“No, we don’t just simply take any particular actions to avoid it,” said OkCupid co-founder and CEO Sam Yagan whenever I asked just just what he did to keep people like Dan from making use of his web site as a target referral service. “I think about us as being a bar that is local with a cross-section of most types of people. I’d instead everyone have a ‘buyer beware’ mindset. Every web site has bad and the good individuals.” OkCupid doesn’t have policy needing users to utilize genuine names, let alone criminal record checks, Yagan states, because any actions they might just just take to validate users’ identification could possibly be misinterpreted as a sign they most certainly are not that they are vouching for people—which.

The 40 dollars Dan took Leong for had been absolutely nothing when compared to $50,000 he ripped faraway from a restaurant consultant I’ll call Anthony.

Anthony had been just setting up a small business revamping restaurants in July 2010 as he came across Dan. “He had been the absolute most guy that is amazing the planet,” Anthony claims. “He had been captivating. They can look you dead within the attention and just take you over.” In which he had been a chef with a by having a pedigree that is flawless. Anthony asked Dan to participate the continuing company being a partner. He called Dan’s sources first, plus they all vouched for him. Anthony later discovered that the references Dan listed had been individuals fine friend finder who had worked with all the Dan that is real Kay.

The initial flag that is red up whenever Dan proposed a unique menu for a customer in Hoboken, nj-new jersey. “The restaurant ended up being impressed with him because he labored on Chopped and Hell’s Kitchen,” Anthony claims. “But I Googled several of dishes he proposed, and additionally they had been on multilple web sites. One had been from Emeril Lagasse.” Whenever Anthony asked that he had sold the recipes to various web sites, and that he’d helped Emeril develop one of them about it, Dan explained. However it ended up beingn’t well before Anthony realised he had been in severe difficulty.

“He had no knife abilities, no kitchen area abilities,” Anthony claims. “My stomach had been dropping.”

Anthony began observing mysterious withdrawals from the company account that is checking. “I’d ask him, ‘Why did you may spend this cash?’ He’d say, ‘Oh some groceries were bought by me and sought out to Hoboken to operate on meals.’ I’d ask the restaurant, and they’d say he wasn’t here.” At one point Dan produced wire transfer through the account to a lady that, Anthony later learned, he owed cash to. The bottom dropped out if the owners of the Hoboken restaurant approached Anthony with a sheaf of printed searches that are google Dan Kaufman.

“I stated, ‘Dan, they know,’” Anthony says. “‘I’m sure. You’ll want to let me know the reality.’ He switched nearly see-through white, and began stuttering and fidgeting, and stated, ‘I’m a bad individual, I’m crazy, I’m unwell in the mind.’” Despite being caught, Dan still insisted to Anthony that he had been a cook, and they could nevertheless make their partnership work. Anthony invested the month that is next, and failing, to have their money-back. Amongst the cable transfers, bounced checks, therefore the three Culinary Institute of America pupils whom Dan, unbeknownst to Anthony, had hired as interns at $20 each hour, Anthony was out roughly $50,000. That doesn’t even are the consumers he destroyed. Without getting him thrown in jail though he knew that Dan was on probation, he initially tried to settle it.

Anthony monitored down Dan’s moms and dads to attempt to recover. He quickly discovered that Dan ended up beingn’t raised in Martha’s Vineyard. Diane and Howard Kaufman go on shady street within the Boston suburb that is nondescript of, Mass. Whenever Anthony called, Diane began shrieking at him through the telephone: “Who the fuck have you been? What makes you calling? Daniel just isn’t our obligation! We currently bailed him out once. Usually do not call me personally once again.” I can’t help you when I called while reporting this story, his father answered. I’m sorry.” (I also reached out to Dan’s cousin, whom lives in san francisco bay area. She declined to comment.)

As Anthony tried to save his company, and Dan promised limply to repay him—at one point he deposited $79 into Anthony’s account—he began hearing off their individuals Dan had cheated. The lady in Michigan who’d flown Dan off to consult on her restaurant; he took $5,000 from her. The Los Angeles restaurateur whom shipped away half her menu on dry ice to his apartment after he posed as a prospective investor requesting “samples.” The brokerage company which had provided him $50,000 to get and do not heard from him once again.

Ultimately, he called Dan’s parole officer, but had been told that absolutely absolutely nothing might be done unless criminal fees had been filed.

whenever Anthony attempted to accomplish that, he claims, both the NYPD while the Manhattan District Attorney’s workplace told him that, since Dan had been a partner in the commercial, it had been a matter that is civil. He fundamentally threw in the towel attempting to recover, not before Dan finally broke straight down and admitted to him I don’t know how to cook that he was never a chef. I’ve spent all this work time wanting to convince myself that i really do. I’m a person that is crazy and We need help. I’ve been such as this since I have ended up being kid.”

He wasn’t that way in senior school. Certainly one of Dan’s classmates at Wayland senior high school told me which he had been “a normal, run-of-the-mill kid.” Dan played no activities, he stated. “He had been a lot more of an artsy, drama kid when compared to a jock. Nonetheless it had been a little twelfth grade, in which he ended up being a standard kid.” After graduating school that is high Dan invested a while in Vermont. He filed for bankruptcy here in 1995. One of the creditors that are unpaid Massachusetts Bay Community College. It is confusing exactly what he did utilizing the 12 years amongst the bankruptcy along with his arrival in Brooklyn Heights, but general public documents show he lived in Boston and accumulated significantly more than $80,000 in civil judgements and income tax liens.