Man who tricked Tinder dates out of $50,000 with bogus sob stories jailed
They swiped right and he swiped their cash
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Think your Tinder matches have been bad? They've got nothing on Brandon Kiehm, the notorious 'Tinder Swindler' who's now behind bars.
The sentence comes after Kiehm pleaded guilty to conning three women he matched with on the dating app into handing over £50,000 ($37,000)
Creating a profile on the dating app in 2015, Kiehm, who was a dog walker at the time, took fake profiles to a whole new level when he began posing as a Goldman Sachs banker named “Tristan Acocella.”
Weaving his web of lies even further, Kiehm told one date that he needed money desperately for his sister’s cancer treatments. She gave him $14,000.
Another date gave Kiehm $12,000, this time for his mother’s cancer treatments.
Neither Kiehm’s mother nor sister has ever had cancer.
Around the same time, Kiehm also stole $13,000 from a dog walking client by scamming her debit card (we assume it must have been hard to keep up the appearance of a Goldman Sachs banker with a dog walker salary).
Kiehm was arrested in February 2016 and charged with grand larceny, identity theft, and scheme to defraud.
And yet, while on bail during the summer of 2016, Kiehm proved once again why you should never trust men you meet on the internet when he convinced a third Tinder date to give him money.
With no more family members to diagnose with cancer, Kiehm convinced this date he had lost his wallet - and wanted to enter an online poker tournament. She gave him $10,000.
But on Wednesday, in a victory for the women that swiped right on Kiehm, the 37-year-old was handed a two to six-year prison sentence - effectively putting an end to his Tinder use.
Proving his charm doesn't work on judges, the sentence came after Kiehm delivered a statement in a bid for leniency, in which he quoted poetry and "Finding Nemo."
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