Online Dating Dangers: How to protect yourself

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CAPE CORAL, Fla. – Sometimes the search for Mr., or Mrs. Right, can go horribly wrong.

No one knows that better than Mia.  Mia’s accused stalker is currently in Lee County jail and awaiting trial, after the two met online.

Mia, 41, said she met the man on an online dating site. She said the relationship escalated quickly and she asked the man to move to Cape Coral from his home in Illinois.

“In the beginning, he told me everything I wanted to hear,” Mia said.

Do you really know who you’re dating? Mia (see below) didn’t. She met “Mr. Right,” online, but her fairy tale became a nightmare when she found out about his violent past. TONIGHT AT SIX, I show you the free steps you can take, to protect yourself.*NOTE: Mia has asked us to hide her face.

Posted by Sam Smink WINK News on Thursday, February 11, 2016

Their relationship quickly took a turn for the worse shortly after the man moved in with Mia. The man was arrested for failing to register as a sex offender. She called it quits.

“I was horrified and petrified,” Mia said. “I never expected that I would even be seeing him again. Before I knew it, he was back on the street and at my doorstep.”

Mia said the man was released from jail and began to harass her. She got as many as 70 messages from the man daily. In those texts, he detailed how if he could not have her no one could.

“His behavior was erratic and scary. Life was very scary. I was living in fear,” Mia said. “I was a prisoner in my own home.”

Mia would discover more disturbing details about the man she once loved, at his court hearing for the stalking arrest. Turns out, the man had a long criminal past of domestic violence in Illinois.

“The list continued and it continued and it continued. I wanted to vomit,” Mia said.

Mia, a former law enforcement worker, said she had never thought to check into the man’s background.

“It’s very easy, when you are single for so long, to want to trust your heart and believe in somebody. I went with my heart, instead of my head, and it was a huge mistake,” she said.

In the United States, 25 percent of couples meet online, but many sites do not conduct background checks on their members.

There are many free ways to get information about a person: the federal inmate locator, the Florida Department of Corrections website, and clerk of courts’websites, if the person’s first, last name and county of residence is known. Officials say, do not be afraid to ask for this information.

The first two sites will bring up information about whether the person was ever in prison. On clerk of court websites, you can find things like criminal history and traffic tickets.

Most states also have sex offender search websites.

For more thorough and wider searches, hiring a private investigator is also an option. Keith Perry of ARQC Investigations said he can find out a lot of information about a person.

“I get their background, vehicles, when they live, if they have foreclosures, judgments, liens, restraining orders, I get everything,” Perry said.

Perry said he can get driver’s license information and even neighbor’s numbers. People use his services to check on people they meet online or in person, Perry said. He said for a small fee, people can avoid an experience like Mia’s.

“For $45, it can save you a lot of trouble down the road,” Perry said.

As For Mia, she said she won’t blindsided ever again. She plans on spending time and money looking into any future partner’s background.

Dating sites like eHarmony, Match, JDate and Christian Mingle screen for sexual assault and identity theft conviction, but a lot of other states do not do background checks.

Some states require a dating website to include that information so users know whether they will need to do their own homework.

If you want to do your own homework, here’s a list of local/state websites that can help:

  • Lee County Clerk of Courts, for criminal background, financials, etc. http://www.leeclerk.org/
  • Collier County Clerk of Courts: https://www.collierclerk.com/
  • Charlotte County Clerk of Courts: http://www.co.charlotte.fl.us/Default.aspx
  • FDLE Florida Sex Offender Search: http://bit.ly/1o4j6F9
  • Federal Inmate Locator: http://www.bop.gov/inmateloc/
  • Google Image Search: https://images.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl
  • Lee County Property Appraiser: http://www.leepa.org/
  • Florida Department of Corrections: http://www.dc.state.fl.us/

For background checks out of state, try to learn the city or county that person is from, and look up their county clerk’s site.

A private investigator, like Keith Perry, can also get nationwide searches done easily. Keith Perry is at ARQC Investigations, and can be reached at 239-253-1180.

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