Romance could show you incredible things like magic, madness, heaven, and sin. But in today’s special Valentine episode, Jen and Jill uncover a different kind as April Helm recounts 3 stories of romance money scams. The cautionary note is clear: "Love's a game, wanna play?" Be careful because your next mistake could be a big one.
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Episode three point eighty Love and Money Romance Scams with April Helm.
Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and live a life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.
Happy Gallentine's Day Frugal Frows. It is Valentine's Day, and we are so excited to hopefully you're listening to this.
Her name is Jen, my name is Jill.
Oh gosh, I'm so certain.
We're just so excited.
It's actually the day before Valentine's Day, but we're so excited to do this Valentine's Day episode on romance scams.
Yeah, we did something similar only different back at Halloween, where we did a departure from our typical episodes just to have some fun with money stories, and we loved it so much that we thought we got to do something around valentine Yes Day to talk about how love then interweaves with this.
Yes, so we on our Halloween episode episode three fifteen, Episode through fifty my favorite money murder scams, basically, how scams are murdering your money.
This is our way of generally easing into just becoming a scam podcast.
Gently easing, but We had a lot of fun today with April Helm talking not just about romance scams and kind of laughing along with them, but also normalizing it and giving you some insight on how you can a avoid them and be handle or affect somebody in your life who may be part of.
One, which apparently, as we see in our poll, a lot of people have been impacted by scams, particularly romance scams, either themselves or someone close to you, or just an awareness that they exist. And so I think wherever we find ourselves on that spectrum, it's important to be equipping ourselves with knowledge, know where we can be protecting ourselves, warning others along the way, because this is more prevalent than I think we want to even realize, and we'll learn that a little bit more with April. But some of you did share some of your stories about what you've heard happened to maybe family members or to yourselves, so I think it's certainly relevant.
Yes, so, and yeah, I definitely stick around for this one. It's a it's a really good one.
But first, this episode is brought to you by Cupid, the creepy nude baby flying around hunting us on his bow and arrows serves to unite beings that belong together, kind of like you and a high yield savings account. If you don't have one yet, we really do recommend ciit. It's who I Jill personally use. They are currently offering four point six y five percent apy on their Savings Connect account. So right now we are the creepy babies flying around telling you about the best places to keep your money because high yield savings accounts will love you back you earn a percentage on your money. I got all my clothes on Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash cit.
I just want to make that clear.
Oh I'm not a baby, and I'm not a dude.
I'm not a baby, all right. So, in our gentle transition to becoming exclusively a money scam podcast, we have brought on April Helm. She's the host of the show Scammer Stories, and she started this podcast because her mother was actually scammed and she tells that as one of her stories. But we will laugh, we will be sad, and at the end we'll give a few extra tips for what you can do about scammers in your life. So enjoy.
Let's get to it.
April Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. This is going to be a really fun show. I'm so excited.
Thank you so much for having me on. This will be fun.
We did a fun, little scary money stories episode back at Halloween and it got us thinking, oh Valentine's decks coming up, and we gotta do something good all the.
Way back in October, but we did.
I think we even mentioned it on the podcast. Well, part of it became a public service announcement. Honestly, we thought we were just doing something fun, and then we realized, whoa, there's some really complicated and complex scams out there, and a lot of us are more vulnerable than we think we are. And then, especially when you throw love or the thought of love into the equation, how much more is it valuable to look at? So I think we want to in part have some fun, but also PSA beware. So with that, April, this is what you do. You get to have some shock in awe and learning all the time. And we just want to hear from you your top three favorite romance money scams, whether they're the best, worst, funniest, favorite, and we're just going to talk about them.
Yeah, So let's kick it off. Okay, I want let's go like three two one, like what's your third favorite? His favorite? To a strong word romance, money scam.
Okay, so let's start off with a fun one. Kind of a woman I called Aubrey, not her relan, was duped by a man she thought was The Rock Dwayne Johnson. Okay, for about two hundred and fifty thousand. She was married to a higher up colonel in the military and would go to White House dinners. She was married. This is a very wealthy family. Her and her husband separated. She got a message on Facebook from a man she thought was Dwayne Johnson. Now, back in the day, she was a flight attendant and she did meet him on a flight, so she thought, okay, this could be real wow, and they started a relationship. He the scammer, was so good that he would predict things that would show up on social media before they showed up on social media, like The Rock had a baby, and he just guessed that The Rock was going to have a baby, And he told Aubrey, We're about ready to have a baby. It's coming out in the news. Don't be worried. We're not together. And then it just so happened that it came out in the news that The Rock had a baby. I don't know how he was able to do that, but it was a very convincing scam who Yeah, so she was still married at the time. And then one of the Rock's best friends is a comedian and journalist in the UK, and he actually did a story on her that she was a scammer instead of The Rock, and it really devastated her, embarrassed her, put her in a deep depression, almost committed suicide. She ended up begging her husband back. He forgave her because she lost everything, didn't have a dime left to her name, so she moved back in with him.
