best when it comes to romance, with as many as one in ten profiles being outright scams.

And those that aren’t don’t always work out to being the romantic ideal.

These are our four favourite bad experiences from online dating:

He couldn’t steal her heart, so he stole her phone

According to the New York Post a 22-year-old student in Queens was on a date with a guy she met through the online dating service OKCupid when he started pressuring her to invite him into her apartment.

The date had gone well, but not that well, so she rejected his advances – leading to him stealing her iPhone and using it to update her profile to claim she is open to threesomes.

The Post quotes her as saying, “I guess he doesn’t take rejection well.”

Police are investigating the incident, with the help of his OKCupid profile photo.

And her little dog too

The Daily Record had a similar story of larcenous love gone wrong, with a Dover woman who made the mistake of leaving one “Joel” alone in her living room.

He stole her TV, and her Yorkshire terrier.

Fortunately she too had met the man through an online dating service, and alerted police to his details, as well as describing his gold Mercedes.

While the cops are still on the unloveable dog-napper’s trail, he did at least return the purloined pooch and TV set the next day.

Well, she ain’t cheap

Indian marriage focused website Shaadi.com is noted for some shady things, including one woman who posed as single in order to trick men out of £35,000.

According to The Daily Mail Sidra Fatima snared seven men on Asian marriage site Shaadi.com, posing as a willing, available bride and a “simple person learning from life and finding myself, looking for someone who knows the meaning of love, someone who can touch my soul”.

Apparently the meaning of love is money and presents, and her soul could be touched for about £5,000 in dowry money, which she demanded before the wedding could take place.

Her actual husband acted as her chaperone in order to make sure there was no hanky panky.

Seven men fell for the scheme before she was caught and found guilty by a UK court. She was sentenced to twelve months in prison, suspended for two years.

The Internationalist

A Nigerian man, pretending to be Irish and working on a Scottish oil rig, managed to scam one 66 year old San Jose woman on ChristianMingle.com out of $300,000, according to ABC affiliate KGOTV.

Posing as a man called David Holmes, the scammer asked her to help fund his oil business, tricking her out of her retirement funds and refinancing her home.

He had gone so far as to create a fake website to make the business appear legitimate.

By the time someone in her family alerted authorities, the woman had wired him an additional $200,000 as a second loan.

Fortunately this transfer was frozen just in time, and Turkish authorities managed to arrest one of the man’s associates, and his details were traced back to Nigeria.

Have you had bad experiences with online dating? Tell us at iLIVE@timesmedia.co.za.

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