Web service gives alibis for adulterers

PARIS—Looking to get away for a weekend fling without getting caught? A new French company provides would-be adulterers with custom-made excuses that help take the danger of discovery out of cheating.

Founded six months ago by former private eye Regine Mourizard, Web-based Ibila can cook up invites to phony weekend seminars, fake emergency phone calls from work, invitations to nonexistent weddings—anything to justify cheating spouses' absence.

Mourizard said her service is aimed at protecting couples and families by allowing adulterers to live their flings undetected.

"If the alibi is well done and the spouse doesn't suspect anything, this can sometimes save marriages," Mourizard told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

Here's how it works: In an e-mail message or call to Ibila, the prospective client requests an alibi for a specific date and time. Mourizard concocts just the right excuse, taking into account the client's profession and personal circumstances.

She and her co-worker, a computer specialist, draw up fake restaurant and hotel bills, receipts and other documents to help shore up what Mourizard calls her "little white lies."

If the adulterer was supposed to have been away for a seminar, the company can even provide the kinds of freebies—pens, hats and tee-shirts—sometimes given at such events.

The simplest excuses cost euro19 (US$27), while more the more elaborate and time-consuming alibis can run upward of euro150 (US$207).

Mourizard, a 50-year-old mother of two, said it was her experience as a private detective that led her to open Ibila—Europe's second such service, she said.

"For 20 years, I worked to keep people from doing what they wanted to do. And I then thought, 'what if I help them do it, in a safe way?'"

photo courtesy images.google.com & story twincities.com, 9/23/07