Cyber-dating? Think again

Consumer attorney Neil B. Fineman charges the dating service e-mailed bogus love notes to lonely bachelors in effort to get them to pony up the $25-a-month membership fee. While men can post profiles on the site for free, they must pay to reply to messages from prospective dates.

The lawsuit claims that bogus e-mails with photos of beautiful women were sent to men asking them for a reply or for a date. Once the men paid their membership fee and e-mailed the women, they never heard back.

The plaintiff in the suit, a 35-year-old paralegal, says he was suckered into paying the membership fee after he received a stream of e-mails with photos of attractive women.

Representatives of the website did not return e-mails and phone calls seeking comment. To prove his client’s contention, Fineman says he concocted a handful of cyber straw men — false profiles of men he believed no woman would want to be involved with.

They were the Internet’s most ineligible bachelors, he said: hard-drinking, fat and out-of-work men.

Their goal, he stated in their profiles, was to meet rich beautiful women who would support them. The offers came rolling in. ‘‘You sound HOT!’’ stated one reply, which included a photo of an attractive woman in a bikini. ‘‘I have a never-ending amount of money that my parents left me and would like to spend it on you. We can vacation year round and stay drunk the whole time. Please say you will meet me.’’

In some cases, the plaintiff’s made-up profiles generated identical replies, although the names and photos were different, the lawyer said. Fineman’s client is identified in court papers only as E.A.B.; he did not use his full name, he said in an interview, because he’s embarrassed about his predicament. He will be required by the court to identify himself once the case goes to depositions — if it is not settled before then. (LATWP)