Online Dating Trap

Daylon Pierce loved to party. On his government-issued ankle monitor, while awaiting trial for defrauding women out of nearly $2 million, he was still making the rounds at Scottsdale nightclubs and strip clubs, spending thousands of dollars a night. "It was like a superstar," a friend recalls. "Everybody knew him." The same man who had spent the previous 11 years in prison was now presenting himself on dating sites as a wildly successful stockbroker, a college graduate, a master of the universe. His pickup line was simple: "I do pharmaceutical investments. I can help you with that 401k." And women believed him.

The Making of a Con Man

Pierce's childhood reads like a catalog of trauma. His mother was addicted to crack cocaine and died of an overdose when he was five; he was present and saw her body. At age ten, he watched a man break into his home, rape his stepmother, and stab her 41 times in front of him. His father, released from prison not long after, was shot and killed by a former boyfriend of a new girlfriend. No one offered him counseling. "You're standing there," his defense attorney Chris Doran says. "You've lost your mom. You've witnessed a murder. Let's get you in counseling. Nobody's doing that."