Jilted man says woman owes him for gifts, trips
Claiming he was misled, a Minnesota man sued his former girlfriend in Oklahoma for fraud after she broke up with him.
“She gave me hope, false hope,” Arturo Eguia-Welch, 40, said in testimony about Journi Lynn Bentley, 29, of Yukon.
Eguia-Welch sought to be reimbursed $32,135, a total that included his expenses for their trips in 2014 to Las Vegas, Cancun, Mexico, and Texas.
He alleged she lied to him that she was separated and on the verge of getting divorced when she actually was still with her husband. He said she had insinuated he was “next in line.”
“I did it out of love the whole time,” he testified in a deposition about his expenses. “When I realized that I wasted time in my life pursuing somebody who had lied to me is when I decided that I wanted to seek damages.”
Eguia-Welch, a St. Paul motorcycle shop owner, sued even though he once told Bentley on Facebook “I don’t expect anything in return ... I’m pretty well off” and “it’s like pennies to me.”
A Canadian County judge last year threw out the lawsuit after Bentley’s attorneys argued it was frivolous. In an opinion that became final in July, the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals let that ruling stand.
“If recompense for gifts bestowed upon lovers who parted ways was an available remedy ... the courts would be flooded with suits seeking the same,” attorney Ben Grubb had argued on Bentley’s behalf. “The courts are an avenue for an aggrieved party to seek
justice, not a vehicle for jilted lovers to recover funds spent courting.”
For a long time, EguiaWelch and Bentley were just friends on Facebook. He had noticed her around 10 years ago at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar & Grill while on a business trip to Oklahoma City. She was then a waitress there.
Bentley acknowledges she showed poor judgment when she went on trips in 2014 with EguiaWelch as a way to take a break from her failing marriage. She said he had become persistent in chasing her. But she said she never led him on. And she pointed out that she eventually did get divorced in 2014.
“From the very beginning, I told him, ‘I am married. I don’t want a relationship. I’ll spend time with you because I don’t like where I am right now.’ But I always made sure he was clear that I was not in ... a situation to guarantee him anything. I couldn’t give him that,” she said.
Bentley called the lawsuit frustrating, saying she is out money because she had to hire and pay an attorney. “Knowing a little bit more about the court system, really the only defense you have is just not putting yourself in the situation to begin with,” she told The Oklahoman. “You live and you learn.”
She ended their relationship after visiting him in May 2014 in Minnesota.
“I thought it was odd because we stayed in a hotel. He never let me visit his house,” she said of her visit there. “Come to find out later through the deposition he was married the entire time and never told me.”
Months after that breakup, he brought a car to Oklahoma for her to drive because she’d had a wreck. She said he had a tantrum in January 2015 after he found out she wanted to return the car and also had a new love interest.
She filed for a protective order against him after he took the car back. She alleged in her request that he entered her house without permission on Jan. 15, 2015, and sent her harassing and threatening messages all that day. A temporary order barring contact with her is still in place.
He also talked about their relationship to her parents, her ex-husband, members of her church and a supervisor at work, she said.
He acknowledged in his deposition he had offered to help her ex-husband “take her to court” to try to get out of paying child support.
Eguia-Welch was charged in June 2015 with a felony, second-degree burglary, over the incident at Bentley’s home. He pleaded not guilty. The case is still pending.
In January, a judge in the civil case ordered Eguia-Welch to pay Bentley more than $14,000 for her attorney fees and costs. “We will seek to collect,” her attorney, Grubb, said.
Told by phone he had lost on appeal, EguiaWelch said he hadn’t known that was the outcome. He promised to call back after speaking with his attorney. As of press time, he had not.
He did complain during the brief phone interview that the prosecutor in his burglary case is wasting “court resources and people’s money.”