Guy posed as a hooker online to rob man in a North End alley - and forced him to Venmo him money - DA says

A Taunton man was arraigned last week on charges he robbed a man who thought he was going to be meeting with a prostitute but who instead proved to be two masked men with a knife waiting for him near a North End alley.

Boston Municipal Court Judge James Coffee released Joshua Alves, 22, of Taunton, one of the two alleged robbers, on personal recognizance on the charge of masked and armed robbery with a knife, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports. He was ordered to stay away from Margaret Street and Cleveland Place, an alley that runs off it.

According to the DA's office, in late January, the victim answered a listing on seeking.com and agreed to the woman's $400 fee. But when he showed up at Margaret Street shortly after midnight on Jan. 29, he only saw two men wearing ski masks:

The victim continued to walk down Margaret Street toward Cleveland Place when the men approached him from behind, one of them brandishing a knife. One of the men yelled at the victim that the woman from the dating site was his underage sister.

The men forced the victim against a wall [in the alley] and ordered him to hand over his money. The victim handed them $60 in cash. The men demanded more money, saying, “that’s not good enough.” They then searched the victim’s pockets and asked him how he would have given the woman $400 if he didn’t have any more money. When the victim said he planned to pay via Venmo, the men ordered him to unlock his phone and then transferred $1,000 from the victim’s account.

Afterwards, the man went to police. He gave detectives screenshots of the Venmo transaction and his conversations with the "woman." Police then traced the transaction to Alves, the DA's office says.

Suffolk DA Kevin Hayden says the case shows why you should always be careful when meeting somebody for the first time, and that you should be cautious about what you read online.

Technology is continually advancing, and the methods of bad actors are advancing right along with it. This was a very digital-aged crime in that it contained elements of two online entities - a dating site and a Venmo account.

Innocent, etc.