Surprise, surprise. Not every online dating profile is legitimate, but this story that broke recently in the LA Times is more than a little different.  Recently, an imposter on the dating site www.seekingamillionaire.com  going by the name of “Bree” was caught by authorities for the crime of cheating several men out of their money and for the more serious crime of “identity theft”.

The “fake Bree” created a profile as a model seeking out multiple millionaires on www.seekingmillionaire.com Unfortuantely for the men, the “Bree” who made her profile available on the strange dating site is not actually an 23-year-old aspiring model who has posed for Guess.

Strangely enough, the imposter is a man with a surprisingly high-pitched voice who was able to fool several rich men over the Internet and even the phone. There is a real “Bree Condon” who is actually a model from Newport Beach, but the profile on the dating site was just a big scam.

Bree Condon was definitely the identity-theft victim in this case; her identity was “duplicated” and “misused” for over two years by a con artist managing to amass cash and gifts from rich men, without ever having to meet the men in person. This takes skills- he not only created a different personality using her name, he sent photoshopped nudes of the real Bree with different bodies attached to her head, which I’m quite positive is not allowable on the site.

The real Bree was alerted to the mis-use of her name as rumors circulated about her on the web and hired a PI, who contacted the authorities once he discovered some of the hard truths and they began investigating immediately.

Authorities conducted a sting operation in which they offered to pay for a hotel room for the imposter and then discovered his true identity. They were definitely not expecting a guy-

"I'd been talking to this person for three months," Carbona (the police investigator) said, "I'm telling you this guy has either had his gonads removed or he is talking through a voice synthesizer."

The reality is that people should not be surprised to be ripped off on a dating site designed solely for the purpose of connecting the rich with the beautiful. After all, aren’t gold diggers and rich men supposed to hook up naturally? Is it really necessary to have a web site for that purpose?