Ginsburg-Run Dating Co. Was Investigated by Feds

BOSTON--A computer dating service that Supreme Court nominee Douglas Ginsburg helped run in the 1960s prompted complaints from dozens of people and a U.S. Postal Service probe before filing for bankruptcy in 1967, according to a published report.

The Boston Herald said in today's editions that a blind man was among the angry customers who claimed they were bilked by Compatibility Research Inc.'s "Operation Match," according to files of Boston's Better Business Bureau Inc.

A Postal Service probe of the Cambridge dating service, in which Ginsburg served as vice president, was suspended after company leaders moved to New York and disappeared, according to an investigator's memo.

Some creditors in the bankruptcy case charged that "Operation Match" unduly favored some creditors over others as it fled town.

Ginsburg could not be reached for comment on the complaints, since the telephone at his Washington, D.C., home was answered by an answering machine and he did not return a message left on the tape.

The Herald said Better Business Bureau files contain several dozen complaints against the dating service. But BBB President Leonard Sanders said the compalints likely represented "only about 20 percent of the complaints we probably got" since the agency's files were purged for microfilming in 1969.

The firm Ginsburg helped launch also had branch offices in Chicago, New York and San Francisco and drew complaints from all over the United States.

By its own count, the company served tens of thousands of applicants at fees usually ranging from $3 to $5.

The firm was incorporated in March 1965, with Harvard student Jeff Tarr '66 as president; Ginsburg, who had dropped out of Cornell University, as vice president; and other students, an accountant and a lawyer as principals.

Ginsburg was an official of Compatibility Research "between 1965 and 1968," before returning to Cornell, said Justice Department spokesman Terry Eastland.

In Cambridge, the company ran ads aimed mainly at Ivy League college students, promising to help them "enjoy this summer dating those students who meet your specifications," by matching them by computer with compatible partners.