Armchair Anonymous: Scams II

I'm Randall Shepherd joined by Lily Padman,

and today we have Scham's Part Two. - Scham's are sad. - They are sad, sad warning.

“- Yeah, but they're interesting and they're informative.”

- They're very informative. - One of them specifically, I was like, "That could definitely be me." - They're great cautionary tales. Every time I open my email,

there's two dozen attempts to scam me. My texts, they're not attempting to scam me. - The world is out to get you. - Yeah, the world is a vampire. - Please enjoy Scham's Part Two.

(upbeat music) - Hi, is this free? - Yes. - Oh, wonderful. We don't get to talk to many breeds.

- No, and it's an important name and that's his life. - I'm aware, my phone room is brilliant, but I go by brief. - Since you were a little girl, or did that come later? - It was when I was little, and then went away for a while,

and then came back in my 30s. I decided to reclaim my childhood nickname. - I'm glad you embrace it, 'cause as you know, I hate anything multisilabic, maybe 'cause that's privilege,

but I think when people have like six, seven syllables, we gotta come up with some shorter. - That was honestly part of it, when I started to do more public stuff, and meeting a lot of our people and breathe,

people get it, right away. - Yeah. - And they'll go, "Oh, remember, "breachies?"

- Oh, wow, I never even thought about that.

“- Yeah, that's what people would do with breathe.”

- Really? I actually say that. - Yeah. - Wow. - 'Cause as soon as you connect some object to a person,

you can remember their name a lot better. - Interesting. - Like Monica Padmond, and you think Lily Pad. - Yeah, or you think menstrual pad. - menstrual pad, maxi pad.

- I've never thought that was. (laughing) - Okay, so Bree, you have a, well, first of all, where are you? - Not too far from you guys, actually.

I've been LA, Tony. My husband doesn't want me to give away too much exact, so I won't say this at any, but not too far. - Okay, so you have a scamming story. - I do.

Starts back during COVID. Me and my husband, home with our kids, we have three kids, two of 'em at the time, are doing Zoom school in elementary school. We also have a preschooler, so life's crazy.

We own a business, so we're running our small business through COVID, but I'm home with the kids working from home. My husband still is able to go into the office. And so we're spending way more time on them than we ever have with our three kids.

From the time we moved into this, so my new is gonna be our forever home, and we knew eventually we would remodel. So it becomes obvious, this is the time. We're home all the time, like, let's make this the space

we want it to be. So we have this family room that at the time was like an enclosed patio, no insulation, super low ceiling. It had this full half bath that we called the toilet closet. (laughing)

And would like hide from people when they would come over. They had like the office tile type ceiling and like a tin roof, so when it rained, it was insanely loud in there. So really just the kids used it.

They watched TV had their toys, but we didn't spend time in there as a family. Even though it was a family room. We decided, hey, we're gonna do this remodel. It's a huge project.

It's gonna be like half of our house getting demolished and rebuilt. We're in 2021 at this point. It's like a year of planning, architects, getting city approval, all that stuff.

And then we're finally at the point

in like the summer of 2021 where we're like looking for a contractor. This idea to remodel turns out in the LA area, not a unique idea, so finding a contractor was really challenging.

You know, prices were going crazy. We had refinance our house. - There's supply chain issues, lumber was a lot. - Like how we were doing this at the same time? - Yeah, all three of us.

- We have to labor force was missing. It was just a crazy time to like try to get anything done,

“but we're like, well, is there gonna be a better time?”

Like maybe the world's ending. So let's just keep moving forward. So we're having a really hard time finding a contractor and like around the same time, one of our friends bought a home and immediately started remodeling.

It's really, hey, give us their contact information. Let's get in touch with them. We emailed them like, hey, can we set up a time to meet? You can look at our property. We'll go over the plans and get a bit from you guys.

So all of that happens. It's end of September. We meet with them. It takes some time to get a bid to us. So it's December by the time we hear back.

And we're still trying to get competing bids from like a few other people, but literally just getting ghosted by most of them. And then the ones that we are hearing back from are giving us these like insanely expensive prices, right?

So we got this time we're seeing this company's work

and running into the contractor

when we're over there.

“Like, hey, got your bid, we're reviewing it.”

All that will give back to you soon. It becomes pretty obvious in the spring that we're gonna go with this company. So we start kind of going back and forth over email, going over our questions,

the contract, deciding like the exact scope of work, all this time we're also seeing the contractor in person when we go over to our friend's house. And just making like little comments, like, oh, got your email, like, we'll get back to you soon,

whatever, we get the contract from them. And there's one thing that is a little off. They're asking for a 50% materials deposit to get started. And as you mentioned already,

like lumber costs at the time, we're just through the roof and just kept going up

so that explanation was the only way

we could guarantee this price for giving you right now is if we purchase as much of the materials right now as we can, so we need this big deposit. - It makes logical sense. - I had to do that.

- Yeah, I did the same thing, yeah, it was like, it keeps going up so if we buy now, it's smarter than waiting, normally we would stagger this. - Kind of exact that process really well. It makes sense, we get it.

We don't wanna pay more by waiting, so let's go for it. So we signed the contract, send the deposit, and we get on their calendar for June of 2022. And so this is like a few weeks out at this point.

And they're like, okay, we're gonna deliver a bunch of materials, so we need some space in your home. We need to be ready to move out of essentially half of our house, and we're gonna be living in the house through the construction.

So we emptied the whole family room, don't need all the furniture, back up all our staff, get rid of as much stuff as we can, we're like moving out of our bedroom, and my husband is that's gonna be part of it,

cleaning out the garage. So all that's done two weeks, it comes to the day where the materials are gonna be delivered and nothing comes. So it's not that unheard of.

There was no panic yet at this point, maybe things got delayed, they forgot to update us. So it gets to the end of the day, and I just send an email,

“like hey, nothing showed up, can you give us an update?”

