Match.com
Complaint 1094 Details

Someone I was chatting with claimed to be an overseas American widower planning to return to the U.S. but wound up hacking into my Match account when he realized I knew his game. Here's what happened: As soon as I put up a profile on match.com I began getting contacted by overseas men who would then ask me to chat with them via Yahoo instant messenger. I went along, not thinking I would marry some overseas dude, but out of curiosity and desire to have someone to chat with as my job is very boring and when I am on duty I often have nothing to do. Two guys I was chatting with, I thought were legit, and the third I was starting to see through his persona. So not realizing it could be harmful I started challenging some of his statements. I asked him where in the states he had lived (as he claimed) and he told me Fairfax Virginia. He said his family had moved there when he was 8 and when I pressed for where his parents worked there he said Capital One bank. I wikipediaed capital one and it had not yet been founded at the time period he was claiming (although it apparently is headquartered there). Then I asked him what high school he went to and he said BRB and disappeared. Half an hour later my match account wouldn't let me in and when I contacted Match by phone they discovered it had been taken over and had all new info except the billing credit card number. The closed my account and refunded me everything that I paid. After this I started thinking through the other two guys I was chatting with and realized that they were playing the same game. I am surprised at myself for not putting it together more quickly. My clues
(in retrospect) were two out of the three of them claiming to be widows. All claiming to be single dads raising their kids alone. They all three claimed to be civil engineers, and one of them claimed to be building orphanages (sob). Their English skills were good, but not fluent and there were things in their language that reveal that English was not their first language as claimed. I attributed this to the idiosyncrasies of internet chat sometimes coming across as disjointed, but when I read over the chats (screenshots; I deleted the yahoo account) I realized that it was actually faulty English, mistakes only made by people who learned English later in life, not just typos, common incorrect grammar, etc. Also all three of them pushed me early to say that I wanted a serious relationship, and when I said I was talking to other locals from Match, they tried to talk me out of it (except one guy who just quit on me, telling me he needed me to be exclusive -- after two chats). The guy from Match told me that it is unlikely that the person who took over my account could access my credit card info but I am going to check in with the bank anyhow because I am not completely sure. Although I suppose if they could access the credit card there would be no need for the charm offensive. Got all my $$$ back from Match though, on the first try, with no argument.