'Protect your wallet and your heart,' warns woman after finding Ontario beau's romance scam links
CBC
A man from Waterloo region in Ontario who was found guilty of scamming multiple women out of over a reported $150,000 some 15 years ago is once again facing fraud charges — after one of his former flames took the investigation into her own hands.
In 2006, Jivesh Jagota was dubbed the Online Casanova and convicted of defrauding a dozen local women, according to the Waterloo Region Record newspaper.
The crimes followed a similar pattern: Jagota would meet women on the dating site Plenty of Fish and reportedly bilk them out of thousands, often while pretending to be a lawyer, medical resident or university student, the newspaper said.
At the time, he was given a three-year sentence.
Today, Jagota is in legal hot water for allegedly defrauding a Woodstock woman of $6,800 in 2015.
Woodstock police confirmed they received a fraud report in April 2016 and arrested Jagota roughly six years later, in January 2022.
Why the long lag?
A woman named Anna, who dated Jagota between March 2019 and April 2020, says she pushed police to enforce the longstanding warrant after she hired a private investigator who discovered the outstanding charges against him. CBC News is keeping Anna's full name confidential over safety concerns.
"I want him to be accountable," she said.
Jagota's lawyer, Nick Cake, told CBC his client "recently became aware" of an outstanding warrant for his arrest. Jagota was "released from the station by the officer in charge after turning himself in," Cake said in an email.
"The matter is actively moving through court and any comments about the facts alleged would not be appropriate at this time," Cake said in an email.
None of the latest allegations have been proven in court.
Anna said she, too, was a victim of Jagota's — though she knew him as a lawyer named Jay Singh. They connected on Plenty of Fish, met for coffee and immediately hit it off, she said.
"Things moved really quickly," said Anna. "I think he told me he loved me probably the third date, and I believed him."
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