- And I have no idea why at this point I realized this, but when I'm sending the email, I notice that two different email addresses pop up, you know, my little drop down. - Oh, as you start to type in the name.

- Yeah, so it's the same beginning, but one of them is a hot mail and one's an MSN. - Neither trustworthy to me. - Yeah, great. (laughs) Unless it's Gmail, well in this company,

there will out-dated like it's not that weird in talking to them, we knew that they were a little behind the times. - So when I go, that's weird. Well, I'll just send the email to both of them, 'cause I didn't know which was correct.

Next day, I'm walking to my kid's school, 'cause I volunteer all the time, I'm going to volunteer in the library, and I get a response from the contractor, confused, responding like,

what materials are you referring to? We haven't ordered anything. It looks like we're missing some emails. Can you please advise my heart, just drops?

- I think at that point, I knew. - I'm also so confused, 'cause you were seeing them face-to-face. You were talking about the fact that they had submitted a bid.

“So now the question is, who sent the email, I guess?”

- Right, I go off to volunteer at this time, shove everything down, text my head's been, I think our money was stolen all the contractor right now. And he's like, this whole time, it wasn't them. And this is the part that is the hardest part to tell.

And the part that if I think about it, like I can be back there, the feeling hitting me of this whole dream in an instant is just gone. - Yeah. - It was a huge amount of money.

We'd refinance our house to pull out equity to get the money. - Yeah. - Yeah. - It just felt like we had ruined our family's future.

- Yeah, all this guilt and shame, right? Which is so unfair, you're a victim, and yet you feel immediate. I'm not a good steward of all this. I'm supposed to be responsible to my family,

all these shameful thoughts. - Exactly, I'm not really a super emotional person, but in that moment, it was that shuddered, sobbing, the spell on the couch, and what's just broken for a while.

- So how do we think somebody was privy to the fact that you were talking to them? - And like being in this game. - Yeah, how does all that work out? What have you come to find out?

So after speaking to the contractor, it turned out that there was a third party in the middle of all the emails. So they were pretending to be us to the contractor and pretending to be the contractor to us.

So the very first two interactions were legit, and then from that point, the email address switches from the correct one to the incorrect one,

and we never noticed the scammer had told them,

Don't use this old one, use this new one.

“So they were sending an email to some random other email address.”

And that way, all the emails, when we're asking questions or like contractor questions and needing contracts and all that, they were able to pull a real contract from this company that had their logo

and all the language and just tweak things as they needed to make sure that we kept everything and writing over an email. All the detailed stuff was all done over email, and there's lots of little hints in there

to like make sure we didn't reach out in person. And I think had this been any other contractor, like if we'd picked up some random person and not been seeing them and had this built in trust 'cause they were down the street.

Once the fog kind of lifted, there were more red flags that we just attributed to, they're in a rush, little things like that. - How do you start responding?

How do you start figuring out how this third entity

entered the equation? - It was really just at that point where we talked to the real contractor. - Did someone hack your email or theirs on reading all the emails and then started putting this together?

- They hacked the contractors email, we're pretty sure. It turns out there's not actually a lot to be done about this. - It's a really smart con because of that time lag, as we sign the contracts and the money, and then they're like, okay, well, here's the date

“for when you should expect materials to show up.”

- Yeah. - Once we investigated with the bank and police reports and all that stuff, they traced the money, but by that point, it had moved through multiple accounts that had been closed and eventually ended up somewhere

in Eastern Europe. - Oh, wow, wow. - You read about these scam complexes in Eastern Europe where they are like data centers where all they do is this. - So you weren't able to get any of it back?

- Or really signed out any concrete, anything. And I have to mention the tax cuts that happened

during Trump's first term.

One of the little things they snuck into that bill was a change in how you can write off losses. And so before that point, a loss like this, we would have been able to write it off and not pay tax on it, but that bill changed that.

So the only losses that you can deduct now are like from natural disasters. And ever since that point, this type of fraud has been hugely on the rise, because the government's no longer on the hook

for that money. - They're not incentivized to crack down 'cause they're not eating the tax liability. - Exactly. - Oh, man.

- So that one really hurts, that was like seriously. We have to pay tax on this, bunny that's gone. - And how long was it a searing pain in your side? Like how long before this dissipates and you find your way back to like, okay,

we're gonna live, not the end of the world. - Thankfully, and I will completely acknowledge

“this is a really privileged problem to have, right?”

Like, oh my poor remodel, we were still able to borrow more money to be able to move forward and get the remodel done. So it was probably a few months of a pretty deep depression. - Yeah, yeah.

- It's just like going from this really high point in my life, in our lives, to just kind of feeling like it all fell apart all of a sudden. But then I think once we were able to start moving forward, again, thankfully, we had each other to lean on.

And we had our kids to sort of be like, "Well, you got it if I can get it together." - Yeah, yeah. - They don't care much about these things. They're great in that way, they're only in today. - Yeah, this was kind of a final test.

I feel like I've had all these weird little signs to submit this story to you guys and just put it out there and let it all go, right? Let go of the shame and maybe hopefully helped someone else?

- Yeah, I think anyone who's currently in an email exchange with a contractor talking about a bid will have learned through this that they should get on the phone and get in person, maybe. - Shout out to all the millennials who don't like it

on the phone because that is 100% me. I will avoid a phone call at all times. Sometimes you gotta get on the phone. - But that's so hard because you were seeing them. There's zero reason for you to have thought.

- And you read flights, yeah, yeah. - I'm so sorry that happened. - Yeah, well, how did it turn out is the new living room nice? - The new living room is lovely.

We built it all around the ability to have a nice big Christmas tree right in the middle. And so we've now celebrated two Christmas ends with our big Christmas thing. - Okay.

