A retired Stonehill College professor accused of defrauding a woman he met on a Christian dating site will not spend a day in jail. Gregory Shaw, a professor emeritus of religious studies and theology, was sentenced to six months' probation in Quincy District Court after his two felony larceny charges were reduced to misdemeanors.
Prosecutors said Shaw faced felony charges for allegedly defrauding the woman of $83,813 after using a fake name on Christian Mingle to gain her trust, according to a police report cited by WCVB. That figure has shifted across the case's history — the station's earlier reporting put the scammed amount at $80,000, while Enterprise News reported Shaw was accused of taking nearly $84,000 from the woman he met on the dating site in 2024.
Quincy District Court downgraded Shaw's two felony larceny charges to misdemeanor larceny charges of under $1,200 by false pretense. Rather than entering a guilty plea, Shaw admitted sufficient facts in the case, the station's report notes.
Competing Accounts of Who Scammed Whom
Prosecutors said Shaw only repaid the woman's money after police became involved, per the earlier account. Shaw's attorney, David Duncan, offered a different framing, saying his client repaid the woman after learning she had been defrauded through him — a move that, by Duncan's account, only deepened Shaw's own losses to scammers.
Duncan has maintained throughout the case that Shaw was himself a victim, telling the outlet that the real scammer used Shaw's identity and image to carry out the fraud against the woman. The attorney said Shaw was the victim of a romance scam and lost close to $1.5 million — though in earlier reporting on the effort to dismiss the case, that figure was put at about $1.4 million.
Duncan said Shaw was relieved to put the matter behind him. Shaw retired from Stonehill College in 2024 and no longer works there, the same outlet previously reported.
No Response From Prosecutors
5 Investigates requested a statement from the Norfolk District Attorney's Office on the sentencing but received no response, according to the report.
The case lands amid a surge in romance-scam losses nationally. Consumers reported losing $1.16 billion to romance scams in the first nine months of 2025, according to Central Oregon Daily, citing FTC Consumer Sentinel Network data showing reports were up 22% compared with the same period in 2024. In the third quarter of 2025 alone, more than 11,200 people reported romance-scam losses totaling $398 million, with a median reported loss of $2,218.
Massachusetts has seen its own high-dollar cases. The FBI's Boston field office has described a separate incident in which a South Hamilton man lost $1 million after an online romantic contact convinced him to move their communications to an encrypted app and make what she called investments, according to the agency.
Under Massachusetts law, larceny by false pretense involves obtaining another person's property with intent to defraud through a false pretense, per the relevant statute. Whatever the full legal contours of that standard, Shaw's case closed with probation rather than prison — and with prosecutors and the defense still describing two very different versions of who victimized whom.
