A Dating-App Nightmare

Timothy Valentin found his dates the way so many people find each other nowadays: Hinge. Plenty of Fish. Bumble. Match.com. He had a profile you might swipe right on some dull Tuesday night—well groomed, fit, and happy to meet in a reassuringly public place, like the neighborhood bar. Nothing heavy, nothing untoward. In person, he told tales of his work with the FBI. He was professional, even reassuring, and gentlemanly, insistent on buying the drinks.

Except Valentin would then offer just one more drink and drug his dates senseless, officials familiar with a widening investigation into his behavior claim. As the women drifted into oblivion, they have alleged to cops, he would help them into his car with an offer to grab a nightcap, then film himself raping them. He left little trace: His victims rarely had any recollection of what had happened, officials claim. They simply thought that they had met a nice man in a crowded, public place and drank more than they should have.

Last April, one of Valentin’s alleged victims awoke with the conviction that something was wrong, according to court documents. The night before felt blurred and disorienting. She had left the bar with Valentin and recalled getting in his car—the place that officials claim was the locus of his crimes. Believing that she had been violated, she went to Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department. There she learned that Valentin was no FBI agent. He was a former decorated officer of the very department now tasked with investigating him.

In December, authorities in Alexandria, Virginia, arrested Valentin on charges including rape, sodomy, and altering food or beverages. As investigators pursued the case, they uncovered a huge amount of evidence—digital records, personal effects, and testimony—that suggests that Valentin may have carried out similar crimes across the mid-Atlantic, people familiar with the case told me. Today, Valentin was charged or indicted in multiple additional cases in Virginia and Maryland, and investigators asked for more potential victims to contact law enforcement.  Authorities believe that they have identified more than a dozen victims to date, the people familiar with the case said. Based on the evidence gathered so far, authorities project that the ultimate number of victims could exceed 50—which would make the case one of the most extensive drugging and sexual-assault investigations in U.S. history.

Valentin’s defense attorney, Gretchen Taylor Pousson, said that Valentin is “presumed innocent, and we will vigorously defend his constitutional rights at trial.” She added that the first Virginia trial is set for August and that “we will take all appropriate steps to protect Mr. Valentin’s right to a fair and impartial jury.”

Valentin has pleaded not guilty and maintains his innocence, telling the court that he is eager to return to his job as an insurance-fraud investigator (the company says that he no longer works there). The victims, he has maintained, consented to his advances.

About 80 million Americans use dating platforms, according to statistics from eHarmony, a dating company. Three in 10 Americans say they have used a dating site or app, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center study. That rises to half of adults aged 18 to 29. But online dating rests on a quiet faith that the person on the other side of the screen is who they claim to be.

The apps promise agency. Not interested? Just swipe left. Yet anyone can portray themselves any way they want, and predators have repeatedly used dating apps to find victims. “Who wants to start out on a date being suspicious and wary?” Mindy Mechanic, a clinical and forensic psychologist, asked me. Most violence against women is committed by people they know and trust, Mechanic added, because those are situations where women expect to be safe. But charming strangers can create that atmosphere too, leaving women potentially vulnerable, especially when partying is involved. “One thing to think about is not to drink alcohol,” Mechanic said.

Representatives for Match Group, the parent company of Hinge and Match.com, and a spokesperson for Bumble said that their companies maintain dedicated teams that work with law enforcement on investigations. Bumble said that it continues to enhance the app’s help center and has introduced new safety features such as ID verification and mandatory photo verification. Both stressed the element of trust as a feature paramount to their business models.

My reporting at The Atlantic usually focuses on national security and the White House. But earlier this year, as I was working on a story, I reached out to an old friend and colleague, Scott Weinberger. A former Florida deputy sheriff turned investigative journalist, Weinberger specializes in covering complex criminal cases; his investigative work on the podcast Cold Blooded helped solve a murder after more than four decades. Weinberger was looking for his next crime-documentary project and told me that he had caught wind of something unfolding in Washington: A former D.C. police officer had been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting women he met online and recording his attacks.

