Daniel tries to convince the women with higher offers. Credit:Screen shot "I'm very unique and looking for an equally unique girl :)," he said. Clare Kearney said this was the first and only time anyone had offered her money on a dating site. "I thought it was some misogynistic power game because he had no luck actually approaching women," she said. Daniel offered $500 initially then increased the sum to $1000 then $2000 in nearly identical proposals to three other Melbourne women.

Kearney said she regularly used dating sites and apps, but OKCupid was "awful". "They're not the sort of guys I associate with or organically meet." she said. "They just seem sleazy." None of his targets reported the incident to the site operators or police. OKCupid's terms and conditions ban mischief or harassment, and adjudication is at the site's sole discretion. It relies in part on users to report harassment. Daniel, who goes by the usernames dja86dj and daniel86dja on OKCupid has had his accounts deleted.

A police spokeswoman declined to comment saying it did not appear an offence had been committed. "As such, it would not be appropriate for further comment," she said. It is not illegal to offer someone money for sex in Australia. Melbourne University professor Sheila Jeffreys, who lectures on feminism and prostitution, said laws should be strengthened to protect women on dating sites. "Women are in no position to know whether men who they have never met are going to be dangerous to them or not," she said.

She said Daniel's behaviour was "offensive" and would be illegal in Sweden, Canada, Iceland, Northern Ireland and Norway where laws ban men from offering a woman money to have sex. The laws "see men who offer money to women as perpetrators of violence against women, that's very strong and I think a very important position to have," Professor Jeffreys said. "We need good strong laws so that women are in a position to report the man to police," she said. One of the women who had an online chat with Daniel, who did not wish to be identified to avoid a chance encounter with him, said he had sent her messages on and off over two-and-a-half years from three separate accounts, all of which have disappeared over time. "I just remember his face, he looked like a creep," she said. "He comes across crazy, like straight away."

In one conversation she asked Daniel why his accounts were deleted. "I go, Why? and he goes, 'I don't know, do you know why?' " "I think I know why now." She said Daniel's IP address should be blocked permanently and he shouldn't be allowed to start any more accounts. Another woman, Emma, said she was at work this month when about 3pm Daniel popped up "totally out of the blue" and asked whether she had been offered money.

"It's about number seven or eight of ridiculous first lines that I've had on OKCupid," she said. "I mainly just laughed. I thought it was a bit sad. He didn't even ask for a date first, didn't even try to get it for free," she said. She said it was annoying OKCupid allowed men to approach her without her approval as on other dating sites users "get to weed out the freaks a bit before they get to say anything". OKCupid is owned by US company IAC which runs Tinder, Match.com, Vimeo, Collegehumor and more than 150 other sites. It did not respond to requests for comment.