Okay, so how did it all devolve? So how did we get from I'm in a relationship with The Rock to the Rock's journalist's friend is writing a story about me? Like, how did we get there?
Yeah, she was getting ready to buy a house with him, and certain things just didn't start adding. You know, of course, when you're talking to a scammer, you want to meet them. So she'd planned to meet him, he wouldn't show up. She'd you know, all the plans that they had, you know, buying a house. He never showed up to buy the house. He never showed up with any money. So finally she figured out it was a scam that way, and then the journalist did the story on her after that, but it took about two years. This whole process took about two years in twenty sixteen was when her scam happened.
And so how was the scammer taking money from her? Like, what were the things he was asking for? How did he like groom her?
Well, was that, yeah, there was always something. They come up with a million different ways. They need a lot of times he needed money for a cell phone, or there was a loan that wasn't going through. There was a business deal that he was getting ready to close on, but it wasn't going to make any money until the very end, and he just needed her to give him some money until he closed the deal and then he'd send it back, you know something with this family, it was just a whole multitude of things that he would go through to get money from her.
So she left her husband at the time to be with who she thought was Dwayne the Rock Johnson and they had this relationship over the course of what did you say, two years? She ever ended up meeting the person behind the fake account?
No, she didn't.
Did they ever find anything out about this person? Like? Did the journalists who wrote this story find out anything?
He reached out to me actually recently, and he said, I figured out what I did was wrong and I would like to speak with her.
Yeah. Wow, And he said, I journalism, I know.
No, this guy's bad news. And he said I would like to speak with her. Can you connect me with her? And I said sure. So I reached out to Aubrey and said, he's wanting to talk to you now. He realizes how wrong he was and he's wanting to make amends. And she says, I don't want to talk. We went back and forth on whether she should talk to him or not, and I said, well, how about this. How about I'm on the call with you and I'll record it and anything. He says, that's a lie. We have it so we can come back. And so I went to him and said, she'll talk to you, but I need to be on the phone call. She needs an advocate there with her. And we went back and forth for probably a year, and he said, no, no, I'm not doing that. I said, okay, Well, she's not talking to you then, and then he was like, Okay, we can do it. He was just really rude. It was just a really weird situation. So we've we never ended up doing the article.
So the what is So what was the journalist how what inspired him to write the article in the first place?
Him and the Rock are friends in real life? Uh huh?
And how did how did the Rock even find out about this? It just seems like people scammers are using celebrity profiles all the time, right, this isn't uncommon, So how did this come to light that A this is not an uncommon scamm right, So like, why would you even think that she was the scammer? There's well how many who said.
Yeah, she has a very deep Southern accent. And so in the article he said she was just a dumb Southerner and she was trying to get in with the Rock to get his money. I guess he didn't. I don't because she started messaging the real Rock on social media. This is happening to me. This guy's claiming to be you. So then the journalist says, oh, she's just trying to scam him out of get in touch with the real the Rock and scam him after she.
Started to when she started to realize this isn't what I thought it was, then trying to rectify it, it kind of threw up some red flags around her. Something that stands out to me about these scams, whether it's romance involved or otherwise, is that there are a few key believable pieces to it. You know, at face value, when you just started saying this girl thought she was talking with Dwayne the Rock Johnson, I'm like, oh, brad or, who even falls for this? But then you add in these extra pieces of being in these circles and having wealth and having had met him in the past, and you start to realize, oh, okay, so she wasn't just some dumb Southerner as the journalist tried to portray her to be. There were some believable aspects, And then you add in some of these pieces that you couldn't even imagine how it came about that the scammer was able to guess that this was about to happen. Maybe the scammer was actually close to Dwayne and trying to use him. That happens too. Like I watch.
Catfish, Oh I love that.
Any time I'm anytime I'm in a hotel room, I love just bingeing some catfish. And so often it's a close friend who wouldn't to a close friend to the one that they're trying to use their face to lure this other person in. So yeah, there's so many potentials with it. But I think highlighting again that there could be room for any one of us to fall for something like this if given the right set of parameters and believable pieces to it.
Yeah, some of the worst mistakes I've made in my life. I've never been involved, I've never been a victim of a romance scam, but I've made some really stupid decision when it came to love and ment. I mean, I look back and think, who was that person? How did I make that decision to be with that guy for that long? What was I thinking? And why didn't I see the red flags earlier? So I don't fault these and this this scam particular. I mean, it's bad enough that you get romance scam by someone who looks like a regular person. It's embarrassing. But Aubrey was so embarrassed because she got made fun of. You know, you really think that the rock would want to talk to you, you know.