I felt a chill. Nearly everyone I know has swiped, matched with, or messaged a stranger. Several years ago, I met my husband on a dating app. Weinberger and I began to look into the case.

For some of the women, the first indication that something had gone wrong was the knock of detectives at their door. Investigators obtained surveillance video from a popular Irish pub in Alexandria where Valentin took the woman who first reported him to the police. The footage shows the two of them chatting, laughing, and drinking, investigators told us. But when the woman went to the bathroom, Valentin removed a small sandwich bag from his pocket and poured a powdered substance into his date’s drink, mixed it around, and either sipped or blew on it, according to court records describing the surveillance footage. Prosecutors allege Valentin was ensuring the taste of the drug was undetectable; his defense attorney says he couldn’t possibly have put a drug in the drink if he was willing to taste it himself.

The victim, according to court documents, told investigators she felt sleepy “similar to being placed under anesthesia for a surgery.” She told investigators she recalled waking up to find herself lying on her left side with her head toward the driver’s side of the vehicle, her underwear pulled down and her dress pulled up. Valentin, according to the court records, was allegedly in a kneeling position over her. She had hazy recollections of being raped and forced to perform oral sex.

Court records show that after the victim reported the events of that night to police, she had a toxicology screening. In her urine, medical examiners detected bromazolam-–a sedative with no approved medical use, although it is among the dozens of drugs known to be used in rapes. Male DNA was also detected in the victim’s mouth and vaginal area, according to court records.

After Valentin’s December arrest, investigators cracked open his phone, laptop, and online accounts, uncovering what they described as a trove of recordings. His phone alone allegedly contained dozens of video files, some depicting multiple recordings involving the same victim, according to people familiar with the investigation. The quality of the videos varied. Some were grainy. Some obscured the victims’ faces, but the women could be heard trying to resist.

Afterward, these people said, Valentin often removed driver’s licenses from purses and photographed them, though investigators can’t say why: To know where to drive them home? To revisit them? To extort them? (Pousson, Valentin’s defense attorney, stressed to the court that he never attempted to contact the alleged victim after their date.)

In recent weeks, investigators seized at least a gigabyte of data, and more may still be pulled from Valentin’s Dropbox and Google Cloud accounts, the people familiar with the probe told us. The GPS metadata embedded in the videos have helped authorities track where the alleged crimes took place.

Police searching Valentin’s car also found a cache of condoms and lubricants, and several individually packed baggies of powder, which they believed to be the substance used in the drinks, the people familiar with the investigation told us. (The powder has been sent to a lab for testing, a process that can take several months.) Pousson told a court that the bags contained Adderall, a prescribed stimulant that the attorney said Valentin takes to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Valentin joined D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department in 2017. He was a 22-year-old with a college degree and the earnestness of a young man who, his attorney told the court, believed in public service. During the COVID-19 pandemic, crime rates in the District jumped—homicides rose almost 20 percent in 2020 from the previous year—straining the department. In 2021, Valentin was awarded the Ribbon of Valor, an internal commendation for those who serve with honor and distinction during special details. Valentin resigned from the force a year later. (The MPD referred questions about Valentin’s case to jurisdictions where he’s been charged. None of the charges date back to while he served on the force, officials familiar with the investigation told us.)

According to court documents, Valentin has PTSD stemming from a shooting he was involved in while on duty, as well as ADHD. Last year, he joined the Maryland Insurance Administration, an independent state regulator, as a fraud investigator. The company told us he stopped working for them as of December 31, after his arrest.

