WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Federal Trade Commission has filed a complaint against Match Group, Inc., the owner of Match.com, PlentyOfFish, Tinder, OKCupid and other dating sites, alleging that “the company used fake love interest advertisements to trick hundreds of thousands of consumers into purchasing paid subscriptions on Match.com,” among other violations.

“We believe that Match.com conned people into paying for subscriptions via messages the company knew were from scammers,” said Andrew Smith, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, in a press release issued Wednesday. “Online dating services obviously shouldn’t be using romance scammers as a way to fatten their bottom line.”

In its complaint, the FTC alleges that since “at least 2013,” Match maintained five “deceptive or unfair practices to induce consumers to subscribe to Match.com and to keep them subscribed.”

“First, until mid-2018, Defendant sent consumers misleading advertisements that tout communications from persons Defendant identified as potentially fraudulent users of Match.com and led consumers to believe that the communications are from persons interested in establishing a dating relationship with them,” the FTC stated in its complaint. “Second, until mid-2018, Defendant exposed consumers to the risk of fraud by providing recent subscribers access to communications that Defendant knew were likely to have been sent by persons engaging in fraud.”

The FTC also alleged that until the middle of this year, Match “guaranteed certain consumers a free six-month subscription renewal if they fail to ‘meet someone special’ but failed to disclose the requirements of its ‘guarantee’ adequately.”

Match also allegedly “misled consumers with a confusing and cumbersome cancellation process that causes consumers to believe they have canceled their subscriptions when they have not” and until the middle of 2019, “when consumers disputed charges relating to any of these practices and lose the dispute, Defendant denied consumers access to paid-for services.”

In its complaint, the FTC also depicted Match’s various dating services and platforms as hotbeds of third-party fraud – fraud the FTC alleges Match knew about and didn’t take measures to stop.

“Between 2013 and at least mid-2018, consumers who were considering purchasing a Match.com subscription were generally not aware that as many as 25-30 percent of Match.com members who registered each day were using Match.com to perpetrate scams,” the FTC alleged in its complaint. “These scams include romance scams, stealing consumers’ personal information through ‘phishing,’ promoting dubious or unlawful products or services, and extortion scams, in which a scammer will induce a consumer to send the scammer compromising videos or pictures of the consumer that the scammer then uses to extort money from the consumer by threatening to send the materials to the consumer’s friends or family.”

According to the FTC’s complaint, even in the instances in which Match had removed a member because of suspected fraud, the company didn’t notify consumers of that suspicion, or inform consumers the member they received a message from had been deleted for that reason.

“When consumers subscribe to view these communications, they either gain access to the fraudulent communication or receive a notification stating that the profile that sent the communication is ‘unavailable,’” the FTC stated in its complaint. “This outcome depends upon whether consumers subscribe to Match.com before or after Defendant completes its fraud review process: if the consumer subscribes before the review is completed, the consumer receives the communication that was sent; if Defendant has already completed its review process and deleted the account as fraudulent before the consumer subscribes, the consumer will receive a notification that the profile is ‘unavailable.’”

The FTC added that in “numerous instances, Defendant has not notified consumers that the Match.com users contacting them were removed from Match.com due to the high likelihood that these users were seeking to defraud consumers.”

“When consumers contact Defendant to complain about subscribing to Match.com only to receive a notification that a sender’s account is ‘unavailable,’ Defendant has replied, ‘Please be assured, Match.com does not send members misleading notifications, e-mails or winks professing romantic interest. We have too much respect for our members to ever compromise their trust. If you have received communications from members with profiles that are not immediately available, the member may have temporarily hidden their profile.’”

In its complaint, the FTC faulted Match for the practice of continuing to deliver messages from users the company already suspected to be engaged in fraud pending the completion of an internal fraud review, stating that without this practice, “the vast majority of these fraud-flagged Match.com users would never have been able to contact their intended recipients.”

“Between June 2016 and the beginning of May 2018, for example, approximately 87.8 percent of accounts whose messages Defendant withheld were later confirmed by Defendant to be fraudulent,” the FTC added in its complaint.

In its complaint, the FTC also zeroed in on what the Commission called Match’s “use of deceptive guarantees” in marketing its services and sites.

“Until mid-2019, consumers who visit the Match.com website were offered a ‘match GUARANTEE’ if they purchased a six-month subscription,” the FTC stated in its complaint, noting that while the offer didn’t disclose that the guarantee is subject to any additional terms or conditions, a “learn more” link led to a rules page which listed several requirements the consumer had to satisfy to receive the guarantee.

“Consumers who continued reading after the numbered list of requirements would find that Defendant’s website included a ‘progress page’ tracking their compliance with the guarantee’s rules that consumers must access to comply with the offer’s terms,” the FTC stated in its complaint. “Consumers who view the progress page were reminded that they were required to create a public profile with a photograph and to start a conversation with at least five Match.com members each month, but not that they must provide an approved photo within the first seven days of subscribing or that the members they contact must be subscribers.”

Consumer confusion as to how they could establish and maintain eligibility for the guarantee led to a major discrepancy between the number of subscribers who were potentially subject to the guarantee, compared to the number who tried to redeem it.

“Between 2013 and 2016, consumers purchased nearly 2.5 million subscriptions subject to the guarantee but only received 32,438 free six-month subscription packages during the same period,” the FTC said in its complaint. “In contrast, Defendant billed nearly 1 million consumers who purchased a guarantee for an additional six-month package when the first six-month period expired.”

In its complaint, the FTC asked the court to enter a permanent injunction to prevent future violations of the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (“ROSCA”); award monetary civil penalties from Match for every violation of ROSCA; award “such relief as the Court finds necessary to redress injury to consumers resulting from Defendant’s violations of the FTC Act and ROSCA;” and to award to the FTC “the costs of bringing this action, as well as such other and additional relief as the Court may determine to be just and proper.”

The FTC press release can be read here. The FTC’s full complaint against Match is available here.