Adam Swartz
Scammers using Grindr to target gay men for money
Tammye Nash | Managing Editor
nash@dallasvoice.com
It shouldn’t be news to anyone that Grindr and similar apps can be dangerous for gay men.
Last December, three men were attacked and robbed after being lured through Grindr to a vacant apartment in the Pleasant Grove area. Something similar happened in the Aubrey/Frisco/Plano area in January and February 2017, when suspects ranging in age from 18 to 21 used Grindr to find gay men to assault.
But the app is being used to target gay men in other, perhaps less violent but no less damaging ways as well.
Dallas attorney Adam Swartz this week warned of scammers using Grindr to target gay men and extort money by later claiming to be underage and threatening to turn the men into police. And this isn’t the first time Dallas Voice has heard of this scam.
Swartz said his client had contacted him about three weeks ago “in an absolute panic. He told me, ‘I don’t know what to do. I just gave these people $800. I think I made a huge mistake.’”
Swartz’s client (referred to from here on in this story as “the client” to protect his identity), said he had communicated through Grindr with someone calling himself “Sam,” who said he was 20 years old and had a girlfriend, so he had to be “discrete.”
After the two had exchanged photos, however, the client was quickly contacted via text and by phone by a woman claiming to be “Sam’s” mother, who told the client that her son was in fact a 15-year-old high school student who had just gotten caught showing friends at school the nude photos the client had sent him on Grindr.
“He [Sam] sent me a nude photo supposedly of himself. I stupidly sent him two nude photos of me, one that showed my face,” the client told Dallas Voice. “I thought I was talking to a 20-year-old guy. I had no reason to think I was dealing with some underage kid.”
Grindr’s terms of use require users to be at least 18 years old.
The client said that the woman, who called herself Lisa Wright, sent texts claiming that she had been contacted by school officials and was on her way to talk to them, and threatening to “put the laws on you if you cannot call back and settle this like a grown-ass man.”
She also demanded, via text that he “give me a call ASAP before this gets worse,” and threatened to contact police “unless you call me in 10 minutes to discuss this situation.”
The client said that when he spoke to the woman on the phone, she said the school had kicked her son out, that she had not known her son was gay, and that she was sending him to some sort of rehabilitation camp in East Texas because she did not want him in her house anymore. She then demanded that the client send her money to pay to send her son to the camp.
“At first she said it was $1,250. Then she told me to send her $1,000,” he said, noting that she instructed him to use various apps to send the money, none of which he was familiar with and all of which failed to work for one reason or another. He finally wired the $800 through WalMart.
Even more frightening, the client said, was the fact that the woman “knew everything about me when she called.” She had photos of him, knew where he lived and where he worked. She also knew the names of two of his three sisters and where they lived. And she was threatening to show the nude photos and the Grindr conversations to his family and his boss if he didn’t pay.
The client said the woman called him repeatedly, demanding money and each time giving him deadlines to pay up before she went to police or shared the photos and information with his family.
“She told me, ‘This is not a joking matter. You don’t have very long to call me so I can solve this problem,’” he said. “It really hit me like a ton of bricks. I mean, she knew everything there is to know about me. But I know nothing about her, and I don’t know if there really is a 15-year-old boy.”
Swartz said that as soon as his client contacted him and told him what was happening, “My partner and I recognized it for what it was. We told him, don’t worry about it. We jumped in then, and we texted [the scammers], told them we know what’s going on and that they needed to stop immediately.”
Swartz said he warned the scammers that they were guilty of fraud for “creating and dispersing” a fake profile and then try to scam money from his client.
But the woman was persistent, he said, and when she didn’t stop calling or texting, he started asking very direct questions, such as what school her son had attended.
“She hung up on us then,” he said.
While the calls and the texts stopped, the scammers had one more trick up their sleeve, the client said. He said he was on his way back to work last Thursday when, as he was walking to the door of his workplace, a very tall young man who appeared to be in his 20s approached him, carrying two cell phones.
“I’ve never seen this man before. But he walked up to me and asked if I was Craig. When I said yes, he said, ‘My mom and I have come to collect the extra $400 you owe us. You promised my mom $1,200, and you only gave her $800. We want the rest.’
“I told him that he could contact my lawyer if he wanted, but I wasn’t paying him any more money,” the client said. At that point, the man said he was going to get his “mother” from the car and that they would go into the client’s workplace and talk to his boss. The client said that he had by this time explained to his boss some of what was going on, so when the man threatened him, “I told him, that’s fine. Go ahead.”
The man walked away then “but they never came back. Still, that’s when it really hit me. I’m a mark! They got money, but they just don’t give up!”
Swartz said he had contacted police and talked to them about the situation, and they told him “our client is not in any danger of being charged with anything.
They said this is something they have seen before.”
He said that a police detective told him “this was the first time he’s heard of somebody running one of these scams who was stupid enough to actually, physically show up” to demand money. But because they did, and because nearby security cameras got video footage of the man and woman, police have “some real workable leads” to go on.
“Either these two just don’t care about the consequences, or they are just ignorant enough to show up,” Swartz said. “Either of those options can be dangerous. If they show up, things can turn bad quickly.”
Another Dallas man said he, too, had recently been targeted in a similar scam. After communicating through Grindr with someone claiming to be 18 and then exchanging photos, he said, he was contacted by someone claiming to be the young man’s father and saying that the person with whom he had exchanged photos was actually only 15.
This man said he was on his way to get money from his account when he decided to talk to a friend, who then told him not to send the money and not to communicate further with the scammers.
That, Swartz said, is the best advice: “Don’t give them the money. As soon as you do, they are going to be relentless until you give them more.”
The first thing to do, he continued, is to “call your attorney. That’s the person who can give you the best advice. That’s also the person who can contact the police for you, just to make sure you are protected. And completely disengage with those folks. Ignore them, and under no circumstances should you hand over any money.
“We don’t want to give these folks an excuse to show up,” he said. “If you give a mouse a cookie, it’s gonna want some milk.”