But that's insane that the Rock would reach out because obviously the Rock would have had to tell his journalist's friend that this is happening. Okay, so I think he cared enough to like embarrass this woman.
I think Aubrey scam was one of the first scams that for the most amount of money involving the Rock, and so that's probably how he was alerted to it. He's done several videos on social media. He's been really kind. Hey, guys, there are people using my name and my image and you know, I came from nothing. I would never ask you for money. Please, please, please do not give someone saying that they're me money. And he even went to the FBI and started working with the FBI to try and bust these scammers, to try and get people to stop using his image.
Wow, so the villain of the story really is the journalist and yes, scammer is.
Yeah, okay, So what if they're one and the same. What if the journalists is the skim.
If I didn't even think about like the scammer. Scammers can be close to the people who they're trying to scam, Like, it's not like the rock runs around with everybody and like, you know, everybody is a celebrity that he runs around with, like there are obviously other people to get takes because it's right. These scammers we're not. We're obviously not. Everyone is innocent, reven guilty, you know, it's just you know, run. But like these scammers will put like they will just spray and pray essentially, like that's how they get these it's the stories we hear. Those are like the the very like point zero one percent of who these caammers are targeting, and we and then we think like, oh, these people are just dumb. No, they're just being close enough to the truth for as many people as possible until they get one person that it is that it's like dinging like winter.
It's all it takes. Oh, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money.
Yeah, for two years. Yeah, oh my gosh.
Okay, okay, so one down.
We are off. Wow, we're number three. Wow, Okay, let's continue with story number two.
Okay. Story number two happened around the same time this woman was taken for a million dollars and.
Oh no, yeah, shocked faces. Okay, okay, okay, we're here for We're here for here.
In April, this.
Woman though her resume, you guys, she was actually a US spy. She was an Intel.
We got to release the video on this podcast recording. We can't handle this. We're used to talking about money. I mean, we are talking about money. We're just talking about insane money. We're gonna okay, we're here for it. We're for it.
Done. Okay, Okay.
So she had recently lost her husband, went online, met a man from Britain. He had a British accent because she did speak to him. He was in the forestry business, and she thought it was interesting because she also had some forestry work down in the South America somewhere. He was very articulate. This woman was very articulate, and they talked for a long time. The first time he asked her for money, he said that his friend was trying to get online to an online dating site and he didn't have the money there it wouldn't go through for some reason because of his connection or as something was wrong with his card or something. And asked her for forty dollars and that was a test, and she gave him the forty dollars, So then the money went up because he had all this forestry land and he wasn't going to get paid until it was all cut and sent off. And she said, I realized, you know, she's a businesswoman. She actually owns a business now, a vitamin business. But she said, oftentimes you don't get paid until you deliver the product. So I thought it was real. I sent him the money thinking he would pay me back, and he ended up being fake. He was from South America. Now she realizes that in South America you can have a English accent. And he actually came clean when she started to figure out things weren't adding up, and he video chatted with her. He was a young black man and he wanted to keep the scam going, obviously because he was making so much money, so he tried to keep it. He said he wanted to keep the relationship going, and she said, no, I'm not keeping the relationship going. And she kept it quiet for a long time because that's embarrassing losing that much money.
Wow, Like, I really like you giving me money, and I would love to keep this relationship going. How does that sound?
Well, honestly, when you were starting to say the story you know, he's articulate and she's articulate, and they're both smart and they enjoy each other. Like, Yeah, why don't you just then get together if you just want to kind of share money and share ideas. But I guess it doesn't work if it's just a one way road, if it's just you always only giving.
Oh my gosh, Yeah, we've all been there. Okay, was this.
Guy like, was this guy well educated? Like if he's that articut, like, is he just one of those kind of guys that's too smart for his own good and it's bored by general work.
Here's the scary part. They're all smart, they're all articulate, and they're all well educated. That's why they're so good at what they do.
And they're just kind of using their powers for evil.
Yeah, I mean it's not like the scammers in the US who don't have college degrees. I mean, these people have gone to school. School is a big deal. So yeah, that's why they're so articulate. They know a lot about it, a lot of different things. If they would put their mind to something legitimate, they could actually make money, not as much as they're making scamming people. It's easier.
Yeah, I want to know more about this call. Does she describe like the call in full, like facetiming her scammer?
Yeah, she was pretty horrified because the guy that the picture he used was very good looking, probably you know, fifty year old white man. And then when she saw this, you know, probably twenty year old with this really wide smile. Here I am and she was like, oh, I mean.
Not who he portrayed himself to be.
Not for twenty years old.
Probably just a kid, Yeah, just a kid.
And did she say how he wanted the how he envisioned the relationship continuing? Yeah, what was what were his reasons and rationalizations?
