Tag Archives: Grindr

Kalamazoo’s CBS affiliate reports: A former Michigan priest arrested by authorities who posed as a 15-year-old boy on the dating app Grindr has been convicted. Aaron Nowicki, 49, was convicted of child sexually abusive activity on Thursday, according to a news release from Chippewa County Prosecutor Robert L. Stratton. Nowicki resigned from priestly ministry in Jan. 2019 after it was …

The New York Daily News reports: A disgraced Queens Catholic Church deacon will spend 16 years behind bars for enticing three boys he met online into having sex with him. Rogelio Vega, 52, faced his reckoning in Brooklyn Federal Court on Wednesday, breaking down in tears as he described how his actions hurt his victims and his family. The detective …

The Washington Post reports: A group of conservative Colorado Catholics has spent millions of dollars to buy mobile app tracking data that identified priests who used gay dating and hookup apps and then shared it with bishops around the country. The secretive effort was the work of a Denver nonprofit called Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal, whose trustees are …

From the Justice Department: Chance Seneca, 21, of Lafayette, Louisiana, was sentenced today to 45 years in federal prison for kidnapping and attempting to murder a gay man as part of a months-long scheme to kidnap and murder gay men. The court rested its sentence on many factors, including its determination that the defendant intentionally targeted the victim and other …

Law & Crime reports: A 53-year-old Michigan man will spend the rest of his life behind bars for murdering, dismembering, and eating the severed genitalia of a 25-year-old man he met on the Grindr dating app. Shiawassee County Circuit Judge Matthew J. Stewart on Thursday ordered Mark David Latunski to serve a sentence of life in prison without the possibility …

Market Watch reports: Shares of Grindr Inc. GRND, +304.02% rocketed out of the gate under their new ticker Friday, after the LGBTQ social networking platform’s merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Tiga Acquisition Corp. was completed. The first trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “GRND” after the 9:30 a.m. Eastern open was at $17.00, …

Michigan Live reports: A Shiawassee County judge has found Mark David Latunski, the man who previously admitted to killing and dismembering 25-year-old Kevin Bacon of Swartz Creek, guilty of first-degree murder. The ruling came following a day and a half of testimony in a rare degree hearing in which Judge Matthew J. Stewart was tasked with determining whether Latunski was …

From the Justice Department: Chance Seneca, 21, of Lafayette, Louisiana, pleaded guilty today before U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays to one count of kidnapping. According to his plea agreement, Seneca admitted that on June 20, 2020, he used Grindr, a dating application for gay and bisexual men, to kidnap and attempt to murder H.W., a gay man. Specifically, Seneca acknowledged …

Michigan Live reports: Mark David Latunski, the Shiawassee County man accused of killing and dismembering 25-year-old Kevin Bacon in December 2019, has pleaded guilty. Latunski, 52, appeared before Judge Matthew J. Stewart of the 35th Circuit Court Thursday, Sept. 22, and pleaded guilty as charged to open murder and mutilation of a body. A degree hearing will be held on …

Flagler Live reports: Alphonso Joseph, a 48-year-old Palm Coast resident and pastor associated with several Bunnell churches and spiritual organizations, was arrested Friday and charged with molesting a 15-year-old boy in a vehicle on the Matanzas Woods Golf Course. Joseph himself may have inadvertently attracted sheriff’s deputies to the area: the 911 center had received a noise complaint late the …

Axios reports: Grindr is partnering with Spectrum Labs, tapping the startup’s AI-based system to help filter postings on the LGBTQ dating service. For years, Grindr has chosen not to implement an AI system for content moderation, not because it didn’t want to augment its keyword-based filtering system, but because it was concerned that the models weren’t sensitive enough to keep …

The New York Daily News reports: “Andi Mack” alum Stoney Westmoreland, accused of trying to lure a minor into sex, has been sentenced to two years in prison after pleading down to a lesser charge. Westmoreland, who played the grandfather on the Disney Channel sitcom, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of using interstate facilities to transmit information about a …

Bloomberg News reports: Grindr LLC, the dating app that specializes in connections for the LGBTQ+ community, has agreed to go public through a blank-check firm in a deal that values the combined company at $2.1 billion including debt. The predominantly male dating app is merging with Tiga Acquistion Corp., which debuted in November 2020. The special purpose acquisition company isn’t …

Engadget reports: Grindr’s past willingness to share sensitive data may have been more problematic than previously thought. The Wall Street Journal understands precise Grindr user location data was collected from the online ad network MoPub (once owned by Twitter) and put on sale through its partner company UberMedia (now UM) since “at least” 2017. The LGBTQ dating app curbed the …

Tampa’s ABC News affiliate reports: The Polk County Sheriff’s Office said its undercover detectives have been using dating apps to track down a number of people suspected of buying and selling drugs in the area. A 6-month undercover sting, called “Swipe Left for Meth,” yielded more than 60 arrests, the agency said. Detectives also obtained warrants for eight people. The …

The Associated Press reports: Norway’s data privacy watchdog on Wednesday fined gay dating app Grindr 65 million kroner ($7.16 million) for sending sensitive personal data to hundreds of potential advertising partners without users’ consent — a breach of strict European Union privacy rules. The Norwegian Data Protection Authority said it imposed its highest fine to date because the California-based company …

From the Department of Justice: An Oregon man has been charged with a federal hate crime after using the internet to target and brutally assault a gay man because of his sexual orientation. Daniel Andrew McGee, of Springfield, has been charged by criminal complaint with a hate crime. The complaint alleges that McGee attempted to kill the victim. According to …

From the Department of Justice: Daniel Jenkins, 22, of Dallas was sentenced today for committing violent crimes as part of a conspiracy to target users of the dating app Grindr. Jenkins was sentenced to a federal prison term of 280 months for his involvement in the scheme to target gay men for violent crimes. He is the last of four …

The Insider reports: Melania Trump’s chief of staff Lindsay Reynolds informed Grisham one day in early 2018 that one of Grisham’s closest friends in the White House was being fired due to an “issue with his security clearance,” despite having worked for former President Donald Trump for “more than three years.” Grisham, who then served as the first lady’s press …

The Washington Post reports: The top administrator of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops resigned after a Catholic media site told the conference it had access to cellphone data that appeared to show he was a regular user of Grindr, the queer dating app, and frequented gay bars. Some privacy experts said that they couldn’t recall other instances of phone …