do they makeBlottered, the new true-crime blog, alerted us to this interesting JDate related story in the NY Daily News.

Lynn, a 60 year old widow who lost her husband to leukemia, met Jonny on JDate. They had their first date at a fancy french restaurant. Jonny claimed to be an investment banker and told Lynn about a great investment opportunity in a company that was about to cure, you guessed it, leukemia. Within a month Lynn gave Jonny three checks totalling $100,000. Except Jonny was really Alan Sarner, a married scam artist from Brooklyn out to fleece lonely old women with more money than sense.

“He truly preyed on my emotions and took advantage of them,” the 60-year-old victim, identified only as “Lynn,” said yesterday in a telephone interview with reporters. “He was utterly charming.” … “I don’t like false or dishonest people,” he allegedly E-mailed Lynn. “I have attached a grundgy [sic] picture of myself, taken after two weeks at sea.”

Sarner, who is the father of a very embarassed NYPD assistant commissioner, is being held on $50,000 bail. There is no word on whether JDate has cancelled his profile yet.

Is it any wonder why we are like, the only Jewish site on the Internet that has never had a JDate ad? Oh well. What can I say? They keep provididing me with material. Still waiting to hear about their new IPO – $75 million bucks, huh? That’s gonna be fun. Again.

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About the author

ck

Founder and Publisher of Jewlicious, David Abitbol lives in Jerusalem with his wife, newborn daughter and toddler son. Blogging as "ck" he's been blocked on twitter by the right and the left, so he's doing something right.

23 Comments

  • Yawn. So people are dishonest online? Jdate’s in it for the money? How’s that sky, still up there in the, um, sky? What else is new?

    I refer you to JDatersanonymous, dateline November 2004:
    “How to Jdate for Fun, Profit and Jail Time.”

    Still, could’ve been worse, as a friend of mine relayed her story about her friend who brought a guy home on the first date and all things went to hell…

    People have been ripped off before, cheated online and in real life. People need to be cautious, plain and simple. You never know who you’re really getting–at a bar, online, or anywhere else–until you know who you’re really getting.

  • Yeah, seriously. This is an old trick. Didn’t we have a common friend back in the day who knew about such scams investments? And why are old farts the elderly such suckers so easily duped?

  • Please, I dated a Superfundraiser for Pres. Bush and he was using JDate to ask women for $2000.00 contributions to towards the Campaign. I have made legitimate sales leads and connections using their database of overachieving and overeducated neurotic New York Jews. Then there was the Plastic Surgeon who wanted me to bark, the Kosher grandfather who wanted me to pee…none of this is JDate’s fault…it was all up to me and my decisions to take the risks I took in the name of romance (or sex, whichever comes first).

  • Ahh yes, the old no-unkosher-wine-for-dinner-but-will-you-please-drink-my-pee-after-the-finest-oral-sex-you’d-ever-received story. Forgot about that one.

  • He was eating in a non kosher restaraunt, and he is concerned that his date is drinking non kosher wine? That is messed up. Then he wants her to pee on him, oic, non kosher pee is against his religion, laughing falling off my chair.

  • Yeah, wanna see Tom Jones Mr. Morrissey? Oh, and as for Mr. Pharmacetucial CEO Bush Ranger…he’s married.

  • “It’s not unusual to be loved by anyone…” Ah, 2chutzpah, I remember the Carter Administration. Oy.

    Alas, I’m up here in Bawstun. Not in NYC (though plan a trip down there 8/23-24).

    You simply gotta take my advice, above.

  • It is a fact that even now, during Tom Jones performances boxes and boxes of panties are thrown at him.

  • All I have to say about JDate, besides agreeing with much of what was said… DON’T speak to men abroad-esp. from England. WOW- what a scammer he was- first and last time I will! You know the old saying- “If it’s too good to be true, it usually is, right?”

    As for me, back to meeting someone the old fashioned way! Much luck to all!

  • ive heard some crazy things about jdate but none this bad:

    phillyjdate.blogspot.com

  • Did ya ever sign up for J-date and try to opt out? They make it nearly impossible. They’ll set you on an “auto renewal” program, so even though your account is deleted, they keep billing you!!

    If you’re smart enough to catch the automatic renewal program and shut it off, they’ll just ignore it. The only way you’ll find out that you’re being charged is that it will appear on your bill again.

    Jdate is an expensive rip-off for sure.

  • Attention all possible users of the J-Date service. Keywords: JEWISH SINGLES, J-DATE, JEWISH DATING SERVICE

    They play games with their subscription service. If you don’t go through the steps of cancelling on any subscription they keep charging you. They basically hide this from the average web reader. The non-average would be someone who reads all the fine print in Terms and follows the trail of asterisks to barely visible rules.

    J-Date allows you to sign up for various contracts but misleads you that it’s continuous pay unless you contact them. Any one with an ounce of brains can see how they designed their page to extract more money from the average reader.

    They are a prime example of why Jews have the reputation they do. This is Jewish business that kills a religion (of course I don’t even know if the owners of this rip off are even Jewish)…but just the fact, Jews is part of it.

    I only used the service for one month, of course charged for 8 months because I didn’t notice the charge each month in my bank statement…so I’m pretty stupid myself. So anyone with my intelligence is likely to get ripped off.

    I have no comments on their service, but warn you about how to pay for it.

  • There are plenty of SUBCRIPTION services run by non-Jews, Josiah. It’s nobody else’s fault you didn’t notice the agreement or the charges. It is your fault that you blame Jews for your own mistakes and I think it would be better if you stuck to calling yourself stupid instead of talking about Jews’ “reputation.” I know many Jewish businessmen and if anything, their ethics seems to lean towards integrity and goodwill to their customers.

  • JDate is a ripoff. I wanted out, but even though I told them not to renew, they renewed my subscription anyway (for another month); are they that desperate for money?

  • does anyone have a phone number for JDate where you can speak with a person in order to cancel the membership that I’m no longer using but still being billed for.

  • Jdate itself is a scam. You pay through your nose, and get almost nothing. Your e-mails have daily limits which are low, and won’t reset for a full 24 hours. You don’t know who’s paying, and who isn’t, which is lousy because you could end up using all your daily limit on people who can’t even open your e-mails!

    I emailed Jdate about this on more than one occasion, and their answer was basically “tough luck for you”. There’s no way of telling who is who.

    If you are willing to part with an extra $25 a month, then Jdate will allow you 10 confirmations (per $25 that you part with) to ensure that non-users can read your e-mails… However, the low daily limit for e-mails doesn’t change, and you still find yourself in the same boat… unable to send e-mails.

    You can’t send e-cards, teases, or anything like that either.

    Jdate administrators say this… “Why not IM the people instead?”
    This is their favorite excuse.

    The problem with that is most people paid for Jdate so that they could receive messages, not so that they would sit in front of their computer for HOURS waiting for someone they like to come online. And the IM system doesn’t always properly work either.

    Jdate is a scam. Period. It’s a site that pretends to be legal, but in fact is taking advantage of many Jewish singles and cheating them out of their money, offering nothing to the vast 98% of people who signed up.

    Advice: Stay away from these crooks!

    This is one of the worst sites out there, membership is not as high as you might want to believe, as the majority of profiles of deserters stay up there, so you think the website is actually a huge repository of Jews… but it isn’t. It’s a history book.