She Now, she didn't say that originally the plan, the plan was that he would move to Houston and they would be together. So I don't know if he wanted to actually move to a lot of the scammers from South America and Nigeria were they try and marry the person and move to the States. Now, I don't know if he wanted to do that or just continue living down there and take our money and be friends. I don't know.
Yeah, have a sugar mama. Yeah, so this woman was did they meet like on a legitimate dating site is that where? Okay, so this is you know, a dating site where they have like commercials and they're like fine, love.
And we're we're working. I'm on a scamboard, a national scanmboard where we're actually working with the with the dating websites to try and get them to crack down on scammers. The only one working with us right now is Match, which does tender?
Interesting?
Okay, so Match and Tender And then what all the other ones say, they're just like.
They're not what there's no incentive for them to create a system. I mean they're doing find the way they are what they're not getting.
People are Match.
Are finding harmony, just not in the way that you just might be one sided.
And then the what what stands out to me in this story is just the vulnerability. I think that's what makes the romance scams all the more difficult, or layered that additional layer of wanting love, wanting partnership, wanting a companion, and for this particular person, after being widowed in a very vulnerable place, now trying to see can I start over, could I find love again? And then to have this happen and be swindled from all this money. I'm also still real at how much money she had to give. I know she still want she's not broke, okay, yeah, okay, so it's win win.
It's truly like a right place, right time too, like anybody, no matter how intelligent you are or how much money you've been able to amass, like when a scammer seeks you out at that right place, right time, which was the legitimate dating site in this vulnerable place in her life, and also having the business acumen to say things to her where she believed enough that this guy knew enough about business and specifically a business she was familiar with, like new enough to coax that amount, like and a million dollars. It had to have been Yeah, sure, forty dollars was the first amount, but the subsequent amounts had to been like what six figure like sums? Yeah, they were like how many? How long was the relationship?
I think it lasted a couple of years as well. And you got to remember this lasted a couple A couple of years doesn't sound very long, but you got to realize how much the scammers communicate with their victims all day, all night. I mean hundreds of messages throughout the day. I mean, she says that it's like a high. She would they would talk on Yahoo Chat, and she said she'd be sitting in her living room and she'd hear the computer from across the room and she'd hear that ding from that message coming through on Yahoo Chat, and she'd get this high, this excitement. Oh we just messaged me again. You know, I can't wait this. What's you talk about now? I mean, I mean that their whole life, that's their whole social life, is talking to this scammer for two years.
It's such an investment on the scammer's part.
Well, if you're making that much money, we're at your full time job.
Well it's not your relations That's why they have multiple scammers, because they want to keep you up all day and all night to keep you delirious. So you're not thinking clearly. So a lot of times you think you're talking to one scammer, but you're talking to multiple They take off in shifts.
Oh wow, Oh I didn't even.
It's a team.
Yeah wow?
What will you dated a team and everybody could give you the thing you wanted? Well, you know, you could just just get you know, if you didn't like something you didn't have to deal with that person, like, oh, you're the complain theme of a team boyfriend boyfriend team is that I don't want to go down Valentine's Day, Happy Gallantine's Day.
That's too many toilet seats left up for me. Okay, I can only deal with one.
A Yeah, what if they all had their own bathroom? They shared one.
Bathroom and bedroom and everything possibly.
Moving on.
That's an Actually that's a TLC show. I think what is it where she has multiple husbands?
Oh? I don't know that one. I know the multiple wives, but not the husbands.
Oh. I'm going to look it up.
Okay, keep going, Okay, April, Okay, we're right.
We're wady for it.
The third and final, which is the first the top okay.
Number one story. Okay, call me about it.
This one's not. This one's a little bit more deeper. This one's mine. I wasn't scammed, but my mother was. In twenty sixteen is when it started. What's so crazy about her scam? She was She gave away three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The weirdest part, the most terrifying part about her scam is I think it led to her death. She remember how I said, the scammers will keep you up all day and all night, so you're delirious. We hadn't really spoken. We'd been fighting about the scam, and finally my aunt went to get her. She lost her home, her house, I mean, she lost her house or car, everything. Moved in with my aunt because I wouldn't let her live with me unless she stopped talking to scammers. And so one day we finally went to get her to go move her into with my brother, and my aunt found her dead on the floor. She was delirious and had rolled out of bed and caught her head between the bed and the night sand and broke it. So she was on her way to me. I was going to see her in four hours, and I never saw her again.
Oh April, Oh wow, devastating.
Yeah that was so when she died.
Oh my goodness. So what was that? How did it begin? How did it go?
