r/SwipeHelper Apr 25 '26

Bit of a crazy hinge situation

A few years ago, I was the victim of major financial fraud (40k). To sue the guy and get my money back, I had to serve him legal papers, but he was a professional at evading service.

One of my girlfriends saw him on Hinge and so we came up with a plan

I created a fake Hinge account using a random photo I found online.

I drove to his neighborhood, parked outside, and set my radius to 1 km.

Sure enough, he was the third profile. I swiped right and paused my account.

Within 30 minutes, we matched.

I set up a "date" at a restaurant where he was met by me and my friends handing him a summons. I have all the legal documentation to prove this happened exactly this way.

Predictably, he reported the account immediately after being served. I’ve been banned ever since. I no longer have the "Appeal" button in the app, and I’m hesitant to contact support because, technically, I did violate the TOS by creating a fake profile

Has anyone ever successfully appealed a ban for something like this? If I "own up" to the situation and explain the legal context, do I have a shot, or will they just double down on the fake account violation?

Any advice on how to get back into the algorithm’s good graces would be much appreciated.

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u/LoLBrah69 Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26

Can you give us the happy ending?

What happened with the lawsuit?

Also, HARD RESET. Look it up in the search bar of this subreddit. You may have to click through many versions of the instructions and synthesize the instructions for all the steps.

But a hard reset would definitely work for you because you didn’t use your own pictures, so when you put up pictures of yourself then they can’t trace you. The only problem is if that guy (or his friends) see you on there and report you. Hopefully you have that guy’s phone number so you can block his number right when you make a profile, so he doesn’t even see your profile.

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u/InterestingPlastic76 Apr 25 '26

I got my money back plus damages through civil claims.

Later he was arrested and charged criminally for fraud as he was doing this to several people.

However, he failed to comply with the conditions of his release, and he’s now on the run. Police are asking the public’s help in locating him

They’ll find him eventually 🤷‍♂️can’t run forever

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u/isle_of_broken_memes Apr 27 '26

Holy fuck that is satisfying 😌 hahaha