Raleigh business owner says website giving her spa bad name, scamming men looking for erotic services

A website that suggests various spas in the Triangle provide erotic massages and other illicit services is angering business owners and scamming men.

“It was very creepy,” Destiny McCoy said of the men who kept showing up at Adara Spa, on Peace Street in Raleigh. “On the intake form, [one] wrote 'sensual massage.'”

Adara owner Sunny Miller said that's not the kind of business she runs.

“We are doing a legitimate business, and we have for years,” Miller said.

Other men would visit the spa after hours or without appointments, and one claimed to have paid a deposit. Miller told him it wasn't to her business.

Most said they found the spa on the internet, so Miller asked to see the phone of one disappointed man who was about to leave. Instead of looking at Adara's website, she said, he was on a site called RubMaps.

The site suggested Adara provided erotic services and provided a phony phone number from the 828 area code in western North Carolina.

"Someone gets a potential victim to send a deposit to them, and then they send them to a legitimate business," Miller said.

“The interesting thing is he drove 129 miles to get here," she added of the man.

The RubMaps site acts as a user-generated review site for illicit massage parlors, stating that it's unaffiliated with any business. It requires users to confirm they are 18 or older, and users must register to see reviews of listed spas.

WRAL wasn't able to reach a contact listed on the site.

The site includes listings and reviews for businesses across the Triangle, including 18 in Raleigh, 12 in Cary, 10 in Durham, four in Knightdale, three in Garner, two in Apex and one each in Morrisville and Clayton.

WRAL Investigates visited a couple of the listed Raleigh businesses. A woman at one said she was unaware of the website, while a person inside a second location said the business was aware of RubMaps and had tried to get removed from it.

Miller said she contacted authorities about the site in an effort to get Adara removed.

“I don’t have time to have my reputation ruined because somebody just figured a quick way to make cash,” she said.

She said she's not sure how it happened, but Adara was recently removed from the site. Still, she increased security at the spa.