Woman Sued for Bizarre Internet Romance Hoax


Girl meets firefighter. They fall in love. He dies unexpectedly. Girl left with only mementos (a rubber duck with a firefighter hat, a lock of his hair) to remember him. Sound like the plot of a romance novel? Turns out it was says the Chicago Tribune—kind of. Except that the protagonist was a real woman and her star-crossed lover? A fictional man made up in a bizarre Internet hoax by another woman. According to a lawsuit filed by Paula Bonhomme, a woman named Janna St. James used a voice-altering system and fake email addresses to forge a fake identity as Bonhomme’s long-distance boyfriend, whom she’d met on an Internet chat site. Bonhomme is now suing St. James, who has admitted to the bizarre hoax, using a fraudulent misrepresentation claim, which is usually applied only in the context of business law.

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