Australian Online Dating Site Red Hot Pie Charged with Fraud

Jul 22, 2010 by Karen · Leave a Comment

Jetplace, the company that runs Australian online dating site Red Hot Pie was found by the Federal Government to have operated upwards of a thousand fake online dating profiles in order to send “flirts” and private messages to users. Red Hot Pie will not face any monetary damages due to the fact that the misconduct occurred before the inception of the Australian Consumer Law organization. Jetplace is only required to send each member a notice that they have been operating fake online dating profiles.

Sites like this can literally spring up overnight. Anyone can go to eBay and purchase a .99 “turnkey” online dating site. Some of these sites look and feel just like the bigger dating sites. The scammers will then set up a few hundred or a few thousand fake dating profiles to make the site look like it is busy and active. Then it’s just a matter of charging a monthly service fee and the scam is underway.

Your best bet to avoiding online dating scams like this is to stick with the big online dating sites. Sometimes that is hard because not everyone in life is looking for mainstream online dating. There are hundreds of niche dating websites that are out there ranging from Christian dating sites to the “Let’s hookup” online dating sites and everything in between. There really is no sure-fire way to tell if an online dating site is legit, but if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. If you’re a 50 year old male and you sign up for a smaller online dating site and you are suddenly bombarded by emails from 18 year old blond hair blue eyed model types….chances are it is some sort of scam.

Generally speaking, most of the big online dating sites in America don’t seem like they create fake profiles to puff up their membership. Most of the time the spammers will come to their sites to create fake profiles in order to lure you away (most likely to their porn website) or to try and get your credit card information. The websites that seem to be affected by this problem the most are the “free” online dating sites. Online dating sites like eHarmony and PerfectMatch and Chemistry don’t have that problem as much in my opinion because there is a high barrier to entry (monthly membership fees) and their customer service and security teams are excellent in working to create a safe online dating experience.

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