- So real quick, I gotta say, I'm not really into the sim. I know you guys love the sim and tell the time. But I had not listened to our intern anonymous when it first started.

I was like, I don't have time for the more content.

(laughing)

- The last year finally gave it,

and started listening to it sometimes with my kids. And like, okay, this is funny, this is a good show. And so at the beginning of this year, I decided to go all the way back to 2022 and start them from the beginning.

And like the third episode in as you guys is first scam episode. So I listened to it in January of this year. I was like, oh my God, if they ever do this prompt again, I guess I'll have to submit this story.

- Yeah, that's the next month. - The next month, and I told my husband, and he really was not into me doing this. He's supportive, but he was like, really, he wanted to air out this story

for the whole world. But I was like, I have to, like the world is telling me I have to. - Very soon, whether they're the same or not, it's still soon.

- That's right. - And I gotta say on the scale of embarrassment, I think the harder ones are like, when you've come to trust a person in real life,

and then they betray you and they were always going

to betray you, yours is pretty low on the,

“I think anything that you could feel dumb about,”

because you weren't even looking at anyone, you know? - I don't see how anyone wouldn't have ended up in a situation if they were in your shoes. - I knew you guys would make me feel better, but until, yeah, at the time,

we felt pretty dumb. - Yeah. - That's so cool. Thank you guys so much. Quick shout out to my daughter who's turning 16 next week.

She's gonna listen to this with me when it comes out. My husband and my fellow armchair Becky. - Well, Shuttle Becky, happy birthday daughter. All right, take care. - Scams are me.

- Yeah, they're not nice. - I got a shout out, my contractor bill. He's just so nice. He didn't scam me, in fact, he's like losing money on me. - You can make more money just being up for him.

(upbeat music) - Is it Lee? - It's Leah. - Leah.

- Your name always scares me when I see it.

I'm gonna be honest. - You could go either way.

“- It's a common one that's confused a lot.”

- Well, let me ask you, can it go another way or is the H always Leah? You could educate me now, or some Lees, or maybe I'm gonna confuse with L-E-I-G-H. - I feel like H should always be Leah,

but I do get lea lot, so there's gotta be some people out there spelling it with H. I can't be the only one. - What is all this confusion is coming from? Where are you Leah?

- Hi, I'm in Fisher's Indiana. - Okay, Fisher's Indiana, where is that? - It's like a suburb right outside of Indianapolis. - Oh, okay. - Somewhere on that big loop.

- Yes, right outside the upper east corner of the loop. - For people who know, no, when you're coming south from Michigan through Indiana, you're presented with this loop, and you can either go east or west,

and you don't know. You don't know as a Michiganer. They're conceivably the same length, but the traffic'll certainly be different. - Inch is name, that's very,

- Atlanta. - Atlanta. - True, sure, sure.

“- We never know how long that loop is gonna take.”

- Can you just tell me? (laughing) - Play the loop lottery. Okay, so Leah, you have been scammed, or you scammed somebody, we don't know.

We've not yet had a scammer, but it could happen. - I was scammed. - Okay, I'm so sorry, please tell us. - Okay, so this story takes place in 2016. I am pregnant with my first baby,

and something to know about me is that I'm a very type-a person. So, I took on pregnancy like it was a checklist. One of the things I knew I needed to do before babies arrival was to schedule a newborn photographer.

You're supposed to get your newborn photos done 10 days after that this week's month. - That's supposed to be the sweet spot, we're gonna know the most cutty and bendable and sleepy to get the cute poses.

Of course, what does one do in 2016, but I get on to Facebook? - Yeah. - And I make a post to my family and friends does anyone have any recommendations?

What do you guys think? And really quickly, I get a message back from my cousin and she's like, "Hey, I used to work with this one girl. "Super sweet." She quit her job to pursue photography full-time.

She's super nice. I think you'll love her reach out. So, I go to her Facebook page. I go to her website. She is glowing reviews.

She's a mom to two small kids. She volunteers her photography to local hospitals and I'm like, "Okay, this person's great." Reach out, she calls me pretty quickly and we have a great conversation.

She's super nice, going over all the pricing packages. And she's like, "Hey, right now, "I'm actually offering a promotion "where if you pay for your newborn session in full, "I'll actually give you a maternity session for free."

And I'm like, "Hard pass on the maternity session." - Sure, sure, I don't want a stranger in there. - Well, I just wasn't feeling beautiful at that time. I didn't need to remember my double chin.

So, I was like, "Could I just get a newborn session

"at a discount?" And she's like, "Yeah, sure. "Knocks a little bit off the price

“"and then sends me her zeal info, I pay her."”

- Really quick, did it seem expensive, modest? Where did the price come in for you? - It was a little more than I was hoping to spend, but her pictures were good and she was highly recommended with the discount.

It was like, "Oh, well, this was exactly where I wanted to be." - Oh, yeah, shopping mall. So, I go ahead and send her the payment and mind you, I have like another trimester to go. I'm like really ahead of the game.

So, I check it off, put it out of my mind. Well, 39 weeks rolls around, reach out. Hey, can we schedule something? I hear nothing, 40 weeks, reach out, call, message, nothing. 41 weeks, I go and deliver my baby.

It is a rough delivery.

I had something called a third degree tear, don't recommend it.

- I know, like, it sounds like that. - It's worse than a second degree tear. - It is, it goes up to four. - Oh. - Of course, the absolute worst.

- It's okay. - So don't go to four. - Don't push it, yeah. - Takes me a couple of days. Needless to say, before I reach out, I'm home.

I send her a picture of my baby. I'm like, "Hey, here's my beautiful baby. Can we please schedule something?" And she replies, and she's like, "Oh my God, so sorry. Yes, I've been busy, let's schedule for this day.

9 a.m., here's the address to you there."

“So again, I'm gonna make sure I'm prepared for this session, right?”

