by Anthony DeMatteo
Staff Writer
If a certain blonde Romanian ever has her name in Hollywood’s lights, a local attorney will have had a role in her fame.
Anger compelled Jacksonville attorney Anthony Penoso to write a book, “How Not to Get Burned By Internet Dating and Mail-Order Brides: A Guide for the Potential Victim.”
On Valentine’s Day 2004, Penoso, 48, was set to marry a woman he had supported in Romania for a year, moving her from an apartment without running water to what he called comparable opulence. He met the then 26-year-old woman on the Internet and spent much of 2003 flying from Jacksonville to Romania to be with her.
The couple planned a wedding. She said she would fly to Jacksonville on the visa she’d gotten as a result of being a River City bride-to-be.
Waiting for Dascalescu at the Church of the Immaculate Conception Downtown were not only Penoso and his family, but trumpeters, a violinist and a harpist.
But Anca Dascalescu had other plans.
Instead of Jacksonville, she flew to California, where she hoped to find fame.
And instead of embarking on a honeymoon, Penoso was talking to Dascalescu’s ex-boyfriend on her cell phone. Penoso was told the two had reconciled and he shouldn’t call again.
Penoso said Dascalescu took him for about $75,000 in cash and gifts, including a $30,000 engagement ring.
He was hurt, then mad.
He contacted Homeland Security and immigration authorities to try to have Dascalescu deported.
“After I filed suit, I was able to get her Internet Protocol address from Yahoo,” he said. “I got her Internet provider, and with a judge’s order, her home address.”
After he saw Dascalescu appear briefly on a popular reality show, Penoso e-mailed her.
“I made one last-ditch effort to get her to send my ring and other property back,” he said. “She over-nighted the ring, and I wear it to this day – in a different setting.”
Penoso said Dascalescu wanted to apologize to him in person, so he flew to California to meet her.
“I got my ‘sorry’ and I flew back home,” he said. “She said she’d been dating a rock star and I believed her because the ring she was wearing made my flawless, three-and-a-half carat diamond look like it came from a Cracker Jack box.”
Along with the book, which is available on Amazon.com, Penoso has written a screenplay about the experience and hopes his name will one day be on a marquee.
Not long ago, the anger that made him an author led him to thoughts of revenge. Now, Penoso said he forgives Dascalescu, though he doesn’t think she will have an easy road to fame.
“What she wants to do requires her being in the public eye,” he said. “But that’s the very thing she has to avoid to keep from being deported.”