> ROMANCE PREDATORS
works among them — for the first time,
she was asked about scammers who are
willing to emerge from the digital veil
and meet in person.
“It’s a lot of work to meet face to face,
but they’re definitely coming out,” Whitty says. “People must be cashing in on it,
realizing there’s another strategy.”
Robert, a 50-year-old commodity broker from Manhattan, who declined to
give his last name for this article, says he
scammed him this past spring by a woman
he met online and dated for several weeks.
After he thought the two were committed,
he gave her $3,000 to pay bills.
“I remember when I gave her the
check, I said, ‘If I don’t see you next
week, I’ll know that you scammed me.’”
He didn’t see her again. Instead, what
he got were angry text messages when
he wouldn’t give her more money and
later, an email from the predator that
said, “we met on the internet, what did
you expect?”
HUFFINGTON
06.24.12
THE SERIAL PREDATOR?
Megan, who is 34, and works in medicine, also asked that her last name not
be used for this article, believes she dated an actual conman, Andrew Funches,
whom she met on Match.com. The two
lived in different states — she was on the
West Coast and he said he lived in Minnesota — but went on dates when he was
in town for business.
Megan described Funches as charming
and as flattering as they come. He said
he traveled frequently, wore expensive
clothes, spent freely on dates, and never
gave any sign that he’d ask her for money. After two visits, Megan says he made
it seem like he was head over heels.
“He started throwing around ‘I miss
you so much’ and he told me that he
loved me,” she recalls.
Not only that, Megan says his actions
seemed to back up his words: the two
usually spoke by phone several times
a week, they texted more frequently
than that, and when the holidays came
around, she says Funches welcomed the
chance to spend time with her family.
Ty Fortner,
also known
as Andrew
Funches; Jodi
Bourgeois, )