So I stay up all night feeding this newborn baby, like every two hours. She's gonna get a feeding right before we leave, and she's gonna be super well fed and happy. - Gossal, yeah, for this session.

So I do, I get like no sleep, but by God, she is fed, and we're leaving pack in the diaper bag and ready to go. I get a text message as soon as we're leaving. And it's from the photographer, and she's like,

I'm so sorry, my toddler just fell down the stairs. I think she's injured herself. I need to take her to the emergency room to get her checked out. I can't meet you this morning. And of course, I'm like, absolutely.

No problem, take care of your kid. Let me know, and she's like, if everything checks out, I'll call you and maybe we can meet later today. hours go by, I don't hear anything late after noon.

I reach out to her and I'm like, "Hey, how is your daughter? "Is everything okay?" And she sends back this long message about how horrible the day's been. It's taking forever to see a doctor.

They are still waiting on X-rays, yada, yada, yada. And I'm just like, no worries, we can reschedule for a few days later. But for some reason, and I can't tell you why, but I just feel in my gut that I'm not getting the full story.

So I feed my baby, give her to my husband, get my very broken postpartum ass into the car. And I'm driving to this studio. I just need to go, and I need to find out what's going on 'cause I just feel wrong.

So I drive the 30 minutes to the studio,

never been there, and I get there,

and it is indeed a photography studio. But the name on the door is not her name. There's no one there, but there's a phone number listed. I call the phone number and the older of the studio answers, and I'm like, hey, give her a short rundown of the story.

I'm supposed to meet this photographer at your studio today. Do you know her? And she's like, yes, I do indeed know her. She used to rent photography space and my studio, but she quit paying me.

I asked her for my key back. She hasn't given me my keys. I just had to have all my locks replaced on my doors. Oh, boy. So I'm like, great.

Any chance you're free to do a newborn photography session. You have to pivot it, yeah. And she's like, no, really busy. Okay, can't help you.

“I'm like, well, do you think I'll at least get my money back?”

And she's like, down it, but good luck too, yeah. And so at this point, I'm sleep deprived, hormonal, and I'm just losing my mind. All I want to do is have my little newborn baby's photo taken. So I call my husband and I'm just clerical trying to grasp

the ridiculousness of the situation. So I reach out to this woman when I get home. And I'm just like, talk to the owner of the studio that you told me we were going to. Doesn't seem legit.

I don't think you're being honest with me. Can I please have my money back? And she doubles down in her life. And she's like, how dare you tell me that I'm a liar. This is a family emergency.

You don't know what you're talking about. So I'm just like, you know what, lady. Can I just have my money back? Yes. I'm happy to go on my own way.

She's like, sure, I'll send it to you. Give me your Zell and Phil, day goes by, another day goes by. Never get anything back. So I'm like, okay, well, at least I'm going to go on her Facebook page and I'm going to write a review.

And I'm going to warn other mothers to be like, just don't book this woman, save yourself the drama. And I hadn't been on there in months. When I was there before, it was nothing but glowing reviews. But of course, as soon as I log on,

of how other people have been scammed by this woman. I wonder what happened in her life or she turned from legit to a criminal. Exactly, because that is obviously what happened. Rung habit.

Yeah, I reached out to my cousin after this went down. And I was like, please don't recommend this person anymore. So she reached out to a couple of friends. And apparently, she recently got divorced. And had kind of been going off the deep end ever since.

She wasn't even in town anymore. And was just reaching out to people to schedule these. And there were much bigger sessions she was booked. Well, people probably bought that bigger package. Exactly.

The grow with me package. Grow with me out. It's a thing Monica. Yeah. [LAUGHTER]

“You have to take your baby's picture every three months.”

Are you a terrible mother? This is the thing that they talk to you and is doing it. That's what we have iPhone guys.

I was never that person to do it.

But there was even a bride that had her entire wedding shot. And she did the wedding shot it, but then never gave her the photos. Oh, fuck. So I don't know.

Something landed the divorce. And then the vortex accelerated. It does sound drug-ish. It sounds either drug-ish or bipolarish. Yeah.

Oh, hard to say. And she was a mom herself. She had tons of pictures over to kids. So it's just kind of wild. Who'd you end up getting to take those photos?

How far out were we? I did find someone that my neighbor recommended. I didn't get it in the 10 day window. It's going to be okay. Did your baby look so ugly?

Yeah.

“I wasn't as sleepy as beautiful as she could have been,”

but it still worked out. They came out nice, but I didn't share with Emma. My drama didn't quite in there. I also had my daycare provider snubbed me two days before I started work too.

So postpartum time for me was really, really hard. Wait, what's with these photos I'm going to see? Oh, your baby looks so cute. Oh, it's a tiny little girl. She's so adorable.

This turned out perfect. Wait, and now she's a big sister to what twins? Is that what I'm seeing? No, so the picture on the beaches, the baby, the oldest was the baby.

And then I had a second sense.

Oh, I'm looking at one with a little person holding two babies. So that is when we got kicked out of the daycare. Oh, two months later. So I got kicked out of the daycare two days before I started work, and so did my sister.

I called my sister and was like, your daycare provider isn't going to take my baby. And she's like, she just kicked out my kids too. So that was our Instagram post to be like, what are we going to do?

Do you love having two little girls? They are nine and six, and they're the best. Well, you wouldn't know it by looking at the photo that this was in 10 days later. They're the same real thing.

Because maybe they would have been a little more wrinkles. Yeah, more redness. Exactly. That baby at the beginning. Yeah, the ugly skin pops up.

Yeah, they get all of some baby on set acne. Which was rough. That actually gets really-- Yeah, you can tell the parents are insecure about it. Yeah.

That's the main thing.

It's like, I'm always like, it's fine.

I know that you start talking about it. Yeah. Oh, she's just got, they said it's the baby. I'm just going to go away, it's like, no, I know. Her husband's really bad at it.

