Scammer who deceived more than 100 women with promises of romance will be arrested

Patrick Giblin was an American version of the “Tinder scammer” – but without the private jets.

He courted women with stories about his respectable family — his father was a judge, according to him — and his oceanfront estate in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he said he worked in the casino industry, according to a federal criminal complaint. . He told them he was ready to settle down and was more interested in a woman’s inner beauty than her looks.

He swore that distance wasn’t an issue because he had access to discounted flights and was even ready to move to a woman’s town to continue the romance.

But federal authorities say that was all a lie, invented to trick women looking for love through dating sites. A review of plea agreements and federal claims shows that Giblin deceived at least 100 women over two decades, persuading them to pay more than $250,000 with false promises followed by requests for loans from short term that were never paid.

“He preyed on vulnerabilities, promising to end the loneliness of a woman who had recently ended a long-term relationship or soothing someone who had recently suffered the death of a loved one,” said a report from federal prosecutors in New Jersey. “Giblin would convince these women that he was willing to move to their towns, but he needed money to do so.”

Despite convictions and prison time, he continued to defraud women, even after he was caught and twice escaped federal custody.

Prosecutors say Giblin even conned prison women while serving time on similar charges after he became a fugitive for failing to show up at a halfway house in Newark, New Jersey.

But his schemes may finally be over. On Wednesday, a federal judge sentenced Giblin to 66 months in prison for escaping federal custody and a wire fraud charge for being involved in a scheme to defraud women of telephone dating services.

Scams that predated Tinder

Giblin’s scams date back to the early 2000s, authorities said — when he was in his early thirties and long before Tinder, Bumble and other dating apps. He is now 58 years old.

On Lavalife, QuestChat and other dating services, Giblin went by “Pat,” a seemingly charismatic man who assured women that their weight, height and other physical characteristics were not an issue, according to the federal criminal complaint. The complaint said that he created several accounts in his name on dating sites in the United States and Canada.

Prosecutors say he messaged women on the sites, saying he was looking for a long-term relationship with a “real, real, genuine woman” and exchanging phone numbers.

Giblin would then build rapport with the women through lengthy phone conversations before proceeding to ask them for money, according to court documents. He gave them various excuses for financial emergencies, including that his car broke down or that he needed funds to release winnings from a gambling tournament, according to court documents.

His scams predated Venmo, Zelle and other money transfer apps, so he would ask women to send him the money – often several hundred dollars at a time – via MoneyGram or Western Union. Some of the women didn’t know how to use the services, but he explained it to them during the process, according to federal court documents.

Prosecutors say Giblin targeted vulnerable women, including widows, women with physical disabilities and single mothers – at least one had recently lost a child.

“Giblin went after the lonely and heartbroken. He found their weak spots and attacked them when he couldn’t get their money,” Kathy Waters, executive director of the nonprofit organization “Advocating Against Romance Scammers,” told CNN. “Victims are not only abused financially, but also emotionally and psychologically. He is a master manipulator who has deceived an unknown amount of people, as some never came forward.”

Giblin’s public defender, Lori Koch, declined to comment when contacted by CNN.

First arrested in 2005

Giblin’s scams were first exposed after he was charged with extortion in New Jersey for allegedly cheating on a woman in Ohio. That was in March 2005.

After his arrest, the FBI said he used the same phone dating services to scam women across the country for five years before that, court documents show.

At the time, Giblin admitted that over a five-year period he had victimized more than 80 women, according to a federal report. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 115 months in prison. But that was just the beginning.

Waters believes his victim toll is likely much higher because Giblin continued to defraud women well into 2021, and some victims of romance scammers are too embarrassed to come forward.

“The amount of romance scam victims that Giblin has violated in the United States over the years is a number we have never seen linked to a scammer,” Waters said. “Not reporting the crime is common for anyone who has been the victim of a romance scam. Often, scrutiny accompanies reporting, which leads to shame and embarrassment.”

To avoid confusing the women, Giblin kept detailed notes of their activity on the dating services, including victims’ names, their physical descriptions, what they did for a living and the type of men they were looking for, according to the criminal report. The FBI interviewed numerous women who revealed they had sent him money.

As part of a plea deal, Giblin admitted to stealing more than $200,000 from women over the years. In April 2007, he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced to more than nine years in prison.

He was sent to a federal prison in Greenville, Illinois. But his criminal activity did not stop.

Escapes from federal custody in 2012

In late 2012, federal officials placed Giblin in a residential rehabilitation program in Philadelphia. There, he was given a one-day pass to find a job in Atlantic City, but he never returned and became a fugitive, according to the criminal complaint.

A few weeks later, federal authorities found him at an Atlantic City hotel, gambling money off the women he had swindled into phone dating services while on the run, according to court documents. He checked into the hotel under the alias “Michael Patrick”.

A federal agent asked Giblin where he got the money in his possession and whether he had received money from women, and he replied, “There’s a girl I’ve been screwing.”

But a search of his hotel room revealed that there was more than one woman.

Investigators recovered a cellphone, money transfer receipts and notebooks containing a treasure trove of information, including physical descriptions, interests and hobbies of women he interacted with on dating sites while on the run. The women were from across the country, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Carolina, New York and Ohio.

In his notes on a woman, Giblin wrote: “Has a savings account. The house is paid for, so it’s not after money,” federal documents said. He pleaded guilty to escape charges and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

In December 2013, he was released from prison again to supervised release in New Jersey, according to federal documents. As a condition of his release, Giblin was supposed to notify his parole officer of any plans to leave the state, but a federal agent later arrested him at a hotel in Colonie, New York.

While in New York, Giblin used dating sites to meet and defraud more than 10 women in amounts between $15,000 and $40,000, according to court documents.

Eight years later, he escapes again.

Giblin was sentenced in August 2017 to five years in prison and ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars in restitution. But he continued to deceive women while incarcerated in federal prisons in Estill, South Carolina, and Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, according to court records.

In July 2020, he was approved for transfer from the prison in Lewisburg to a residential rehabilitation center in Newark. Federal officials say they escorted him to a plane in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Giblin’s itinerary included a stopover in Charlotte. He never appeared in Newark.

While on the run, Giblin posted messages on phone dating services and continued scamming and taking money from women, according to federal documents. Prosecutors say that between 2019 and 2021 he defrauded about a dozen women out of more than $37,000.

He was arrested in March 2021 in Atlantic City and pleaded guilty this July to wire fraud and fleeing federal custody. In addition to his sentence this week of 66 months in prison, Giblin received three years of supervised release and was ordered to pay restitution of $23,428.

Waters, the advocate for victims of romance scams, said she didn’t think the sentence was harsh enough considering the breadth of Giblin’s crimes — and it just gives her time to devise more ways to deceive women.

“Unfortunately, the counts did not include all the lives he damaged,” she told CNN. “It takes years to heal emotionally, psychologically and financially from these scammers.”