Selling Adultery - Darren Morgenstern's Website Helps Married Adults Cheat On Their Spouses

Launched in January 2002, Darren Morgenstern's Controversial Online Dating Service, the Toronto-based Ashley Madison Agency, Has Spread like a Virus Across the United States, and Now into the UK, Swelling to 1.03 Million Members

Confession time. I've had affairs while married. (Calm down, honey. I'm talking about my first infidelity-ridden marriage, not ours.)

Despite plenty of temptations - and only by the sheer grace of God - I can proudly say that I've only slept with one man the past 12 years, my current husband.

But I don't want to sound like some pious prude; I'm well acquainted with the kind of loneliness and lust that drives folks to the web searching for ways to fulfill their longings.

And for people not blessed with the fruit of self-control, the Ashley Madison Agency's founder, 42-year-old Darren Morgenstern, is more than willing to help them break the seventh commandment - and take 55 bucks or more out of their pockets in the process.

Ready-for-Primetime Player
I first caught wind of Morgenstern and his controversial web site - one that hooks up attached folks - on an ABC News "Primetime" report. Back then I was pitching a column called "After I Do" to several national newspapers, and thought the egregious entrepreneur would make a great expert source for an article about cheating housewives.

Much to my amazement, when I rang Morgenstern up, he answered the phone and granted me an almost 10-minute interview. (Listen to it now if you'd like.)

A Smooth Criminal
During our conversation, I was immediately struck by Morgenstern's eloquent speaking abilities and intelligence. So much so that I found myself nodding in agreement with the married father's twisted logic of "leveling the playing field for women...to behave more like men" until I remembered, Wait a minute...he's peddling adultery, here!

It's the same spiel Morgenstern has since spun - like a marketeer smugly satisfied with his own genius - facilitator of a sin that he says he doesn't practice himself - on Dr. Phil, The Montel Williams Show, CBS Sunday Morning, CNN and in many other interviews.

Apparently I'm not the only consumer who has fallen for Morgenstern's powers of persuasion. In 2001 the FTC froze his assets after uncovering a domain name scam that bilked at least 27,000 unsuspecting people out of $70 each. But that $2 million or so is nothing compared to the greenbacks and pounds the King of Infidelity is raking in now.

Filthy Lucre
Not illegal, but ill-gotten, gain seems to be of utmost importance to Morgenstern and his attractive wife, Marissa, who told CNN she was Darren's "cheerleader." Her hero certainly was fired up on the message boards of Techweb when threats to his livelihood were discussed in the article titled "Online Dating Sites Quarrel Over Background Checks."

True.com had raised the ire of Morgenstern by "pushing state legislators to require matchmaking sites to conduct criminal background checks on members or post a warning that no such screening has been done," a move that could certainly put the kibosh on questionable sites like the Ashley Madison Agency.

Morgenstern exposed his "true" fear in his March 7, 2005, posting beneath the article, words which bemoaned the "layer of costs" online purveyors of flesh would have to shell out, asking how operators would grow their businesses outside the US if background checks were unavailable there.

"True.com is more interested in being 'right' than wealthy," Morgenstern wrote. It seems that Morgenstern is more interested in being wealthy than right, as his explosive worldwide growth shows, divorces and betrayals be damned.

"By the typing of many fingers and thumbs..."
"...something wicked this way comes," the Bard of Avon may as well have quilled about not only Macbeth but also Morgenstern, whose site has already signed up 67 members in Stratford-upon-Avon, the small town in south Warwickshire, England, that gave birth to Shakespeare.

Since branching out in March into big cities and small towns across Great Britain (including parts of Ireland), the Ashley Madison Agency has already lured close to 8,000 philanderers into signing up for its services, causing the Welsh Catholic Church to recently blast the venture.

When Satan Smiles
So why give old Beelzebub any more pub? To act as a voice crying out in the woods, both to Darren Morgenstern and his beguiled subscribers, the multitude of which should realize that so-called secure databases are hacked all the time and subscriber info published for the whole wide web to see.

But to Darren himself, I'd love to relate the saga of the scariest nightmare of my life in 2000, on the eve of my 31^st birthday. In real life, I'd just written and self-published a salacious novel - blasphemous in fact - that I knew would be my ticket to fame and fortune.

During my dream the devil looked directly at me and flashed a wide grin, happy was he that I was doing his work for him. Both my heart and horrific fright pounded me awake. The following Monday - Easter Monday, as it were - I threw away all remaining copies of the Bible-imitating, gold-gilded-edged books in the Dumpster. Nearly 10k went down the trash, but my conscience was resurrected.

Adolph Hitler - another hypnotic speaker - also suffered from terrifying dreams of Satan that caused him to cower in fear. In his book, Hitler Speaks: A Series of Political Conversations With Adolf Hitler On His Real Aims, Hermann Rauschning, Hitler's aide, describes the dreams that would cause Hitler to wake up screaming, speaking about spirits.

Once awakened, he'd stand and shake and cry, unable to be consoled. I always wonder what would have happened if Hitler had heeded his nightly warnings and turned his life in another direction. Maybe many more Morgensterns would've lived to tell the tale...

Alas, there are a number of Scriptures that come to my mind, stuff about gaining the whole world and losing your own soul. But Matthew 18:6 says it best:

"It will be terrible for people who cause even one of my little followers to sin. Those people would be better off thrown into the deepest part of the ocean with a heavy stone tied around their necks!"

Unsavory.

"They should be careful what they wish for," Morgenstern wrote about True.com, warning that their "initiative will ultimately fail and most likely blow up in their faces."

Well, Mr. Morgenstern, I posit that the warning trap you set just may be your own.

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