It takes everything to ignore it. She's like, this is fine. She's supposed to look this way.

“But again, that's why you get him done so early.”

The face is smooth. For the face is pretty good. Wow. Oh, well, it's lovely meeting you, Leah. Yes.

Yes. If you'll indulge me for a quick minute. Of course. Needless to say, I kind of told you that I'm very type-a and had a lot of things go wrong within not only these two things, but had a lot of things go down within my first

couple months of having my baby. I was diagnosed with postpartum depression and anxiety really, really severe, really, really awful time for me. And I can't believe I'm talking to you guys. The most challenging part of my life was the three years after having my first daughter

Alice. I would sit in my car and be terrified of just being alone in my brain because when you were that depressed and anxious, your thoughts feel like a prison and the only thing that could get me out was listening to stories. And listening to you guys, and I remember your first interview with like P1s when you were

like, what medication are you taking and what therapy are you doing? And I was like, oh my god, other people take medication and I'm not alone. I'm not broken and defective. I was so ashamed of how horribly I was struggling and I felt like such a failure as a person as a mom.

And it's a week and so my birthday and to get to meet both of you guys, it is the best gift I've ever had. Oh, Leo. I'm sorry you were going through that. That's so hard.

Yeah, if anyone's listening, it does get better. That is my biggest message. That is the problem when you're in it is you believe this is the rest of your life.

As I always say, you're never having a great time and go, oh fuck, I bet I'm going to

feel elated for the rest of my life. You know, damn well, you're not going to feel elated and the same is true on the other side. You're afraid it's never going to end, but it does get better. I'm happy for that.

I'm happy for that. Yeah, happy for that. Yeah, happy for that.

“I think we're like really close in age, Monica, a few months older than you.”

Yeah. I see you're 39. That's great. Nice. So I agree with you a lot.

Thank you, Monica. We're really close in age and I feel like we get each other a lot. I love it. You're equally annoyed with me at times. Hopefully.

I always see both sides, the both great arguments always. Me and Monica grew up at the same timeline, so we sync a lot. You had the Flintstone's vitamins. I did. I try to get my kids to eat them.

They don't like them. The new kids, their tastes are two. Well, they should have better guys as well to happen. They've got these are delicious, they're some nice chalky. All right, well, happy birthday.

Be well. Great meeting you. Thank you, guys. All right. Take care.

(upbeat music) Hey. Hi. I don't want to say you're a real name. Have you picked out a fake name?

I haven't.

“I was hoping you guys would be able to pick for me.”

I hate to be pedestrian, but I'm going Brian. Okay, I like that. Do you have any objections to Brian? Is there if you've been bullied by Brian?

Never been bullied by a Brian or Paul Brian before.

So that works. Okay, perfect, perfect. And where are you? I'm located in New York City, but the story is going to take place in Hobo, can you Jersey?

I felt like it might be in New Jersey. You did. I did. Well, she goes down in Jersey. Let's just acknowledge that, right?

There is a lot. We're going to set the picture for you. Okay. I'm in my young 20s right now. Fresh out of a relationship and Hoboken is known for a lot of their bars.

So I'm going out to the bars, meeting new friends every weekend. I'm not thinking anything other two weeks after just binging the bars, non-stop. I get an Instagram follower. My account's private, so I'm like, "Alright, this is strange. I don't remember talking to this person at the bar."

Also, I am in my young 20s, so I'm meeting everybody out there. Was it a hot girl in the photo? It was. Yeah. Four moments are going wild at this point, so I accept the follower request.

They actually reach out to me and we'll be yawning back and forth, non-stop. It comes to a point, it's like late at night. They start setting the mood. They're like, "Why don't we take this conversation to SatChat?" Oh.

So as a young person on Snapchat, you gotta be sending pictures back and forth.

“Really quick, in the promise of Snapchat, was they evaporate?”

They evaporate right away. So you open up it evaporates. If you take a screenshot, the other person's notified that so-and-so, took a screenshot of your picture. So, they're going back and forth, things are seeming to get pretty hot.

The pictures that they're sending back look, 100% real. Mm-hmm. Like, they're in someone's bedroom, kind of thing. Exactly. They're sending videos.

I'm thinking that this is real life. The most exciting night of real life. Definitely. We're going back and forth. Then they're like, "Why don't you send a video of you and I'll send a video of myself?"

They want to do it. Of course. So, I'm like, you know, I'm not really comfortable doing this right now. I don't even think I even met you.

So, also, and they're like, "Okay, I'll send one first so you can see it.

It's real." And I'll send you a video. But then they're like, "Don't take a screenshot or anything." So I'm like, "Okay, fine." So they send it.

I'm like, "This is great. It's real." Life can be magical. [laughter] So, I'm not thinking anything.

You know, they're like, "Can you send a picture of yourself now?" So I send a quick photo. Sure. That first, who is shirtless. Okay, very safe.

And then they're like, "No, I want to see your face and everything else." So I'm like, "All right, fine. Let me cover up a little bit so I'm not showing too much and I'll send a picture." And I guess there was a mirror in the back that kind of captured a little bit of my face. But I had no idea about it.

I was even thinking about it. Yeah, you're in an accelerated state of mind. All of a sudden, they take a screenshot of it. And I had no idea because they were using some third party app. And within seconds, they send me a screenshot of my picture.

And they start demanding a payment of $700. No. I am at this point sweating bullets. I'm like, "What the fuck did I just get myself into right now?" I'm like, "I have a kickball game in 30 minutes."

Now, this person's blackmailing me for $700. I'm like, "What the hell did I just get into?" I'm like, "I don't know what to do. I'm freaking out. I'm in my early 20s.

I can't call anybody and be like, "Yeah, I just sent this person like a shirtless picture."

So I'm like, "You know what, let me just send the $700 and then it will be over."

