From scam guys to cam girls, it’s a wicked world for people looking for love online.
Just look at cyber villain du jour, a lousy liar named Daejon Love who allegedly conned at least 26 victims out of more than $1.3 million. How? He posed as a romance-starved player for the San Francisco 49ers.
But a new online platform called Stud or Dud, which launched last week, is promising less Daejon Love and more actual love, or at least a fighting chance at it.
Launched by public-records company PeopleFinders, the website lets interested parties do a simple, free background check on their wannabe Romeos — including address history, bankruptcies and other publicly available records.
The site aims to simplify the pre-date sleuthing ritual familiar to most singles by putting all public records in one place, by also adding context to the material like compatibility read outs and color coding information with red and green flags. It’s your own little black book.
Of course, you could still simply Google someone, and sift through pools of scattered links that may also turn up some false user generated information, a company rep told The Post.
“Records give you context, not certainty,” PeopleFinders CEO Amber Higgins told The Post. “It’s less ‘trust, then verify,’ and more ‘verify, then trust.’”
Before a first date, the standard vetting process for a potential romantic partner typically went as follows: send his dating profile to the group chat, where your best friend deploys the finsta for career-level private investigator work.
Comb through tagged photos. Check LinkedIn for employment. Search Facebook forums like “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” — all in an attempt to verify that your 7:00 pm drinks aren’t the beginning of an elaborate dating scam.
As online dating became the default way people meet, Higgins told the Post she kept hearing the same story.
“Someone got burned by a match who wasn’t who they claimed to be, and there was no easy, trustworthy way to check. Stud or Dud came out of that, taking the public-records expertise we’ve built over two decades and putting it into something built specifically for how people actually date.”
Shockingly, a recent survey found that 1 in 4 Americans reported interacting with a fake profile or AI bot, while 15% reported losing money to an online dating or romance scam. And 21% of men and 10% of women surveyed reported losing money to an online romance scam.
Even if you’ve posed yourself as an off-duty detective, Google and social media deep-dives aren’t solid means of verification.
Higgins explains that often, people assume that if someone has an active Instagram or a search result that looks normal, they’re legitimate. But photos, bios and follower counts can all be staged or borrowed from someone else entirely.
So your besties’ finsta may not cut it anymore.
“Social platforms were never built to verify identity, employment, or financial history, so someone can look completely real online while hiding a very different story,” Higgins explained.
She said the polished profile isn’t the only risk — it’s everything that comes after it.
“Watch for someone who won’t get on a video call, who has inconsistent details about their job or where they live, or who moves the relationship forward unusually fast,” she recommended while noting that any financial urgency is a major red flag.
“If money comes up before you’ve met in person, that’s a moment to pause, not lean in.”
As background checks become less taboo and more of a pre-dating rite of passage, your group chat may have the backup it needs.
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