God, that's awful. Thank you for sharing. I'm sorry for you and especially the women involved.
It's horrible to think that my photos are being used for this and there's nothing I can do about it. Even if I cover myself legally, people are still going to be victimized. I hope I never have to involve the police.
Thank you. I hadn't considered legal options. I would prefer not to have a public lawsuit attached to my name -- I know, that's the point, but I don't want to call attention to this.
I'm thinking about doing something private but formalized, like having a lawyer send a letter to OKCupid summarizing recent events and demanding they take down profiles impersonating me. I could share that letter with my (new) employer if another victim ever contacted them directly. I know it wouldn't really prove anything, but it might be convincing to HR. Last time, the HR representative didn't seem to believe me, which definitely made me feel terrible and theoretically could have affected my career.
Thank you for the recommendation! I'm having trouble phrasing a warning in a way that's clear to a scam victim, without seeming weird or off-putting to business contacts. It's somewhat upsetting to think about this too much, which may be why I'm struggling.
Somebody is impersonating me on dating sites and blackmailing women. They convince their victims to send nude photos, and then they threaten to send the photos to their families. The scammer (or scammers) use photos of me that used to be publicly available on social media. They also use my real name, presumably so that the victims see a legitimate LinkedIn profile when they google "me".
Years ago, I got called to a meeting with my work's Human Resources department. The victim had looked me up and emailed my company. HR told me that "I" had to stop doing this. When I realized what had happened, I knew that I couldn't do anything to make it stop. Thankfully HR didn't take any action, but the whole time I worked there I had low-level background anxiety that another victim would contact them.
Last month, a different victim messaged me on LinkedIn because she was suspicious of "my" profile on OKCupid. She sent me screenshots of the profile and messages. The scammer used obviously non-native english, so at least there's some credible evidence that it's not actually me.
I've only become aware of the two incidents above, but I'm sure there are many other victims. I emailed OKCupid to ask them to block the impersonator, but I don't know if they can even stop him from re-registering, and there are other dating sites. I no longer have recent photos publicly available, and I've locked down all social media, but I don't want to delete my LinkedIn.
What else can I do? Has anyone else had something like this happen to them?