What If We Treated Online Dating Fraud Like “Real-Life” Sexual Fraud?
By Jessica Huhn for DateAha!
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Whether it’s about their age, height, figure, occupation, marital status, or something else, so many online daters weave webs of lies in their dating profiles. In fact, the vast majority of online daters aren’t honest — Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that a whopping 80% of daters post at least one lie in their profiles. And of course, some people develop entire fake identities, photos and all, in order to manipulate others into developing an online relationship. As this behavior becomes more common, more and more people treat online dating deception as “normal.” This is extremely problematic, especially for those of us looking for meaningful, lasting relationships with honest people.
Worst of all, some fraudulent daters use their online lies to eventually deceive people into having sex with them.
But sexual fraud outside of the online sphere is punishable by law. Why shouldn’t fraud on online dating sites be treated the same way, if it leads to a real-life sexual relationship? Lawyers are arguing just that — sexual fraud originating on the web should have legal consequences.
What Is Sexual Fraud?
- According to Cornell University, fraud is the deliberate act of deceiving someone in order to cause financial, physical, mental or emotional damage.
- Specifically, sexual fraud is when someone misrepresents themselves in order to trick someone else into consenting to sex.
- Deception used in sexual fraud can include using old or fake photos, using a fake identity, and lying about one’s occupation, marital status, fertility status, positive testing for sexually transmitted disease, or appearance.
- Full-blown catfishing — developing an entire fake identity with photos, a false name, and a fraudulent backstory, is an extremely common online method used to manipulate people into having sex.
- Sexual fraud is also known as rape by deception. It’s a type of rape because, even though consent was gained, it was gained through deceptive means — if the manipulated person would have known the truth about the deceiver, they would not have consented to sex with them. And only truly informed consent is valid consent.
The Damage of Sexual Fraud
- Victims of sexual fraud will almost always experience emotional distress; many will struggle to trust others in the future.
- For women seeking to marry and start a family, there’s also the loss of valuable time, especially if they are getting close to the point when their fertility drops. The time wasted on forming a relationship with a man in hopes it will lead to marriage, only to find out he isn’t who he claimed to be, can be costly.
- Even those who do not want children lose valuable time that they could have spent on cultivating a lasting, genuine relationship.
- And of course, there’s also the loss of dignity that comes from being manipulated and used.
- Online fraud is especially insidious because perpetrators can deceive many victims at once. Also, it’s far easier to conceal one’s identity online and conduct deception anonymously.
Let’s examine two examples of online sexual fraud, both of which led to no consequences for the deceivers.
Maserati Rick’s Fraud Goes Unpunished
To catfish women into sleeping with him, Ricardo Agnant digitally crafted the persona of a Miami Dolphins football player with the nickname “Maserati Rick.” (In reality, Agnant never played for any NFL team, and only participated in one Dolphins regional combine). He heavily filtered photos of other Dolphins players, posted them online, and claimed they were of himself, to create an attractive celebrity persona that women would fall hard for. Agnant was able to manipulate women into having sex many times over a three-year span, all because they thought they were hooking up with a celebrity. When he was outed in 2017, he deleted every online account he possessed, leaving few traces of his deception. But Agnant paid no legal penalty for his fraud.
Anna Rowe’s Horror Story
Anna Rowe was a victim of sexual fraud that originated online, but this fraud wasn’t treated as a legally punishable offense. (She lives in the United Kingdom, but survivors in the U.S. run into similar problems.) Anna fell in love with a seemingly kind businessman she met online, and developed a year-long relationship with him. But this man was actually a married lawyer from London who had set up an entire fake identity. He used a false name, a different occupation, a developed, contrived story, and edited photos of a Bollywood actor, all to manipulate Anna.
After they had conversed online for some time, the man confessed that he had used fake profile photos, in order to gain more of Anna’s trust. (But, he continued to maintain all other parts of his facade: fake name, fake occupation, different marital status, and fully contrived story.) The relationship was so strong in Anna’s eyes that she was ready to meet him in real life. She let him into her home for frequent romantic visits, and he asked to marry her several times. All the while, he concealed his true identity and purpose.
This man didn’t want a lasting relationship with Anna at all. He was only catfishing for sex… like he had done many times before. He had developed relationships with 13 other women, several concurrently, to trick them all into sleeping with him. And then, he did the same to Anna before she could find out the truth. Anna was understandably traumatized, both physically and emotionally. She felt violated in mind as well as body, because she “would never have consented to a sexual relationship with a married man, let alone a man who was actively having relations with multiple women simultaneously.” Also, like many other victims of sex-motivated catfishing, she now has difficulty trusting others. But since catfishing for sex is not a crime in the UK, she had to start a petition and fight for this fraud to be recognized as such.
Can Online Dating Fraud Be Legally Punished Before It Involves Sex?
Based on the above definitions and examples, it’s overwhelmingly clear that online dating fraud that leads to sex should be legally punished. But can action also be taken preemptively, after a relationship is found to be steeped in fraud but before the sexual act? After all, as intellectual property expert Irina D. Manta so deftly points out, “we punish low-level shoplifting, or false claims in commercial advertising, more harshly than we punish most forms of sexual deception, despite the suffering and harm to one’s dignity the latter brings.” Do we have to wait for rape by deception to happen before we can legally punish a fraudulent dater? Or can we punish them for any “sexual deceit — ” manipulating someone into developing a relationship through online lies, in the hope that this will eventually lead to sex?
This is where things get complicated. Legally, it depends on if there is a provable cost to the victim. If a victim was manipulated into giving up money at any point, that’s clearly financial fraud (and many catfishers who have set up money extortion schemes have already been punished by law). Also, sexual fraud itself is provable, since it’s a form of rape. “Lower-level” sexual deception is far more likely to go unpunished, though. The lies that led the victim to form a relationship with the deceiver can easily be captured, via screenshots of the offending dating profiles and messages. But unfortunately, even though finding out that your date is a fraud is usually emotionally distressing, and always an assault on your dignity, it’s extremely difficult to prove your emotional distress in court. And proof of loss is key in the prosecution of fraud.
Punishing Online Sexual Deception in Today’s Climate
Of course, we must also take the current legal climate into consideration. Even with the #metoo movement’s impact, many acts of sexual misconduct (in various forms) are not reported. Survivors fear that no one will believe them or take the proper action to punish their abusers. In fact, even many known cases of offline sexual fraud go unpunished. As Irina D. Manta reports, “[U.S.] law only haphazardly penalizes misrepresentations in the context of sex — ” legislation drastically narrows the list of sexual fraud types that someone can be legally prosecuted for. Thus, it’s clear that the legal system needs many reforms. The system must not just treat rape by online deception the same as completely offline sexual fraud. It must also take all sexual misconduct allegations far more seriously.
A more immediate digital solution, though, can be found outside the legal sphere and in the public’s hands. DateAha!, a browser extension that works with dating sites, enables crowd-sourced reviews of daters, right on top of their dating profiles. Users can leave anonymous comments on top of profiles, as well as view and reply to others’ comments, to alert others to any dating fraud they’ve experienced at someone’s hands (both involving and not involving rape by deception).
Even when the legal system will not listen, the DateAha! community will hold fraudulent online actors accountable for any lies they place in their profiles with the power of negative feedback. Whether it’s as simple as lying about their marital status or as complicated as catfishing, they won’t be able to get away with this bad behavior in the public eye.
DateAha!’s mission is to make the online dating world safer, saner, more transparent, and more civil for everyone. Learn more about DateAha! and join the movement for dating accountability here.