Oh no.

“They send me a Venmo account of who they want the money to go to.”

I send the $700. I think it's over at that point. Within seconds of them were receiving payment. They're like, "Now we want $1,200. That's fine."

I am mortified right. I have no idea what to do. It's now 10 minutes to the kickball game. No, what are you gonna do? I'm freaking out. And then all of a sudden, reality, I don't know what the heck happened, but it just clicks

in. And I'm like, "You know what? Send the fucking picture." Yeah. Let all my followers let the world see my picture.

I don't care. They're like, "It doesn't work like that." They try to get me to send the additional $1,200. And then I'm like, "No, 'cause they're gonna want that." Then they're gonna want more accelerations.

I'm like, "This isn't happening." Send the pictures.

So then I close out of everything.

I start reporting the account. I get my friends to report the account. I did a little researching myself to find out that Venmo account. And what other Venmo accounts it might be linked to. I find Facebook pages of the user.

So then I'm messaging them. I started digging up everything from this user. I started reporting it all. And I call Venmo. Meanwhile, my kickball game had already started to lay.

I called the captain. I'm not gonna make it. I'm dealing with some stuff right now. I'm in the middle of the high stakes black belts that you're with. So then I call up Venmo.

They are zero health. Venmo is like, "It's your own fault. There's nothing that we can do about it." I call up my bank. And they helped me tremendously.

They wanted to help me get my initial $700 back. Really? So I got my money back. They tried to blackmail me for an additional $1,200. It didn't work out.

Maybe a count itself wound up getting terminated and I guess kicked off of Instagram. I guess I like the guy broke even that night. Gumbless that bank. I know. Because I might be like the bank, too, like, bro, you know, did all this.

Yeah. Yeah, it's all ox. But you learned to let $700 lie, so yeah, I guess. Thanks, dude. Tried.

I wish Venmo would have flagged their Venmo account.

“That's what I was trying to get them to do in the first place.”

I gave them the user's name. I gave them the payment, substance, everything. And I'm like, this user is scamming. Luckily, my bank helps me, but there's probably 100 or more users out there that actually got scammed.

And who knows who actually sent them the $1,200 payment? I mean, I stopped after the first one, but it just kept on going on and on. Well, I got to say there is some genius to the first number. $700. $700?

They would have started with $1,200, would you have done it? Probably not. I know, like, I think they figured out what the threshold is. They've done hurts, but in your mind, it's like, okay, it's also a substantial amount of money.

Enough that they just gained $700, like if you said like $100, that's not enough for them. For sure. Somewhere along the way, they figured out that's not an accident, the 700. Now it's just like a fun thing between friends. Like, if I owe one of my friends money and I'm like, oh, how much do I owe you?

There's just all like $700. Wow, I'm glad you got your money back. I know a few friends of mine who have engaged in a correspondence in DMs and ultimately

the person's always like, yeah, I want to come see you, but I need this for the bus fair.

Oh, yeah. I had a hospital thing, you know. I know it was crazy, but I lived to tell a story. No. Wonderful.

I'm glad we have you listening, yeah. Thank you for having me. All right, take care, brother. Bye. What a sweet, so high. You.

It was so cute. Can't believe he listens to us as a little young boy. I know a playful personality. He got his money back. Me too.

We would have had a pain.

“The whole time I was here in the story, do you want to know what I was thinking?”

I was like, huh, 'cause I've never used this Snapchat. I was like, wait, it goes away. You want to be able to look at that for a minute. Like, how quickly does it go away? Do you guys know?

I don't know. You can't admit to knowing either of you. I know. I know. But you need some time.

How quickly does this appear in a spirit? They see a fun video, and that just wants? I don't know. And then why wouldn't you be able to take the-- Oh, it can't.

But then you're outed. But then you could just have another phone video in your-- Oh, that's a good hack. Smart for the listener. Yeah.

And you outsmarted that one. What I usually do is have another phone. Sure, third. Hello, Trina. Yes, I'm Katrina, nice to meet you.

Do you go my Patrina or Trina? I have two different things on my piece of paper. Patrina is my real name. Patrina, Patrina, where are you? I'm in Australia.

Ooh. Get the fuck out! From down under, what time is it there? Well, let me guess. Oh, it must be very, very early.

Is it tomorrow? Is it 5 am? It's tomorrow, yes. I am in the future.

It's a bad score to 7 in the morning.

Oh, God. How's your morning going? Not too bad. Just gotten up and all excited. Ready to go.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. We're going to weather. Do we have this time of year? It's fall for you guys. Yeah, still quite hot, though, where I am.

We've got big rain events happening at the moment, which is causing a bit of chaos in some parts of the state. But quite nice here today. It's blue skies and sunshine. Are you in Sydney?

More northern parts. So in Brisbane.

“Okay, is that part of the gold coast today on that right?”

Yeah, we're north of the Gold Coast.

Okay, do you care about the Australian Grand Prix? It was just last weekend. I've seen some highlights, but no, not some make-up follow closely. No. Okay, so I didn't think people got scammed anywhere but the U.S.

Did it happen in the United States? No, unfortunately, it was here in Australia. Oh, right. People all over the place who do that unfortunately, so a bit of an uplifting story in the end, I think.

Personally, so this took place back in about 2009, 2010, I can't remember exactly. But I was living here in Brisbane, Australia. And I was about 22 at the time living by myself with my two-year-old child. I just recently split up from the child's father, but I was living by myself. Had good jobs.

I was able to support myself, so that was all very well and good. After about a year, my friends encouraged me to start putting myself out there instead of moping around about the separation and I was reluctant as a single parent to start dating again, but I did get on to the online dating sites. And I asked, was your reluctance that you were nervous like how will I introduce the person

to my child? Or was your reluctance? I have a child and no one's going to like me. Bit of both, really. Didn't really want to introduce a stranger.

