Fake entertainment jobs, photo work and Hollywood connections: Internet fraud
Date: April 15, 2007Source: latimes.com
The job was a gamble: A last-minute birthday dinner for 20. Four courses. No time for a deposit, the caller said.
But Santa Monica private chef Laszlo Andras, 34, had taken a chance on such gigs before. So he trusted the friendly woman on the phone who called herself Kat.
Kat's check for $1,300 bounced, sending the Hungarian-born chef to police. They sent him to small claims court, he said; the court sent him back to police. Exasperated, the chef turned to the Internet.
"I became an angry person," he said, "and I tried to escape to a website."
Andras in November created http://www.superripoff.com , a site that connected about a dozen photographers, actors and would-be models who alleged that Kathleen Legaspi, or Kat, had swindled them out of thousands of dollars with false promises of entertainment jobs, photo work and fake Hollywood connections.
In March, Santa Monica police arrested Legaspi. And many are crediting Andras with helping to build the case.
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