And yeah, okay, so she again a widow, and she told me she was going to get online and start dating and I said that's fine, just be careful. So she sent me a picture one day like I'm talking to this guy named Jared, and I want to meet him, and I said, Mom, I think that's a scam. Mom was seventy years old. This guy was like forty okay, very good looking in forty what you know, it's just and she said, I'll just be careful. And I said, just don't send money. And she said, I promise I won't send money. That's you, you and your brother's money, that's your kids's money. When I'm gone, okay, fine. So then one day I get a text message I've given him two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I'm so ashamed, come get me. And I'm like, oh my god. Well it turns out it wasn't two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. We got her phone after she died, it was three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Because she became addicted to his attention and moved on and talked to other scammers. She ended up talking to three. I actually, before her death, interviewed her for my podcast, and I had to pay her because she was asking me for money. I knew she was asking me for money to send to the scammers, so I told her, I won't send you money unless you give me an interview. So I gave her two hundred dollars for the interview, And when I was interviewing her, I said, okay, I want you to fess up finally, because they the scam victims lie to their family members, I said, I want you to tell me how many scammers were you talking to? And did you stop when you say you stopped? And she said, I was talking to three giving money to three.
Oh my gosh, because she was lonely and she wanted people to talk to me.
Yes.
Do you think that she believed these were the only people who would talk to her, because it sounds like she knew these are scammers she did, continuing to maybe.
I mean, yeah, she was battling ovarian cancer at the time, so she she wasn't able to get out much. So yeah, I do think so they were. And she thought that she was a good person, so she deserved someone who was wealthy. I haven't told you the crazy story about what her scammer told her. Okay, he told her that he owned a diamond mine in Turkey and he wasn't able to make it home to Christmas to meet her because he ran into emeralds, as she believed. I said, Mom, there aren't emeralds in a diamond mind. But he had her convinced that he was rich and he was going to come home and she was going to have I remember her going like this, I'm going to have diamonds and emeralds.
And I was like, Oh, there's nothing more addictive than hope.
Exactly hope.
Well, I don't hope his hope is good.
I hope hope can be good, but it can also I've placed in the right things, Yeah, is great, but right misplaced can be.
So April. It sounds like you, as family members on the outside, could see clearly what's happening trying to talk to your mom and lead her towards well being for herself. What do you think were her biggest barriers to listening to you?
I think hope. I think she just wanted it to be real so bad. I mean, look back on the bad relationships we've had. You hope. You're hoping, Oh this could be, It'll get better. It'll be true if I just hang on. And then once she realized that he was a scammer, she told me that she was going to get her money back, that's why she was talking to him. Well, that doesn't happen. Scammers are never sending you money back. Ever.
Yeah, yeah, now that you're sunk so deep into it, now you feel like, well, I just have to stay in it. Otherwise that means I am relegating myself to the entire loss, the loss of the relationship and the loss of.
The money, and it's like a death cost.
Yeah.
And she became a money mule, which a lot of them do. She would go from bank to bank and they would put money in her bank account and then she would send it back out and the banks started kicking her out. She was going to six different banks and money laundering money for these scammers. And I told her, you could go to jail. The federal government is starting to send money mulers to jail, not much, but they are starting to to help crack down on these scams. And I said, do you want to spend the rest of your life in a jail cell? And that would be crazy?
Well, this is something that we talked about in our Halloween episode on scams, is these money mules. And I had not heard about it, but it was like a bank teller who cracked, who told this guy that he was being scammed. He didn't realize it. But when the bank teller figured out what he was doing, she is who told him.
I think that's what makes the romance and love part all the more complicated, because I think you hear this a lot more often. Once they realize they're being scammed, they may not get out of it. And the ones that we talked about at Halloween, it's they're thinking that they are saving a family member or getting themselves out of debt, and then when the light comes in, they're like, oh, Okay, what do I got to do to backtrack? But when you have this relationship at whether real or perceived or whatever, you're intertwined for years talking with this person NonStop. The second it's pointed out to you, and whether or not you believe you're being scammed, it's harder to remove yourself. You're not immediately going to say, well, why don't I get out of this? Because you've shared stories with each other, you've talked like you're in a relationship.
Yeah, and that's that teller telling that victim that you were talking about that they were money muling. Normally they won't stop. My mom didn't stop. And the banking industry can't really share a lot of information with family members. They're trying to change that. They're creating new laws and stuff so the banking industry can stop because they're losing money too. And another thing that a lot of these victims don't realize they may be talking to a human trafficking victim as their scammer. There's phone banks where people are being held hostage to scam other people, and that is financing terrorism. I mean, this is scary stuff.
Wow, whoa I didn't I mean, hearing you say it, it makes sense, but I didn't realize all of the tendrils and how deep this goes and potentially how many people are caught up in it. And I'm so so sad to hear of where it then led for your mom, for you, for your family, April that you didn't get to see her come into freedom. And on the other side of that, after her passing, were you able to have any sort of retaliation towards her scammers? Were you more like, let's move on help closures? Yeah, where were you left post twenty twenty?
