> ROMANCE PREDATORS
she was 25, she says she could have
stayed afloat financially.
Fortner’s lawyer, a Chicago attorney
named Richard Zito, declined to allow
his client to be interviewed. But Zito
says in an email that any claim that his
client was a romantic predator or a con
man is untrue.
“Mr. Fortner was not running a
“scam”; at most, he is guilty only of borrowing money from a girlfriend and failing to pay it back,” Zito writes.
Carrie, who is 29 and also asked that
her name not be used, said she dated
Fortner within the last year and borrowed $9,000 from an ex-boyfriend so
she could to pay off his Fortner’s debt
and keep him from being killed.
HUFFINGTON
06.24.12
After connecting with another woman
on Facebook who said Fortner scammed
her, Carrie pieced together Fortner’s history as a Lothario.
Carrie says that she stayed in touch
with Fortner until this past spring, hoping to get her money back. For several
months she says he used the loan to control her by saying that if she came to his
apartment, they could talk about paying
her back the moneyback. But when she
would arrive, Fortner would tell her that
she had to sleep with him first.
Whenever Carrie went to see him
she’d leave a note on her desk in her
apartment for someone to open in case
she didn’t return. She wanted them to
know that it would be Fortner who was
responsible for her disappearance.
Carrie gave