How One Con Man Applied OkCupid For Fun, Fraud, And Revenue

Daniel Kay the cook clearly wasn’t working down for Kaufman. Therefore summer that is last he became Dan Kay the internet 2.0 business owner. Their profile that is okCupid to individuals who saw it, had been cleansed of every sources to food. He replaced the pictures of him in kitchen areas with nondescript snowboarding photos. His face had been constantly obscured.

It is ambiguous when CloudMob Media, the advertising that is mobile he’s accused of defrauding, hired him as the main technology officer. The company would not return repeated telephone calls. In accordance with the unlawful grievance filed against him last thirty days, Dan was working at CloudMob in November 2011 as he started fraudulently billing it with respect to a fake specialist:

[D]efendant was employed at Cloud Mob Media, Inc. in November, 2011. [O]n two occasions defendant told informant that defendant will have another person do work for the business, and having said that company then issued checks into the quantity of $16,467.00 and $3,024.61 with other individuals. [S]aid individuals cashed said checks and not did any work with said business.

[S]aid checks had been given to defendant’s girlfriend and defendant’s landlord and…defendant stated in substance I TOOK THE CASH BECAUSE we OWED LEASE ON A HOME IN MONTAUK. I had been ATTEMPTING TO WOW our GIRLFRIEND.

Dan told the crowd he went with in Montauk last summer time he said he had purchased with AOL founder Steve Case that he was the CTO of Netscape, which. He advertised these were in the procedure of rebranding it being a mobile web browser. Before that, he stated, he previously been a programmer at Google. Whenever Tim Armstrong left for AOL, he brought Dan over with him as being a direct report. He explained their affiliation with CloudMob by saying he had employed the company to complete some agreement benefit Netscape.

“All summer time long, he kept saying he was likely to buy someplace on the market,” claims Andrew. “Or lease a spot for per year. Each and every time a home went available on the market, he’d call the realtor.” Kay told their Montauk buddies he played baseball that he went to the University of Oklahoma, where. No record is had by the university’s registrar of the Daniel Kaufman attending. Afterwards, he invested a year playing aaa baseball on a team “on martha’s vineyard or nantucket,” one friend recalls. There are no AAA baseball teams on Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket. He reported to end up being the pitcher that is only AAA-ball history to pitch a no-hitter and nevertheless lose through walks. He continued, he told their friends, to make graduate degrees at both Stanford University as well as the University of California at Berkeley. Neither school taken care of immediately duplicated inquiries confirmation that is seeking.

Dan would plan elaborate worldwide trips and invite associates, buddies state, and then cancel inexplicably during the last minute—even once they had opted in terms of packaging and inoculations that are getting. He talked incessantly of their prowess being a surfer, but nobody ever really saw him into the water. “He’d constantly say he has a bruised rib, or that he’d recently been out really very early that morning,” Andrew says. “One time we had been tossing around a frisbee, and he had no clue how exactly to put it. Which will be odd for the AAA-ball pitcher. I will have known.”

The (since deleted) Facebook profile for Dan Kay—the Montauk variation, perhaps not the chef iteration—was heavy with pictures of searching and beaches, but nevertheless offered no direct proof that he previously ever surfed. Their feed betrayed no fascination with food, but was well-stocked with links to things at Techmeme as well as other web sites that a main technology officer might read.

Probably the many strange part of Dan Kaufman’s numerous lies may be the a very important factor he had been really doing. He told friends in Montauk which he had been founding, being a part project, a fresh network that is social Voutliers. The theory behind Voutliers, perversely enough, would be to produce a network that would rank people by their trustworthiness. It’s motto is “VOW to Trust,” and according for this advertising presentation (for “Voutliers Coroporation”), it might allow individuals to “trust in individuals once again by sharing unique characteristics of you to ultimately reliable packages of people.”

Voutliers would work by charging you users a cost to “vouch” for new people, which may fundamentally incentivise them to invite just people that are trustworthy the community. The site’s advertising materials say, “to generate credibility. it is an easy method”

Daniel Kaufman had literally established company using the goal of protecting the web from individuals like himself.

Plus it was not—at least con that is entirely—a. Voutliers was integrated within the continuing state of the latest York in March 2011. Its initial agent that is registered Joseph Toombs, a top college mentor in Mamaroneck, N.Y. Its current authorized representative is Marcus Siotkas, a guidance therapist at a unique Rochelle senior high school; their listed address is Kaufman’s apartment into the economic region. Neither guy came back repeated telephone calls. The business seemingly have put some work into increasing financing. In accordance with its internet site, Voutliers is planned to launch the following month.

It’s not yet determined how CloudMob found out who Dan Kay really had been, or which he ended up being stealing through the business. He had been fired in November and relocated off to the Montauk household forever, explaining to a few of their buddies which he ended up being going right through some “personal issues.” The NYPD’s warrant unit took the long drive out to the eastern end of Long Island to arrest him on Jan. 26, 2012 after much cajoling.

Their lawyer, Sharyn Henry of this ny County Defender Services, claims Dan is waiting for indictment by a grand jury—he had been arrested on the energy of a criminal complaint—and may face more costs. Expected them, she said, “Everyone is eligible to plead not liable, and we’ll work from here. if he intends to fight” His next hearing, an arraignment, is planned for Feb. 28. Dan will probably be residing in prison until then, and probably longer, she says: “I don’t expect him to create bail.”

In the request of some people I talked to because of this story, online dating iceland whom consented to provide information only regarding the condition which they never be told they have been connected with Kaufman, we now have turned down commenting with this post. Me know and I’ll follow up if you have had run-ins with Dan Kay, Dan Katze, or any other version of Dan Kaufman, please let.

This post initially showed up at Gawker.Gawker may be the high-brow gossip sheet addressing news, entertainment, politics and technology.