Well, they tried to scam me next, Yeah, go oh, tell us about that. So because I had Gerald's number saved in my phone, so it was only a couple days after her death and he sends me a message and he said, I've got a video of you with another gentleman and I'm going to release it unless you send me money, which you know, basically we were doing the naughty and I started laughing. I was like, if you got a video of me doing something like that, let me see it.
Oh, please share it, it'll help me. I was like, my reputation, there.
Is no such video of me. So he moved on. But the thing is, you can't convict that. You can't go after these scammers and arrest these scammers because they're in another country and it crosses jurisdiction jurisdictional lines. The only time really that these scammers can be caught is once they've moved to the US or there's a few that have been busted because the governments will get together and say, Okay, we're going to go do a bust on this call center or whatever.
But yeah, are you learning anything through your own experience, through knowledge of all these other scams about how people can protect them? And it sounds like once you're in it, there's going to have to be a journey to getting out of it, but even before you find yourself there, like what to be aware of before you step into an online relationship? What would you say to people to protect their vulnerability?
Okay, well there are some red flags. Number one, they'll ask you for money fairly quickly. Don't ever give anyone money online. I mean, I know that sounds obvious, but when they have a sob story, you know, tugging at your heartstrings. They also profess their love for you fairly quickly. Their grammar sometimes is bad because you know they're it's a different language. And also, i'd say a fourth one is they want to learn everything about you, and you think that's flattering. I remember my mom saying, he wants to know every single one of my favorite songs, and she would come up with these nineteen sixties songs and he would act like they were his favorite too. I was like, right, he was just trying to c Yeah, I'm just trying to learn everything about her so he could act. He would act like, you know, like, whatever your religious beliefs are, they're going to act like those are their religious beliefs too. Whatever your music tastes are, that's gonna be their musical tastes. Too. That's just so they can learn how to get in good graces with you. That's that's not the flattering things I would say those four things. Wow. Yeah.
And when you're dealing with a loved one who you believe is in a romance scam, how should we best approach that is?
How?
Yeah, that is.
The most difficult question throughout this whole thing. Most scam victims don't get out. They continue. They become addicted to the attention and the companionship. I get so many questions on how can I stop my loved one from being scammed? There is no answer. Some people have tried an intervention that works maybe two percent of the time, but these scam victims. I have one lady who's living in a trailer because she's lost everything. There's another woman I talk to who's a scam victim's daughter. Like me, she's worried about They think that her mom is poisoning her dad, trying to get rid of the dad to be with a scammer. I mean, that's how deep this scam goes.
Wow, WHOA. So there's obviously more at play here than just oh, someone thinks that they're in a relationship. There the attachment to it. There's the what they're receiving from it. There's whatever it's doing to the neurological pathways and their brain and what they're believing that that means about them and their experiences. And there's so much intertwined here. It almost sounds Jenna and I also like to watch cult documentaries. Oh, like someone's experience exiting, you know, and you're exact support and knowledge is needed exactly to move through that.
That's a great comparison. And I've talked to others like me who think the same thing. Some people think it's like a domestic This is the domestic violence situation of the seventies, because these victims will go to the police. I had an FBI agent go to my mom, still didn't stop her. And once these victims do realize that they're being victimized and they go to police, police say, that's not a crime. You gave your money away. So that's another reason why they're not prosecuted, why they don't go after these people even if it's even if they are in the US.
Yeah, it's complicated for sure.
Ah, well, you know it's not complicated.
Not No, it's vague.
It's vague, but it's not complex'd not complicated.
The hell of the week.
That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore.
Duck bills, butfalo bills. Bill Clinton, this is the bill of the week April. Every week we asked our guests and our listeners to share with us their favorite bill of the week. Maybe it is a bill who is a scammer who maybe you know, got what was coming to him. Or maybe it's a bill you saved money on. We don't care. It's bag but not complicated.
So my bill of the week would be I recently saved money by going to Amazon, which I don't recommend, but I did, and I bought exercise equipment, and I got read of my gym membership, and I put the exercise just some weights, put them in my put them in my garage, and I'm not going to the gym anymore. Saves me time, saves me money.
Yes, I wish that I had space to be that person, but going to the gym is my escape from my home.
Oh you like it? I want to love.
Going to the gym. I love going to the gym. Yes, it is an escape for me from my two small children's toys and the home renovation. So well.
A lot of people like running too. You see people running and they just look like they're just enjoying it, and I'm like, I want to be that person.
