PlentyofFish.com founder Markus Frind. Frind said he had only slept two hours in the past week after Russo was able to access users' personal details that reportedly included email addresses, usernames, passwords, addresses, phone numbers and PayPal accounts. Russo, who previously has admitted to hacking into popular piracy site The Pirate Bay to demonstrate secrity issues, sent a statement to Grumo Media - an interactive media agency with a blog - saying he was simply trying to warn PlentyofFish about the vulnerability, which he said was "under active exploitation by hackers". And far from extortion, Russo claims Frind's company was looking to legitimately hire him as a security consultant. He released emails which he says proves this, but Russo did not respond to Frind's claims about the Russian gangsters. Russo said: "I explained to him several times that we were only reporting an error, but he refused to understand and kept accusing us, over the telephone communication he clearly threatened me again, saying that he was going to do something, just before mentioning his connection to criminal organizations."

Later, PlentyofFish said it had examined the logs and determined only 345 user accounts were "successfully exported". The site said it had already reset all users' passwords and closed the security hole that allowed the hackers to enter. However, Russo appeared to have broad access to the site, as security blogger Brian Krebs - a reporter for the Washington Post from 1995 to 2009 - created a new account as a test and said Russo was able to read him his username and password. Frind accused Krebs of being involved in the attack but later backtracked from this. "The company appears to store its customer and user passwords in plain text [instead of encrypted], which is a security 101 no-no," Krebs wrote. Frind wrote that it took Russo two days to break into the site. "He didn't even try to hide behind a proxy, signed up under his real name and executed the attacks while logged in as himself," Frind wrote. "At midnight Miami time my wife gets a call from Chris Russo that plentyoffish has been hacked into and that Russians have taken over his computer and are trying to kill him, and his life is in extreme danger and they are currently downloading plentyoffish's database."

Frind said over the next 24 hours he and his wife received a torrent of voicemails from Russo, who he believed was simply "trying to create a sense of panic". He said Russo told him he had to either fly to Argentina or Washington DC to help him stop the Russian attacks. Frind said Russo claimed the Russian hackers had complete access to PlentyofFish's database, including bank accounts, and wanted to steal about $US30 million from a string of dating sites. When the story about the Russians didn't work, Frind said Russo and a business partner, "Luca", made contact with him and attempted to get Frind to hire them as security consultants. They claimed they could fix the site's security holes and if Frind refused they would go to the press. "They then start talking about money because they need to incorporate a company that can deal with companies outside of Argentina and that will cost $15,000," said Frind. "They also needed to know if they were going to make over $100k/year or 500k/year as that would require different registrations."

The two hackers sent Frind their resumes and Frind discovered that many of the previous "employers" listed were just other sites that the pair had hacked. "They are trying to extort us, but they are making stuff up as they go along because they have absolutely no idea what they are doing," said Frind. "At this point I did the only logical thing; I emailed his mother." Russo released an email in which Frind allegedly threatened to email every user of PlentyofFish with Russo's phone number, email address and picture, telling them Russo hacked into their accounts. "Then i'm going to sue you In Canada, US and UK and argintina [sic]. I am going to completely destroy your life, no one is ever going to hire you for anything again, this isn't piratebay and we definately aren't fooling around."

Frind has yet to comment on the veracity of the emails released by Russo.