Millions with dating traps | How a Swiss network of companies is exploiting Europe’s singles | Five companies based in the canton of Zug are depriving lonely people of their money with hundreds of dating sites. | European Investigative Collaborations (EIC)

by BezugssystemCH1903

6 comments

  1. Title taken from the preview, as this is an interactive story.

    Article in German

    >Impressum:

    >__SRF Investigative__

    >__Storytellingd-Desk__

    >__Research series “Dirty Payments”__

    >This investigation is part of the investigative series “Dirty Payments”, which was conducted by 21 international media under the coordination of the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) network. It is based on confidential documents and data obtained by EIC and Der Spiegel.

    >__Participating media:__ Mediapart (France), Der Spiegel (Germany), NRC (Netherlands), Le Soir and De Standaard (Belgium), Reporters United (Greece), Expresso (Portugal), InfoLibre (Spain), Politiken (Denmark), VG (Norway) – all members of EIC -, TBIJ and ITV News (United Kingdom), SRF and Die Wochenzeitung (Switzerland), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), Snoop. ro (Romania), TVN24 (Poland), 24.hu (Hungary), HlídacíPes.org (Czech Republic), Drop Site News (USA) and Toronto Star (Canada).

    >Coordination:__ Stefan Candea (EIC), Yann Philippin (Mediapart), Sven Becker (Der Spiegel)

    >__Data analysis:__ Yann Philippin (Mediapart), Konstantina Maltepioti (Reporters United), Christoph Winterbach (Der Spiegel) and Rik Wassens (NRC)

  3. Ah yeah, once again Zug’s tax incentives result in our entire country looking bad…

  4. Nothing good has ever come from monetizing love in a way or another

  5. Wow, an internet scam for adult people. Zero empathy. Put it on Zug, yes. Like having a company registered in Zürich would be any different. 

    The money gaming companies lure out of kids – that should be something to talk about. 

  6. I saw the video report yesterday. One of the interesting parts about it was that apparently the Swiss branch of Worldline (credit card company) allows those companies to receive payments whereas this isn’t the case in other countries anymore.

    Apparently companies like Worldline charge massively elevated fees for certainy types of businesses. According to the motto: “if you’re a shady business we’ll still collect payments for you, but we want a higher share of your shady revenue”. IIRC in the video it was said that those dating scam pages pay up to 9% fees to Worldline.

Comments are closed.