That's her too, that's me too. Yeah, she does, April, I'm here with you. We're doing that. She out with whatever we can find around the house. Sometimes it's just water bottles. Sometimes it's not even something we got off Amazon. We're just filling off water bottles and lifting them. That's amazing. We've been talking. We talk a lot about looking at your subscriptions and are you really using them? Is there another way to get what you need without paying for those subscriptions if it's something people value. We're here for the gym membership. But if you can get the movement that your body needs without it, you find it actually creates more room for consistency. It's fantastic. I love that bill. If you all listening, have a bill about spending money to save money or saving money to spend money or just say men, or just spending or just being bill for old Friends podcast dot Com, slash Bill And now it's time for.
Politely around pew. All right, so let's talk about our vulnerability around what type of scam would you most likely fall for? Like if the scammer like came to you and said this, you would be like, mm hmmm, yep, scam me.
All right, I baked a scammer a cake once.
What makes found say more? Okay?
So I was a journalist making little money and at the time I was married to a man who was a gambling at it and I was desperate for more money. So I went on Craigslist and I found a service that would find you a better job and double your pay. So I went to his office brought baked him a cake the night before because I was so excited about the prospect of making more money. He felt guilty when I gave him the cake.
I was like, here's a cake, and he was like, h I don't know if I could take this, and I was like, now I know that he that's why because he knew that he was trying to scam me out of money and I'm giving him this cake.
It was rum cake.
By the way, I love that he feels worse about receiving a cake than taking your money.
Okay, how was he gonna so what was the scam going to be?
Okay? So he said that if I gave him three thousand dollars that day that he would find me a job that would make me double and pay. But if I didn't sign to it that day, and I waited until the next day, it went up to four thousand dollars.
And what do you do with that cake?
I left it because I went home. I didn't realize that it was really a scam until I went home and I started thinking about it, and I was like, okay, wait, this is this is not right, this is no I never gave able to do.
People do pay for services like headhunting services exactly, and they can make it sound like that.
You pay for career coaches. Yeah, that's the thing. It sounds wild, but people will pay for.
A little bit true. It's just a little tread of normalcy. But I think or even a reason. What we talk about too before making purchases. We talk about those with small burches, but absolutely big purchases too, creating that pause not just to pause yourself to say is this what I really want? But to also do that run through of how do I feel about this? Does this sound accurate? Is it possible that this person is for real?
Is it fake? To give you that time to think it through, because as you're describing April, scammers are going to feed off of the sense of urgency, creating some level of delirium, not giving you that space to think and use your brain. So all the more that we practice creating our pauses will build up a muscle of protection against some of these tactics of scammers.
Wow, that's wild.
I bet that cake was good. Hopefully, hopefully that cake was the thing that happens like that?
What was so nice? I can't do this to anyone else.
I can't do the same.
You should reach back out, see if you still have the email?
Jen.
See this is a hard question for me. I I don't know. I I am I'm a cynic, and I can't. I maybe if it was like a friend, like a really old friend reaching back out to join her girl Boss team.
I might.
Sorry, But like I really love connecting with people and I'm so bad at doing it. So if somebody connects to me, I like, I'm so excited that sometimes I will uh think fast and not slow. So I think it would have to be like one of those scammers that recreates your friends per file and reaches out to you for bitcoin.
Yeah.
Yeah, like promise of money or better business from someone you think you know. Yes, for me, I would one fall for a hot dog scam. Like they're promising free hot dogs, so I show up hungry and really they're just passing out warm puppies.
I'd be devastating if you showed up to a place and they promise hot dogs and there were puppies.
Like warm puppies hot dogs, that would be right. But like, that's the scam. You know, it's not actually hot scam.
That's a beautiful thing. It would be a scam for beautiful thing.
I'm getting an American delight of cuisine. It's just puppies scammed. I'm scammed.
We're not. I'm not even a pet person, and I think seeing puppies is great.
Oh and the puppy scams are hard. I could I could get scammed with a puppy scam easy.
Oh and those are real. We didn't even go over those in our Halloween, like you're you put down a deposit for a puppy and you never get the puppy. That is a that is a common thing that happened a lot during the pandemic whenever you get dogs dogs. Yeah, that happened a lot. Man Ah wow, Well that's uh. You know, everybody is susceptible to scammers. It is literally right place, right time.
All find our area of vulnerability, and if.
It's not you, it's somebody you love. So everybody is susceptible and probably in your time will be impacted.
Your areas of vulnerability and work to protect it.
Yeah, it's I think it's a relief that you don't have to be smarter than anybody in order to just just take a enough pause to think slowly.
April, thank you for sharing all of these stories, your own story. This has been a fun, little bit of a departure from what we normally do. And if people like this departure and they want to go down more of the rabbit trail with you, where can they find more from you?
Scammerstories podcast dot com, on iTunes or on Spotify, anywhere you get your podcasts Awesome.
Thank you, April, Thank you it's been well, I found that show. It is having multiple husbands. It's seeking brother husband. So I don't like it. You could have a team of brother husbands, Jill.
Don't like Okay those pairing of words.
