This Valentine's Day: Women accuse Iowa online dater of stealing more than their heart
John F. Clarke has had his luck with the ladies, but this Valentine's Day that good fortune is petering out.
For years, the 55-year-old Des Moines man has found marks easily on dating sites despite a rap sheet ― including nearly two dozen felonies ― dating back to the late 1980s.
Even when caught, Clarke never did much time.
His modus operandi is well documented in reams of court cases: Gain the trust of single women; pose as an employee of a cellphone company; gain access to their phones, service plans and credit; and purchase electronics, including cellphones and Apple watches, that can be sold or pawned.
Before the women know what hit them, Clarke is gone.
But in December 2023, Clarke’s past started catching up to him.
He’d been featured by then in a few televised news reports in Iowa and Nebraska, outed by some of his reported victims in Facebook chats, and amassed a stack of complaints to Iowa’s attorney general and with local law enforcement agencies in at least six Iowa counties and five states.
Some women leaned hard on law enforcement to arrest the career criminal, as he'd started finding women in new states.
Mary Grunow, who lives near Madison, Wisconsin, said when she met Clarke last year through Facebook Dating, he told her his name was Johnathan Jay Lucas. She said she tried looking for any criminal history in his background when they connected last August, but she found nothing.
Grunow, 62, said she made the mistake of telling Clarke she’d been abused by a former partner, and he used that to gain her trust.
“He kept saying, ‘You’re going to be treated like a queen going forward. I want to show you what a real man should treat you like.'"
In time, the two grew so close they talked of living together, and Clarke's daughter called her "Mom Mary" on telephone calls when he came to visit.
Donna Weber, 54, lived almost seven hours away from Grunow in Columbia, Missouri. She said she also met Clark, who went by Jay Lucas, on Facebook Dating a little later last fall.
She said he told her he worked for UScellular and was from Davenport.
She said she wasn’t all that interested because he lived so far away. “But the more we talked, the more attracted I was. More and more, he was being that person that you want.”
Like Grunow, Weber said she tried to check out Jay Lucas’ background on the internet.
“I couldn’t find him on social media,” she said.
Neither Clarke nor two of his defense attorneys could be reached this month for comment.
Imposter fraud more common in Iowa, across the country
In 2023, imposter scams were among the top five types of complaints Iowans brought to the state attorney general’s Consumer Protection Division. Dating or romance scams are a subset.
In 2022, nearly 70,000 people in the United States reported romance scams to the Federal Trade Commission, with reported losses reaching $1.3 billion. The median loss reported was $4,400.
More: Romance scammers' favorite lies exposed
Catching offenders can be difficult because the perpetrators often use technology to victimize people, employ different aliases and move between jurisdictions.
Clarke’s long rap sheet includes convictions in Johnson, Linn, Marshal, Polk and Story counties in Iowa and numerous counts of theft, identity theft, forgery and parole violations. Though he’s labeled a habitual offender under Iowa law, judges and prosecutors have let him take plea deals, only to have him commit more crimes, court records show.
In 2020, for example, Clarke was charged twice with felony theft with stealing from women in Black Hawk and Linn counties, and later convicted.
In a subsequent case not long after in 2021 in Polk County, Des Moines resident Bailey Goodwin reported Clarke, then living in Ames, had gained access to her Verizon phone and used it to order a new cell phone and Apple watch for more than $1,700 ― purchases he admitted making, court records show.
Goodwin could not be reached for comment.
Clarke received suspended prison sentences ranging from five to 15 years and probation in the three 2020-21 cases, court records show.
It was while he was on probation for those crimes that he eventually travelled to Monoma, Wisconsin, to meet Grunow.
She said the relationship progressed quickly and the two talked of buying a house together. Clarke, she said, had told her he’d been relocated to Wisconsin from Iowa by Verizon.
In little time, she said, he was putting constant pressure on her to upgrade her cell phone. She said that one day, when she was distracted while working as a security supervisor at a Wisconsin Badgers football game, Clarke persuaded her to add him as an account manager on her phone so it could be upgraded faster.
“And that’s when he started buying up a storm,” she said.
By November, after he’d run up thousands of dollars in purchases on her credit cards and with Verizon, their relationship was over.
More: Social media mogul charged with bilking $2 million from lonely Americans in 'romance scheme'
In hindsight, she said, she’s disgusted with herself because she missed a number of red flags: He told her he had $200,000 to help buy them a house; he didn’t. He disappeared one weekend when he was supposed to meet her daughter and grandson. Workers at the Verizon store where he said he worked said they’d never heard of him.
One time when he’d gone AWOL, she said, he sent photos of himself in the hospital, claiming doctors thought he’d had a stroke.
