700 Men Turn Up For Sex After Fake Grindr Profiles Turn Man's Life Into "Living Hell"
A New York man is suing Grindr after his ex-boyfriend allegedly impersonated him on the dating app in order to lure men to his home to harass him.
Matthew Herrick says the trouble started in October 2015, when his former partner, who he met on Grindr, made several fake profiles of him on the app.
Men began showing up at his apartment and at the Midtown restaurant where he worked, all under the assumption that they'd be hooking up with him. At first, it was only two or three suitors a day, but the numbers soon swelled to eight or nine.
Eventually, the ex started giving Herrick's number to users, who then bombarded his phone with texts and X-rated photographs.
In the weeks that followed, Herrick says the tone of the spoofed profiles began to change, marking him as interested in rough, unprotected sex as well as in orgies and drugs. The new aggressive vibe attracted an increasingly assertive and, at times, violent group of visitors.
According to the suit, one particularly dangerous altercation involved Herrick and a man who'd come to his apartment to enact a rape fantasy he'd discussed with one of the fake profiles. In their exchange before the meetup, the man was told that Herrick would "say no when he means yes," which led the man to attack Herrick when he was asked to leave his home.
“They were setting him up to be sexually assaulted,” Herrick’s attorney Carrie Goldberg told Wired. “It’s just luck that it hasn’t happened yet.”
While Herrick's complaint points to a specific ex-boyfriend as the person behind the profiles, the subject of the lawsuit is Grindr for refusing to respond to any one of the 50 calls Herrick has made about the situation.
“A malicious user is just running amok using their product as a weapon,” says Goldberg. “Grindr can control that, and they’re not.”
Herrick estimates that over the past year and a half, nearly 700 men have attempted to solicit sex from him after interacting with the spoofed profiles.
Even after a judge signed an injunction Friday to force Grindr to block the fake profiles, they have yet to go away—Herrick says that at least 24 men have come to his home and work since then.
“My entire life has been stolen from me. My privacy has been taken from me. I’m humiliated daily," he said. “It’s a living hell.”