I have the expectation that they had to take the part of a parent. I was quite happy to do that by myself, but it was yet a bit of an awkward scenario to come across when you're of that age. Yeah. But there was someone I eventually met, let's call him Justin.

We hit it off pretty well at the start. He was normal. He's going. We had good back and forth conversation, which is rare back then and still rare now to get that to do a conversation going.

It did take a genuine interest in me. It wasn't too intrusive with questions or push boundaries with anything, so we took things pretty slow. What was the advertising essay?

“He was, I think, 24 is what he advertised his name and we did meet in person after”

a few conversations, things went smoothly. We dated pretty casually for a little while and I did eventually introduce him to my child. He got along really well with the child. We'd play into the little games that two-year-olds wanted to do and would bring little

gifts and make things really nice for both of us, really. He was sweet. Yeah, it wasn't what I would consider a love bombing stage or anything like that, but it was kind. Things progressed and he had stayed over for a night or two every week.

I met some of his friends, we hang out when we both finished work, it was nice, it was uncomplicated and he was willing to take things slow, which was nice for me getting back into that environment. So probably in hindsight, I was very naive when he took your old and I was looking at things through various color glasses and there were things that probably should have

got my spotty senses tingling, so things like he had his own landscaping business and worked at all these random places, but he didn't have a car to get around. He was vague about where he lived. I wasn't able to go to his house, he wouldn't tell me his company name, and then just things like he was a landscape or worked hard all day every day, but didn't really come

home. Sweaty or dirty? Yeah, which is a bit strange.

He'd get dropped off and picked up from my house by his work friends, but it was always

different people, different cars, and they'd call him different names. At the time, I brush it off thinking he's just a private person, he's got different nicknames that work, what he goes by and didn't really think too much of it. Did you even go so far as to imagine, like, oh, maybe he wants me to think he owns it, but he doesn't, and he's embarrassed.

I did, but I also thought, who cares, he's making a living, he's giving it a hug so that whatever it is. I've had doubts about how serious this business hearing was, but it's his life at the end of the day, and he didn't owe me anything to get into the nitty gritty of it, so that was fine at the time.

So probably about three months in at this point, and myself and my child, we went on our holiday with my parents and my family, we were away for about a week and a half. It was a pre-planned holiday. We weren't in a situation where I felt the need to invite him, but he did offer to check on my house while I was gone, watered the plants, and just tend to things while I was gone,

“and I was quite happy with that, so I left him a spare key.”

We spoke really regularly during the trip, no red flags, nothing out of the norm, just really sweet conversations, saying it was exciting for me to come back, missing me those types of things, and he said he'd stopped into check on the house, everything was fine, and for us to have a really great time, and we were, but I was excited to get back, because of all

to you. Yeah, you're 22.

“The day came and we arrived back home, it was pretty early, it was about 6.37 o'clock in”

the morning, and he was meant to pick us up, I'd reconfirm the time with him the night before, and that was all fine, but he wasn't there. And where's there? A train station or the airport? Yeah, it was a train station, actually, so he was running a bit late, I sent the rest

of my family, I was saying, I'm sure he'll be here soon, they took my child with them, they

had a car seat, so that was all good, I waited about an hour and he never showed up.

So didn't answer any calls or texts? Does he have your car? I didn't think he did at the time, so I had someone else pick me up and took me home, I pulled up to my house and I'd just set the security door was latched open, which is not something I would usually do, it's a little bit out of the ordinary, but the main door was looks,

I didn't think anything of it, I went inside and I was just really confused, there was junk everywhere, but nothing else, no furniture, no appliances, work jewelry, money boxes, all gone, went to my garage, car was gone, it was only about a two-year-old car, it was very nice, very new, ahhh, spare fridge gone, main fridge gone, like all the food that was in it was just in a pile on the counter, it's like moving trucks, yeah, yeah, well, that

comes into it, I had some of my grandparents belongings at the house, I wouldn't vote that

“my grandfather had hand made and painted, it was gone, all those really important family”

heirlooms, in my bedroom, I walked in, there was a lamp on the floor and then just a pile

of my clothes just in the middle of the room, oh my god, there was like food packets, alcohol cans just scattered around the place, my outdoor furniture was gone, so my child's bedroom at the time was only door that was closed in the entire place and I was just so anxious to open it, thinking that look, if all their things had gone, it was just make me see, the thought that that had been violated as well was just unimaginable to me, but I opened

the door and surprisingly it seemed to be the only room that was intact. So he's like a 90% monster, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He probably was going to, but then he remembered like, oh, this kid, I gave him presence. I can totally relate to that moment, I can imagine going like, yeah, how dark is this person?

How bad am I going to be today? Yeah, exactly. I did later to a bit of an inventory of the room and I did work at the only things that would take him with a gift that he had actually given my child earlier, the relationship.

“So that was a bit strange, but everything else was there luckily.”

So my initial thought when I've gone into the house was that it has been broken into and I was panicked and worried about him because how do he got in court up in it or something like that? Calls and texts not going through, not answering, and then they stopped going through all together.

It's like not sent kind of situation. Are you even blocked? Yes, that's when I realized what had actually happened. Ah, he was obviously involved in the whole scenario of emptying the house and stealing the car.

I've called and made a report to the police. They came straight over, took all the details, put out the bowl over on the car for it to be flagged, told me they'd be in contact, started making that inventory list and later on that night, they called me down to the police station. So I gave them proper written statement and after that, they explained that they'd looked

him up in the system and he had an excessive record of this similar pattern with the behaviour, extensive record of different aliases, charges of fraud, theft and all in very similar circumstances around this kind of dating a person scenario and then ripping them off essentially. And that person can probably be juggling multiple marks at once.

