A Michigan woman says she was “shocked, humiliated and embarrassed” by a Facebook romance gone awry and is seeking damages from her former online love.

Cheryl Gray, a 50-year-old unemployed paralegal says Wylie Iwan, a 35-year-old Applebee’s employee, led her on.

Gray claims she spent hundreds of dollars on gifts and a trip to visit Iwan, but was humiliated when he posted vulgar comments on her Facebook wall and was “devastated” and angry when a week before her planned trip, Iwan said he’d met someone else at a bar and no longer wanted to continue their “relationship”.

Now, “I feel foolish,” Gray said. “I’m not so much mad or angry. I feel foolish. I am disillusioned.”

Gray has decided to take her hurt feelings to court, filing a lawsuit seeking to recover $8,386.88 from her former online flame.

There have been other lawsuits about jilted online friends who spent money on gifts or other things they want to recover, but whether a judge will hear a case often depends on whether it was a good-faith relationship or outright fraud.

In the case of Gray and Iwan though, it appears she was merely a “thirsty” chick looking for love online.

Gray, a single mother of a 13-year-old daughter, claims she fell for Iwam when he began using the telling her “I love you” or “I’m falling in love with you,” and making plans for the future during their online chats.

They also talked on the phone, through text messages and via email, she said.

“He led me to believe for a number of months that our meeting was to explore a potential relationship between the two of us,” she said.

“We spent an hour plus in the morning online and three, four, five, eight hours at night every day,” Gray said.

Gray even sent him and his sons gifts for Christmas, his birthday and flowers on Valentine’s Day.

She finally bought airplane tickets and reserved a rental car for a trip to visit him from April 6-11 and reserved a hotel room nearby.? She even purchased tickets for their first date, the Seattle Mariners’ opening home game.

On March 30, days before she was to make her trip, Gray said Iwan told her he had met someone else.

“I was just really devastated … and I guess I was angry. I had done some very nice things for him.

He supposedly met this person on Saturday, but I don’t believe that. I believe he was already involved in a relationship. I felt like this guy is taking me on a ride.”

Iwan said that the spurned Gray started a hate group about him on Facebook and called him an online predator, although he claimed he had always been upfront about finding a new relationship.

“I want this lady to move on and leave me alone,” said Iwan, who had to find an attorney in Michigan to represent him. “It’s a completely frivolous lawsuit.”

It is the overall consensus of legal experts that Gray’s case will be rejected by the judge, but if it does make it to court, you can best believe I’ve got a personal list of online predators I’ll be suing for damages due to causing me emotional distress on Facebook…. starting with THIS CHICK!

But I digress…

One thing’s for sure, my personal feelings about “online dating” definitely haven’t changed.

Who do you think is at fault in this case?

Was it Gray for willingly spending her dough or Iwan for leading that old lady on?

[Source 1 and 2]