TRUE filed suit against a convicted felon and registered sex offender from California who applied for membership with TRUE and accessed TRUE’s database in violation of our policies. The dispute was resolved by agreement, the terms of which require the sex offender to: (1) cancel his existing memberships and refrain from using TRUE.com and other companies in the online dating and relationship industry; (2) complete a community service obligation; and (3) pay damages to TRUE.

The offender was convicted in California in 2001 of attempted lewd and lascivious acts with a child under 14 years – which is a felony. Press coverage at the time quoted law enforcement officials as saying that he allegedly planned to “abduct and rape” his underage victim.

Upon discovering the offender's felony history, TRUE took immediate action to increase its members’ safety, reporting him to appropriate authorities and taking the unprecedented step of filing suit.

TRUE filed suit against the sex offender in United States District Court. TRUE believes that by falsely representating himself, he violated both federal and state law.

TRUE also believes that the man violated federal wire fraud laws when he falsely represented himself to TRUE and its members as a non-felon.

“When I founded this company, I made a commitment to our members that we would do our best to create a wholesome environment for courtship – one that includes a safer dating experience,” said Herb Vest, founder and CEO of Dallas-based TRUE. “As part of that commitment, we continue to lead the industry by implementing criminal background and marital certification to help weed out potentially dangerous individuals. According to the Department of Justice’s Criminal Offender Statistics, approximately 67.5 percent of convicted criminals released from prison are rearrested for a felony or serious crime, making criminal background screening a must for the online dating industry. Our criminal background screening covers approximately 94% of all U.S. felonies and over 170 million criminal records, but it cannot catch every criminal. This is why background screening is simply the first step toward increasing the safety of our members. Our member safety program also relies heavily on feedback from our members, who we encourage to directly report suspicious persons or activity on our website.”

Some United States jurisdictions restrict access to criminal conviction data, which prevents many companies from locating complete criminal history information when they choose to run a background screening. For example, the California statewide sex offender registry is not available to businesses such as True.com. This lack of access to complete records made it more difficult to discover that the individual in question was a felony sex offender, since his crime occurred in a jurisdiction that does not allow companies to access his conviction information.

“It is sad the State of California maintains laws that actually protect the privacy of criminals,” Vest said. “I would like to see convicted felony records opened to the public in all jurisdictions to better protect our consumers and our children.”

TRUE became aware of the man's sex offender status when a TRUE.com member, who requested to remain anonymous for this story, directly contacted the company. TRUE took her concern seriously, promptly investigated the claim and quickly removed the offender’s profile from the website.  

“We prominently warn consumers that if they misrepresent their criminal history or marital status for the purpose of gaining access to communication privileges with our subscribers, they could be subject to civil and criminal penalties under federal and state law,” said Vest. "There is a new sheriff in town, and we mean what we say in our warnings. I challenge the rest of the online relationship and dating industry to follow our lead and show a similar concern for their members’ safety.”

TRUE, which since its inception has been a strong advocate of safer online dating, is a member of the Safer Online Dating Alliance (SODA) and continues to lead the industry in pursuing issues to further increase online dating safety. TRUE works with legislators, victim advocacy groups, law enforcement officials and other parties concerned about safety issues to raise awareness of the need for greater consumer protection and public safety in the world of online dating.

TRUE is the only leading relationship service that screens communicating members in the U.S. against one of the largest criminal record databases on the Internet.

TRUE's Member Safety team is dedicated to maintaining an ethical environment for serious singles to meet. Please notify TRUE Security or contact TRUE Customer Care if you suspect that a member is not complying with the member code of ethics or if you have other security concerns or questions.