A New Jersey man who has twice served prison terms for using dating services to defraud women admitted to escaping from federal custody, as well as another additional fraud charge regarding his romance scheme.
Patrick Giblin pleaded guilty to escaping the custody of the attorney general, as well as one count of wire fraud.
The 57-year-old Atlantic City man escaped while traveling from federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, to a halfway house in Newark where he would finish serving a federal prison term, a five-year sentence for defrauding multiple women, according to court documents. That 2017 sentence followed an earlier 115-month sentence for a 2007 wire fraud conviction for a similar fraud scheme.
Giblin had been approved to fly in July 2020 from Harrisburg to Newark with a stopover in North Carolina. According to the complaint, prison personnel accompanied Giblin to the Harrisburg airport and watched him get on the plane. He never showed up in Newark, however, and was declared a fugitive.
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He was arrested in March 2021 by the U.S. Marshals Service, according to court documents.
It wasn't the first time Giblin had slipped away from authorities, according to court records. He was arrested in upstate New York in 2014 for violating terms of his supervised release after serving several years in prison for the wire fraud in connection with a dating service scam.
According to court records, Giblin posted ads on telephone dating services throughout the country from January 2013 to December 2014. He sought to lure women into relationships and would then ask them for loans that he did not intend to repay, prosecutors said. He victimized more than 10 women in various states.
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Giblin would tell the women he wanted a relationship and needed a loan to relocate to their area, prosecutors said. He would then have his victims wire him money or have them transfer money onto a payroll/debit card that he used. Prosecutors said he used some of that money to buy cellphone minutes so he could defraud more women.
From April 2019 through March 2021, including the time for when he was a fugitive, Giblin continued his scheme, preying on more women.
He could face up to five years for the escape charge, and another 20 years for the wire fraud charge. Attorney information for Giblin was no clear.
Sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 16.