“I felt like I was a trusting blind person," she said. "But he’s very, very convincing. He looks you in the eye. And he says things like, ‘I will make sure I’m there for you always.’“
Out more than $20,000, Grunow said, she went to her local police department in Monona and reported that she’d been defrauded. She said that at first, the officer told her there was nothing he could do because she’d given Clarke access to her phone account.
Later, she said, she went back to the police with a pile of evidence showing charges on three credit cards and her Verizon account, as well as evidence of his past history defrauding other women.
“I had to put together the whole freaking case for them,” she said.
Grunow said Clarke left her with cards exceeding their limit, damaged credit and in a dark, dark place.
“Going into Thanksgiving, I was emotionally burned out,” she said. “My family didn’t celebrate.”
At a Marshalltown bar, his past catches up
Weber said she was left feeling the same way in December, after Clarke swindled her before the two had their first real date.
She said last October, he was supposed to come for one but didn’t, making excuses. Later, he texted that he’d wound up in the hospital, sending her the same pictures in a hospital bed he’d sent to Grunow.
He told her medical workers thought he’d had a heart attack, but he promised to come the following weekend, anyway, she said.
After he failed to Facetime with her before that next visit, he apologized and insisted he was going to make it up to her by buying her a new phone, she said. She said he’d kept telling her she needed a new phone, though she didn’t really think so.
She said Clarke called her cell service provider and paid for a new phone for himself and for her, as well as accessories, which he drove to Missouri to bring to her. But then he turned around before they even had a chance to go on a date, saying he'd forgotten he had a dentist appointment.
Weber soon learned he'd used someone else's credit cards to purchase the phones. The charges he made with her provider got reversed and put back on her account, she said.
“This happened before Christmas. I didn’t have Christmas. I didn’t even put up a tree,” she said.
Weber began some internet sleuthing, eventually learning who Clarke was.
In time, she said, she found another woman who had been scammed by Clarke on a Facebook site where people check to see if they are dating the same people. The two women formed a private Facebook group that now includes about 20 different reported victims.
The women have talked on the phone, swapping stories about how they met Clarke on dating apps. They tracked his court cases, compared emergencies he’d used to explain sudden disappearances, and laughed when they learned he'd sent many of them the same nude photo.
“Some people haven’t pressed charges,” Weber said. “Some are very traumatized by the whole thing.”
By later December, Clarke was not only being outed to law enforcement by more alleged victims, he was in deep trouble with his probation officer. He’d cut off a GPS monitoring device in November and failed to show up for probation appointments that month, court records show.
The probation officer also learned he’d been arrested on a theft charge in Windsor Heights for allegedly stealing 10 lotto scratch tickets from a Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh were he worked, court records show. In addition to the new crime, Clarke was wanted by Monona police for what he’d reportedly done to Grunow and was charged in Boone County, Missouri, for allegedly scamming Weber.
He’s also being investigated by the FBI on a referral from the U.S. attorney’s office, court records show.
With a tip from a past victim, Clarke was arrested Dec. 20 at a Marshalltown bar in connection with his outstanding warrants tied to the alleged probation violations.
A probation supervisor in Iowa’s Fifth District, Danielle Bailey, has written the court that she will not agree to any sentencing recommendations other than prison.
“He is currently on supervision in Black Hawk, Linn and Polk counties for the very same behaviors he has most recently committed in Missouri and Wisconsin,” Bailey wrote in a report to the court. “He left the state of Iowa on multiple occasions without our knowledge or consent; violating interstate compact laws and his probation here in Iowa. After cutting off his GPS bracelet and then failing to report into the office, we believe him to be a flight risk.”
Clarke has until a trial April 8 to decide if he will take a deal to resolve the probation violations related to his past offenses. The deal would have him serving a 15-year sentence in Black Hawk County, as well as a five-year consecutive sentence in Polk and another in Linn County.
If he rejects the offer, he risks being prosecuted as a habitual offender, which could mean even more prison time, court records show.
In the meantime, his alleged victims are monitoring what prosecutors and the FBI eventually do. Many, including Weber, say they still have not recovered.
She said she had to lean on her eldest son to help her financially after she was defrauded, and she's selling some of her possessions to pay him back.
"I feel hurt, I feel betrayed and I’m mad," she said. "I’ve cried about it for a quite a while. I’m broke. I’m just broke."
Lee Rood's Reader's Watchdog column helps Iowans get answers and accountability from public officials, the justice system, businesses and nonprofits. Reach her at lrood@registermedia.com, at 515-284-8549, on Twitter at @leerood or on Facebook at Facebook.com/readerswatchdog.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Women join in takedown of accused dating app romance scammer from Iowa
