Australian farmers misled by Rural Network dating agency

All they wanted was a wife to make their solitary lives in the Outback a bit more bearable.

The farmers and miners who joined the Rural Network dating agency got a lot less than they wished for. Some fell in love with women who did not exist. Others lost up to A$20,000 (£9,500) as the agency tempted them into parting with more and more cash with the lure of love.

Rural Network, in Tweed Heads, Queensland, lured lonely country men with pictures of beautiful young women and the slogan “Bringing the Country Together”.

Men who logged on to its site read that it was for “busy country people who have lost all hope in the dating scene and just want to find a person to share their life with and find happiness”.

Some of the women, such as “Stunning Angelina” and “Spellbinding Laura”, appeared the stuff of fantasy. The trouble was, many of them were exactly that — fictional women dreamt up by agency staff — according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which has had the agency in its sights for the past three years.

The dating site, whose director Leanne McDonald was also known as Leanne Viney, Lana Viney and Lana McDonald, had various ploys to cajole men into paying ever higher membership fees.

A number of men fell for the line that a “compatible” girl had asked to meet them, and they would be introduced once additional fees had been paid.

One man paid A$17,000 in his increasingly desperate attempts to find that special someone who was eagerly waiting to meet him. Another embittered man, who says that he joined the site because life in a small country town was getting lonely, was asked to pay A$4,400 for two years' administration fees.

“A couple of weeks later, they told me it was for something else and charged me more money for more services,” the victim, who would identify himself only as Richard from Perth, said.

“I saw their webpage and put my details on there and I was signed up at their most basic membership. Over the next few weeks they contacted me numerous times telling me about different members I could meet, but only if I upgraded my membership each time. They also changed the story of what I was paying for.”

Over the next few months he shelled out A$20,000.

This year, after an investigation by the consumer commission, the agency was ordered to repay 35 of its victims A$120,000 and to write to new customers informing them of the “misleading and deceptive conduct” that it had been involved in.

Justice Jeffrey Spender said at the time that the agency's conduct was “not only serious but calculated and quite callous” — although he stopped short of closing it.

Instead, he imposed a seven-year restriction on the way that it advertises and supplies introduction services. It was also ordered to pay A$60,000 in court costs.

Yesterday the agency was back in court, with the commission accusing it of failing to honour any of the undertakings.

Ms McDonald was unrepentant, saying that she “massively contested” the allegations.

Rural Network is still operating a site, now called Chances Consulting. Advertising itself as “one of Australia's largest and most respected Introduction Agencies who has [sic] caters for the needs of singles looking for romance in Australia and New Zealand”, it went on to state that it “caters for busy country people who have lost all hope in the dating scene and just want to find a person to share their life with and find happiness”.

The case will return to court in September.

Drought of romance

— Single dairy farmers in Wales began putting their vital statistics on the side of milk bottles last year in an attempt to find love. More details of the farmers are available through an online dating agency

— L'Amour est dans le Pré (Love is in the Meadow), which attempted to find partners for lonely French farmers including Cecil, a goat breeder from the Pyrenees, became one of the most popular TV shows in France this summer

— Country Life magazine ran a lonely-hearts column for farmers until 2005, when the volume of mail became too large to handle.