He targeted specific demographics of women on dating websites, attorneys say
- By Holly Rusch, Daily Journal staff
A San Mateo man and Silicon Valley investor was found liable in civil court for $8 million in punitive damages and over $1 million in compensatory damages for scamming a Santa Clara woman he met in 2016 out of more than half a million dollars, her attorney said.
The man, Brendon ‘Bren’ Farrell, met the plaintiff in the case via Match.com in 2016, according to court documents. Beginning in August 2016, Farrell intertwined his romantic relationship with her with financial trust, promising that if entrusted with her money, he would eventually create better returns on it than she or any financial advisor could, court documents said.
From 2016 to 2018, she gave Farrell $672,811 — only $85,000 of which was ever paid back. And she wasn’t the only woman, attorneys say, noting five women, including the plaintiff, testified that a similar scheme was employed against them.
“It’s really a scheme. That was our whole case,” Steve Leydiker, an attorney on the case, said. “It was a pattern of conduct. That’s where we had to bring up these other women, to show this conduct was so similar in nature.”
Going through Farrell’s bank records, Leydiker said he was astonished at the amount of women it seemed Farrell had defrauded, many of whom were Chinese and had come to the country for work, with little family in the area.
“This is how he does business. He goes on these dating websites, targets a specific demographic of women,” Leydiker said. “All they know is work. They don’t understand the dating world, they don’t have any family here … and then they meet this guy, a sophisticated savant type, who shows off all his entrepreneurship abilities and wealth and basically woos these women with all these success stories.”
If the women suggested that they would go to the authorities, he would also allegedly threaten to expose sexually explicit material of them, Ara Jabagchourian, another one of the plaintiff’s trial attorneys, said.
“If anyone wants to make a move, guess what he has?” Jabagchourian said.
Farrell’s attorney’s office could not be reached for comment, but he filed a cross-complaint in 2021 alleging that when their relationship ended in 2018, the woman suing him “hatched a plan for control” to extort him for the $85,000 and punish him if he did not comply.
All of those allegations except one — charging more than the legal rate of interest of 10% when she demanded he repay her money and the two entered into an agreement — were dismissed by the jury, Jabagchourian said. He said he expects that, too, will be dismissed by the judge in the coming months.
A companion case, filed by one of Farrell’s other alleged victims, will be going to court next year, Jabagchourian said. She lost less money, around $30,000, but it followed the same dynamic.
“It’s either a, ‘What do you got? You got 401(k)s? I could do better than Wall Street. Look at me, I can do better and trust me with your money, and if we’re going to be in a long-term relationship, you’ve got to trust me anyways,’” he said. “Or, ‘my startup is running into a cash crunch right now. I’m going to be running into some big money soon. I need some money.’”
Farrell has filed lawsuits against two of the women that testified during the first plaintiff’s trial, a move her lawyers say was designed to intimidate them.
Though Farrell could still appeal the jury’s Nov. 7 verdict, Jabagchourian said he was pleased with the results of the case and felt they sent a firm message. It was the first case of his career in which a client received more in damages than he asked a jury for, he said.
“You, as a jury, get to serve a special function. You get to serve public justice, and you get to shut this operation down. You have the power in your hands to shut this down,” he said. “And they took that power and did something with it.”
