Here is the link to a recent news story about a man who was duped out of $80,000 on an internet dating site. The victim is an American man and the perpetrator is a Nigerian man who pretended to be a woman. The problems here are obvious. The main problem is that this site was not able to, or did not care to verify the sex of one of its users. It is obvious that this site did not run any kind of background check on that user, and if it did, they did a terrible job.
Dating sites and matchmaking companies are the types of businesses for which background screening should be imperative. Clients are using these services to meet and potentially start relationships with people they know nothing about. Most people on dating sites are probably decent people, but some could potentially be violent criminals or sexual predators, or in this case, a complete fraud. I won’t speculate as to how this person ended up giving away $80,000 to someone in a foreign country whom he has never met, but people should do their due diligence when they sign up to use any dating service. One of the first things that users MUST find out is whether or not the service they are using conducts any kind of background screening.