Married love-rat UK businessman who contacted prostitutes on iMessage pursues Apple for £5m he lost in the divorce – after his wife found the ‘deleted’ texts on the family iMac
A married businessman who contacted prostitutes via iMessage is taking Apple to court over the £5 million he lost when his wife divorced him after finding the ‘deleted’ texts on the family iMac.
Richard, not his real name, said that in the later years of his marriage he had started meeting prostitutes and talking to them via iMessage. After agreeing to meet with them, he would delete the messages, believing they would never appear again.
But when his wife clicked iMessage on the family’s connected iMac, he was shocked to see the last message he had sent to someone else. iPhone was for a prostitute.
As she dug deeper into the messages, she discovered several years’ worth of messages to prostitutes that her husband thought would never appear again. The times reports.
After uncovering her husband’s trail of his infidelity, she filed for divorce within a month.
Richard, not his real name, said that in the later years of his marriage he had started meeting prostitutes and talking to them via iMessage. (File image of iMessage on phone)
When his wife clicked on iMessage on the linked family iMac, it turned out that the last message he had sent to someone else’s iPhone was to a prostitute. (File image of iMessage on laptop)
Richard, a businessman and middle-aged father from England, is now taking legal action against Apple in a bid to recover the £5 million he lost in the divorce, plus legal fees.
He claims the tech giant is not making it clear that iMessages sent to another iPhone user can be viewed on other linked Apple devices – even if they have been deleted on the phone.
He told The Times: “If you are told a post has been deleted, you have a right to believe it has been deleted.
‘It’s all quite painful and still quite raw. It was a very brutal way to find out [for my wife]. I think if I could have talked to her rationally and she hadn’t realized it so brutally, I might still be married.”
Richard told the newspaper that he and his wife were happily married for more than 20 years until his infidelity was exposed.
He believes what he did wasn’t as bad as a full-blown affair and that the couple might have been able to get through the saga if it “hadn’t been so sudden, brutal and disturbing.”
Richard said he thought he was going to have a heart attack from the stress the situation had caused and had to take beta blockers to reduce panic attacks.
Richard, a businessman and middle-aged father from England, is now taking legal action against Apple in a bid to recover the £5 million he lost in the divorce, plus legal fees. (File image)
London law firm Rosenblatt is taking legal action against Apple. It is exploring the possibility of a class action lawsuit on a no-win, no-fee basis.
Richard says that since his divorce he has heard of others experiencing the same problems he did.
In one case, he says a father’s messages went to a teenage son’s iMac, causing him to see messages he shouldn’t have.
And in another case, messages sent by a man on his phone downstairs appeared on an Apple TV viewed by the woman upstairs.
Rosenblatt’s Simon Walton told The Times that Apple is “misleading” by telling iPhone users that their messages will be deleted while they are still found on other linked devices.
MailOnline has contacted Apple for comment.