Possibly. So the really interesting thing that I then found out about that is with the timing, they let me know he had only recently been released from prison and I had actually started speaking to him within a day or two of him being released. So I had no idea that that was him, there was no landscape in business, there was no job,

people's literally fresh out of prison, just started on the dating sites to repeat his pattern. So he was on parole. One of the friends that I'd met earlier, he was actually released from prison while we were in a sort of dating period.

So I met him the day he came out of prison had no idea. I knew it was just material possessions at the end of the day, but I was like, he meditated. I was angry and I was hurt. I was going to ask you, was it so hard to call your parents and tell them what

happened? Yeah, I don't even recall doing it, but I ended up staying at their place. I wasn't feeling safe at my house for that little while, but then I got really angry. And I went into like a full investigation mode. I went and door knock to my neighbors, they were surprised to see me, they said, oh, we thought

you had left. Like we thought you had moved out, because we saw that big moving truck here, a couple

days out, and it ended up being like the second day I was away on that holiday, and was

So I was talking to me that whole time, everything's fine, yep, house is fine, meanwhile

“he's got this moving truck at my house, loading it up with all of my possessions.”

It was a very distinctive truck as well. So I was able to pass that information onto the place, but I did my own research, and

I found out it was the second hand store that did him the duty of coming, collecting all

my belongings and moving it away, and they paid him $2,000 for my entire house. Your whole life. My guy, the police issued a warrant, I was able to go and collect the belongings that was still there, but apparently most of it had been sold, which I didn't believe, but I did get my grandfather's hand-made wooden boat back.

That's the irreplaceable thing. Exactly. The car was eventually tracked down, he had dropped it just over state lines, literally a couple hundred meters into the next state, and that made the recovery of that really difficult, but I did get it back, it was damaged and trashed, but it was repairable in the end.

So I did gather things back, which was good, but he was still out in about at this time, which made me worried. He knew where I lived.

“He did randomly send me a text, I think, two months after just saying sorry,”

but then he was arrested about a week later, he was sent back to jail. He played a guilty, so I didn't have to go to court. What was he doing when they picked him up? He had gotten to a state where he'd run out of money and went back to his mother's house. I'd actually reached out to his mother and let her know what was happening, and she just said,

"Look, I'm sorry, it's a hard lesson for you to learn," and I don't know where he is, but he showed back up at his mom's house. She either turned him in or convinced him to turn himself in a nutshell. But he was in jail for nine or so months, and was ordered to pay restitution, so it was about $30,000 in the end, was the amount of damage and things that he'd taken.

He got $2,000 through, but this was over 15 years ago, and I'm still getting paid. 20 dollars a week, restitution's pay off this bill. Really?

I didn't even get any restitution for probably the first five years, because he was still paying off

from the previous crimes that he'd committed and that other people had done it too. That was a really horrible way to get back into the dating scene. It took a really big toll on me. Overall, it eroded a lot of trusts that I have with the relationships and that made me second guess my own judgment, which is one of the worst things, but also, like you touched on that,

the start-backs, the thought that I'd bought somebody into my child's life. It was not the sort of person that I wanted them to be around, and that could have gone a lot of different ways, it was really scary, and really hard for me to get past. This is what I absolutely hate about these situations, as someone gets completely abused, and then they're left to feel terrible. It's the cruelest of all crimes.

Yeah, it was really horrible, and it affected me for quite a few years. I turned that into a hyper-independence and threw myself into my career. Eventually, I was able to buy my own house and build my own safe environment back around me.

I did eventually get counseling for it a few years, I probably should have done it earlier.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it did really help me to reframe the experience and empower me to forgive myself and forgive the situation, which was really good. I haven't really dated since then, so it's been quite a few years now, but hopefully my next chat with you guys is, "I meet Keets now." Yeah, I hope so.

Yeah, well, that kind of experience really gives the shadow voice that we all have a lot of proof, unfortunately. It gives it some validity that it shouldn't have. Yeah, fuck. I hate that guy. I'm so mad about this.

Yeah, unfortunately, it happens in Australia too. I guess it's good to know it also happens a little bit. It feels a little better for us, yeah. I feel like every five seconds, so one of the more of those happens here, it does. So, maybe he's now a 17 or 18 or something.

Yeah, all grown up. Got their license, growing their own little independence.

“I think we are living a really great life. I'm a very privileged to live the life we have.”

And I do think that that scenario that I went through helped form some of that direction. So, as bad as it was at the time and not for many years afterwards, I'm happy that I've ended up with where I am now. Good. Wow. So nice to meet you. Yeah, I'm incredibly happy to meet you.

We love that you're on the other side of the world listening. Yeah, means a lot. I'm trying to grow the cherry group. Hopefully we get that spot. Have a great day guys. Bye. Bye.

Oh, I'm mad. How can people be that mean? Oh, people are really mean. But then people are really nice. Like the ones we're talking to are really nice. Yes, and there's more of us than them.

Can I count myself or that guy? I know. I know. I can tell I feel resistance. I have not scammed any. I know that. I just feel like that guy when he was stealing the stuff and then he was going to go in the bed.

Like so much was going on psychologically. He didn't steal from the kid. He did take his presence back. There's a lot. That's complex.

Him or her, I'd rather be her.

“I don't think your life when you're that way is pleasant.”

I don't think you're winning when you're doing that.

I think you live with all that.

I just don't think anyone's foot loose and fancy free. And let's do a sociopath. Right.

“Yeah, I must have been, I mean, I didn't do a sociopath.”

It's just so sad because it robs the other person.

More than the stuff, it's like a sense of safety in the world, a sense of safety about yourself, like it's so damaging. So damaging, yeah. Just be careful out there. Be careful. We love you.

Love you.

“I don't think you're winning when you're that way is pleasant.”

I don't think you're winning when you're doing that. I don't think you're winning when you're doing that. I don't think you're winning when you're doing that. I don't think you're winning when you're doing that.