Six women who were drugged and sexually assaulted by the same Denver cardiologist have filed a major lawsuit against Match Group, the corporate owner of Tinder and Hinge. The civil action, filed in Denver district court, accuses the world's largest dating app company of negligence and of operating a "defective" product that actively accommodates sexual predators.
The Allegations: A Platform for Predators
The 54-page complaint argues that Match Group fostered a dangerous environment by allowing known abusers like Stephen Matthews to remain active on its platforms even after being reported for rape. The lawsuit, backed by four law firms, states: "Even when Match Group receives reports about rapists, they continue to welcome them, fail to warn users about the general and specific risks, and affirmatively recommend known predators to members."
Matthews, a cardiologist, was convicted in August 2024 on 35 counts related to drugging and sexually assaulting 11 women between 2019 and 2023. In October 2024, he was sentenced to 158 years to life in prison. The six women bringing the civil case are proceeding anonymously.
Carrie Goldberg, a prominent attorney representing the survivors, stated: "Dating apps have a duty to protect their users from known dangers. Stephen Matthews was a known danger." She described dating apps as "potentially the most dangerous product."
Systemic Failures and Broken Promises
The lawsuit heavily cites an 18-month investigation by the Dating App Reporting Project, published by the Guardian in February 2025. This investigation found that Match Group, an $8bn behemoth operating in over 190 countries, had long known the scale of harm on its platforms but kept the information secret.
Despite promising a transparency report in 2022, the company never published it and later removed mentions of the pledge from its website. The investigation also revealed that Match Group had scaled back critical trust and safety teams.
Alarmingly, Matthews was first reported to Hinge in 2020, yet he remained active on Match Group apps, continuing to match with and assault women until his arrest in 2023. The lawsuit details his methodical pattern: disarming victims with a park trip with his dog, brunch, or a game of Jenga before assaulting them.
Defective Design and Legal Hurdles
The complaint labels Hinge's product design as fundamentally flawed. It alleges that a perpetrator can easily "unmatch" with a victim before they can report them, causing the reporting option to vanish. This design, the suit argues, protects abusers.
Product testing by the Dating App Reporting Project confirmed that banned users could easily rejoin Tinder, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, and OkCupid as late as December 2025, using the exact same name, birthday, and profile photos from their banned accounts.
However, the lawsuit faces significant legal challenges due to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a 1996 law that typically shields online platforms from liability for user-generated content. In 2019, Carrie Goldberg lost a similar case against Grindr based on this immunity.
Match Group, which did not comment for this article, has previously positioned itself as a safety leader. In a February 2025 statement, it cited "harassment-preventing AI tools, ID verification, and a law enforcement portal." CEO Spencer Rascoff said in a November earnings call that the company was "doubling down on trust and safety," though he admitted some new safety tools were reducing monthly active users.
One survivor, identified only as Alexa, met Matthews on Hinge in 2023 when she was 22. She was infuriated to learn he had been reported to the app three years prior to her assault. "Hinge was liable for giving him a platform," she said. "They had all the power and the resources to prevent this from happening."
Alexa no longer uses dating apps, stating: "I've kind of even accepted that I would be totally fine being alone for the rest of my life if it means keeping myself safe from what happened to me." The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for the plaintiffs.
