Duped singleton sues dating site

A woman has filed suit against a dating company alleging she was tricked into a relationship with a man who claimed to be a company CEO, but who in fact was a married unemployed man, 10 years younger than her.　

Xiao Fang (pseudonym), a single postgraduate, registered on dating website baihe.com in 2010. She connected with a man named Jiang Haifeng who claimed to be rich, and said he owned many apartments.

"I trusted him because I thought he was a verified member of Baihe," Xiao told the Global Times Monday.

Baihe's rules state that for members to be "verified" they should provide three types of documentation, including an ID card or driving license.

"Baihe said Jiang's documents are real. But his information is different from what he put on the website," she said.

Xiao became pregnant with Jiang's child in 2011, and is now raising the baby alone.

She confirmed that she discovered Jiang was married and was only educated to high school level, instead of being a Tsinghua University graduate when she visited his hometown in Taixing, Jiangsu Province.

"I'm angry with Baihe because when I discovered his information was fake, they were slow to respond and didn't give me an explanation, just an automated e-mail reply," she said.

Lan He, Xiao's lawyer, said Xiao is asking for 500,000 yuan ($80,150) in compensation, as Baihe failed in its duty of care to its customer as it did not properly verify the identification information provided.

"If you have registered on Baihe, there is a contract between the company and the registered members," he said.

"The truth is that only his gender is correct. Even his age is wrong. Baihe totally failed in its duty to verify a member's information," said Lan.

Chaoyang district court has accepted the case, said court media officer Liu Qizhi.

Li Li, media officer from Baihe, told the Global Times Monday it always tries to guarantee the authenticity of members' information.

"But our capability to examine a user's identity is limited due to the restriction of the Internet technology as well as the government's level of openness of online information," said Li.

"For instance, we can't check marital status, because the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau doesn't have the information uploaded online," Li said.

Xiang Jun, a marketing officer for zhenai.com, an online website providing dating services, confirmed that it is hard for Internet companies to verify customers' information.

"It's easy to fake documents, and we lack effective ways to authenticate these documents," said Xiang.

Jiang was sentenced to four and a half years in jail for fraud in August 2012, after criminal charges were filed against him, said Xiao.