Fantasy Date With Twins Turns Sour for Manhattan Man, 84
The website billed itself as a place where older men with money could meet young women interested in dating someone who could support them financially.
“Find your sugar baby,” the site exhorted its users.
This year, Paul Aronson, an 84-year-old from Manhattan, contacted a 17-year-old girl, Shaina Foster, through the site and took her out to dinner. On a second date, Ms. Foster brought along her twin sister, Shalaine.
For a few hours on Oct. 1, the evening looked as if it might turn into an old man’s fantasy. The three dined at an expensive restaurant in Midtown. Then Mr. Aronson invited the teenagers to have a drink with him at the four-story brick townhouse he owns on East 38th Street.
He bought a bottle of raspberry-flavored rum from a liquor store on the way, a defense lawyer said. But instead of receiving caresses or whispered flirtations, Mr. Aronson ended up tied to a coffee table for 20 hours.
Prosecutors say the two girls bound him with zip ties, took $470 in cash from his wallet and went on a spending spree with his credit cards, buying makeup and clothes, while he lay helpless on his living room floor.
On Wednesday, the Foster sisters, looking more like high school students than hardened criminals, pleaded not guilty in State Supreme Court in Manhattan to charges of kidnapping, burglary, larceny and related crimes. Justice Michael J. Obus ordered them returned to jail without bail. Both face a minimum of 15 years in prison if convicted of the top charge.
Later that day, Mr. Aronson, a former partner in a men’s clothing company, opened the door to his elegant townhouse and politely declined to comment on the ordeal. “I’m done with that story,” he said.
A criminal complaint said both teenagers took part in tying up Mr. Aronson and rifling through his pockets around 8:15 p.m. on Oct. 1. Shaina Foster bound Mr. Aronson’s leg to a heavy coffee table, while Shalaine Foster tied his hands behind his back, the complaint said.
Mr. Aronson, who wears thick glasses, collapsed on the floor and could not get up. A neighbor found him the next day. According to court documents, Shaina Foster told a detective she did not understand why Mr. Aronson had reported the crime.
“He asked to do things I wasn’t going to do,” she told Detective Darryl Ng at the 17th Precinct after the girls were arrested on Oct. 21. “He is ugly, old and disgusting. I tied him up. I took his money and left. He was starting to creep me out.”
Brian Kennedy, a lawyer for Shalaine Foster, said his client only watched while her sister robbed Mr. Aronson. “She got caught up in something not of her making,” he said.
Shaina Foster’s lawyer, Theodore M. Herlich, declined to say anything about the facts of the case.
Before he was tied up, Mr. Aronson had given the teenagers a tour of his townhouse and let them play with his tiny dog, a Yorkshire terrier named Muffins, Mr. Kennedy said. Then he poured them glasses of rum and asked them about their sex lives.
“Both girls were taken aback by that,” Mr. Kennedy said. He said Mr. Aronson also tried to grab one of the sisters when they initially started to leave his house, which precipitated the robbery. “This was an older man who was trolling these websites,” he said. “He was trolling for young girls.”
The twins came from a troubled family and had lived for some time in separate foster homes, their lawyers said. On Oct. 25, their mother, Liza Torres, was arrested on the courthouse steps and charged with heroin possession after attending their initial arraignment.
Mr. Aronson contacted Shaina Foster on SeekingArrangement.com, which advertises itself as a service “where beautiful, successful people fuel mutually beneficial relationships.”
Its “sugar baby perks” are listed as “financial stability,” “find a mentor” and “be pampered.” For men, it announces selling points such as “no strings attached” and “ideal relationships.” A spokeswoman for the site did not return a telephone call from a reporter.
New York Times