On a recent afternoon, Weinberger and I drove to Fort Washington, Maryland, a quiet, middle-class D.C. suburb, where Valentin, now 30 years old, lives with his mother. A neighbor, Malinda Battle, described Valentin as polite and reserved—the sort of neighbor who keeps to himself but shows up when needed. He and Battle share a love for cats; at least a dozen could be seen wandering back and forth between their adjacent properties. Battle said she would tease Valentin about his speedy driving, telling him he’ll “miss the garage” one day. She mostly noticed him taking out the trash or pausing to pet the cats. “I’m surprised to hear that he’s gotten in trouble,” she told us, with a look of disappointment. “He’s just the kind of guy you want as a neighbor.”

Serial offenders are rarely driven by impulse alone. Over time, their crimes tend to evolve into a ritual—one that serves not just their desires but their ego. N. G. Berrill, a forensic psychologist who has studied the psyche of repeat offenders, told us that repeat predators often develop a sense of psychological elevation and an endorphinlike rush tied to their ability to manipulate others. Success breeds a kind of intoxicating confidence. “There’s usually a kind of grandiosity to serial criminals,” Berrill said. “There is arrogance, and there’s also a kind of a high. This is what excites them: the chase.”

Serial offenders tend to rely on small but consequential transitions during an encounter—a sinister choreography that moves a potential victim from relative safety to isolation. An invitation for one more drink, a suggestion to change locations, a casual proposal to continue the evening somewhere quieter: Each step is a calculated test of trust. Persuading someone to leave a public setting—for instance, to get in a car—can be the crucial threshold. The predator has effectively reshaped the environment and can dictate terms.

“These are often men who have the opportunity to have consensual sexual relationships with women,” Mechanic told us. “But the excitement, the thrill is taking something from somebody who’s not willing to give it, and using tools like drugs, alcohol to get it.”

But pinpointing an exact drug used in an instance of date rape is seldom straightforward. Trinka Porrata, a former Los Angeles Police Department narcotics supervisor who now leads Project GHB (a nonprofit dedicated to sexual assault and date-rape awareness), told us the public fixation on a single “date-rape drug” obscures a far broader and more troubling reality. “It’s a big myth that there’s one or two,” Porrata said, noting that more than 50 substances—from prescription medications to over-the-counter antihistamines—can be weaponized to diminish a victim’s control or awareness. “Any drug that impairs your ability to control yourself and your environment can be used,” she explained, adding that these are better understood as “predatory drugs,” often used not only for sexual assault but also for robberies.

Alcohol frequently intensifies the effects, Porrata said, including with bromazolam—the substance found in the urine of the first alleged victim. The size of the woman also makes a difference—a more petite woman might be harder-hit with a lower dose.

Modern social habits have, in some ways, made this process easier, both Berrill and Mechanic said. The culture of digital introductions—dating apps, spontaneous meetups—means that people meet “under the most dubious circumstance” with others they don’t know, Berrill said, creating an ambiguous space for individuals skilled in deception to exploit. Predators, he added, relish the ritual of identifying a target, deploying charm or persuasion, and carefully lowering the intended victim’s guard.

What makes Valentin’s case especially unnerving is that many of the women whom investigators allege he victimized likely still have no idea a crime occurred. Detectives are still working to identify all of those they believe he may have targeted. Valentin’s filming and photographing of driver’s licenses has given investigators a place to start. They also are reconstructing identities from digital breadcrumbs: exchanges on a dating app, stray messages.

For many of the women who have been contacted by investigators, their fuzzy memory of the night carried a simpler explanation: They assumed they simply had too much to drink. They woke up disoriented—sometimes ashamed—unsure how they had gotten home. And despite the evidence that has accumulated, officials say many potential victims remain reluctant to press charges: wary of police, skeptical of authorities, or stunned by the possibility that what they remember as an overindulgent night out was something much worse.

Had it not been for the hazy recollections of one alleged victim, investigators say, Valentin’s alleged crimes would not have come to light. But her account allowed detectives to retrace her steps to the Alexandria bar and the surveillance footage. There on the screen, the investigators told us, was a man stirring something into a drink, patient and methodical, in a crowded room where no one noticed a thing.

Marie-Rose Sheinerman and Isabel Ruehl contributed reporting for this story.