Ashley M is nothing.
There are sites like “seeking arrangement” where women go into relationships with rich men for a cash exchange. Most of the men are married so it is basically a site to buy a mistress by the month. Something like 5% of female NYU students have at least made a profile on it.
It was deemed legal as long as the exchange is for a “relationship”, not purely for hourly sex.
There is also a recent new site where women auction themselves off like eBay. Don’t recall the name.
Liberation has come!
Well, to be fair, call girls and others who wanted relationships based on monetary favors have used personal ads for years. Before online personals, it was the old-fashioned pen and paper kind. It was one of the biggest complaints men had about personals. Dating and matchmaking services have had the same problem, though the reputable ones do their best to screen them out. The sugar -daddy outfits have just decided to capitalize on that specialty. Then there are the “alternatives” personal sections in alternative city papers. They cater to a demographic looking for sexual experiences that would have been illegal or grounds for divorce in grandfathers day.
Predators using personals has a long colorful history. Belle Gunness, probably Americas first female serial killer, used personals to get hired men who sometimes became lovers, husbands or key figures in her insurance fraud schemes. Men, like Ray Fernandez, who was executed in New York in the fifties, have also been Lonely Hearts predators. In these cases, the victims were looking for what they thought would be regular relationship with regular people, of course. But it is one of the reasons that the personal ad business has had such a bad reputation for so long and only with the advent of the Internet has it become really mainstream and respectable.
I’m a true crime buff, and just as an aside, I would say avoid insurance fraudsters. It seem to be a gateway crime for a lot of spouse killers and other nasty types.