A B.C. man has been sentenced to more than four years in an American prison and fined $303,196 for operating a "cruel" $1.2-million online dating scam.
Delta resident Barrie Turner, 66, operated more than 200 websites offering so-called "Executive Dating" services. He was arrested for mail fraud after more than 100 people complained that they were being matched with imaginary people.
Turner was ordered to pay restitution to his victims and sentenced to 51 months in prison followed by three years of parole in a Seattle court on Friday.
"You stole the victims' money, you stole their hope and dignity, for the most base of reasons: money," U.S. District Judge Ricardo S. Martinez told Turner during sentencing.
"If someone orders a computer on eBay and gets a box of rocks, they are unhappy and mad...but they don't lose their hope, dignity and self-respect as these people did."
In all, 260 clients filed victim impact statements about Turner's sites, which included Executive Gay Dating and Executive Catholic Dating.
One woman wrote that the dating service "raised my hopes, and then they dashed them. I felt foolish, embarrassed and depressed. They preyed on me and others when we are the most vulnerable, all for the sake of their own greed."
Former clients said that after paying as much as $1,500 for a membership, they were matched with people they suspected to be fake. The same photographs were used for multiple matches, with only the personal information changed.
People who tried contacting these suspicious matches were told their potential love interest had decided to date someone else.
Turner's sites also pinched legitimate profiles from other dating websites like Match.com.
U.S. government prosecutor Tom Woods described the scheme as "fake, fraudulent and cruel" in court.
"[Turner] did this cruelty over and over, across the county and in Canada and Great Britain."
Turner was arrested on March 26 as he attempted to cross the U.S. border to Point Roberts, Washington, where he maintained a mailbox to collect membership fees for his sites. He pleaded guilty to mail fraud in June.