Well, TLC DIDDLC is unhinged.
I did not realize it until later in adulthood. TLC is who raised me.
On my sad says a lot. I guess all right, yeah, but this was a really this was a really good one. One thing that we learned after the episode is that if for some reason the scammer is in the US, one way that you could possibly get them is tax evation. So we all know that these like big gangsters from the big gangster times whenever that those decades were didn't actually get arrested because of any of their murders. They got arrested from tax evation. That's how That's how they got.
After the blue the white collar crime.
Yeah, because there's actually a reward. The IRS will give you a reward, it says uh. At least fifteen percent, but not more than thirty percent of the proceeds collected attributed to the information submitted by the whistleblowers. So if somebody in your life is scammin' or trappin'. Wow, we actually learned this from a TikTok from our friend Vivian at your rich BFF. And they are no longer in your life or you don't want them to be in your life anymore. Make sure they truly are evading taxes, and if they are, you can report them and you will get a reward so you can maybe recoup some of your money or some of somebody else's money.
Yeah.
Wow, so that's a little uking.
Some level of recourse, but really the best recourses getting out and finding real belonging and companionship.
Yes, I think real in life because that way, if you do get scammed, you can whistle blow them to the irs. I think that is the lesson we've learned here. Make real relationships with real in person American scammers. Yeah, so you can whistle well, yeah, I think that's what I've learned. And if you can create a team of boyfriends.
And beware of the internet.
Yes, thank you, thank you so much for listening. And uh, I'm very excited that you guys hang out with us, even when we do something that's a little offbeat. Please let us know if you like it by leaving a review, and please let us know if you don't like it by not leaving a review, sending a quiet email that has just a few words and say I didn't like it. That's it. But if you did like it, you can leave a review like this one from Akajis it happened to be? Five stars? They say, love this, priceless all forever. Give these ladies five stars. That's it.
Yeah, so our kind review can also be shortened. Yes, and we'll read it and love it. Thanks everyone for listening.
Again.
If you did enjoy it, please take some time to leave us a rating and review. If you have not done that yet, get our friend letter. If you're not getting met yet girlfriendspodcast dot com. We're just we're here for.
It all we are up fully closed. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric sirianni Okay Jill So. This release is on two thirteen, day before Valentine's Day. Uh two days ago. Two days preceding this, the super Bowl happened.
Ooh ooh.
Yes, and we do know that the forty nine ers in the Kansas City Chiefs will be playing the Super Bowl.
Oh, we do know that, we do know that Hey, yep, that's knowledge we both have.
We both have that knowledge. Now, Previously, I thought I was going to have to obligatorily root for Detroit.
Because thought Detroit was Chicago.
Correct. No, I didn't think Detroit was Chicago. I just thought Detroit and Chicago were the same for one minute that I spoke out loud. It's fine, but not regularly so as I have already. I have already apologized to everybody in both Chicago and Detroit. But thankfully they didn't win, so I can forget that all ever happened. But I think there's only one correct answer to who everyone in the Super Bowl will be rooting for.
Right, Oh, because who's playing? Oh, Kansas City.
And the forty nine ers, San Francisco and Kansas City. You're tracking, you're tracking, keep going.
They're not the Bills.
No, I know it, they're not the Bills.
Chiefs.
Uh huh? Who plays for the Chiefs? You don't know? Who's dating somebody that plays for the Chiefs?
Oh yeah, Taylor Swist Yeah and the Okay, so that's what we're doing. Yeah, okay, it has nothing to do with Bill.
I got excited.
Bill's got to be a part of this not Taylor Swift, because.
I never talk about Taylor Swift. But ultimately, also I just think Kansas City is a better city than San Francisco. Like it's just never been. Nobody has ever told me they've found human feces on the ground in Kansas City, just like on the street.
That's true. San Francisco. I didn't love it. Never been so many people, but maybe I can't agree.
Yeah, so many people have just told me about the human feces on the ground in San Francisco. And so I just feel like there's only one right answer, and I hope that I hope that they win, and I can't wait to see all the memes of Taylor Swift if they do it. Another reason I see what happens.
Oh yeah, yeah, we're just going to sit back and watch. You know, there's a lot of people going to cheer for the forty nine ers because they're the underdogs. But all this is old news. We're talking about it like it's fresh hot takes. But Super Bowls over by the time.
Right, I just I want to know, Like apparently since September she's made like millions of dollars for the Chiefs, Like there's been Do.
You think that's a scam. Oh, I don't think this is a scam. You know how people thought that they're romance their romance was a scam. I think people are still saying that.
I don't know, you know what, they're both funny? Okay. Swift has been worth over three hundred and thirty million dollars for the Chiefs. That's how much her relationship with the how with the with the man.
I don't I don't think I understand Travis Kelsey works all of a sudden.
So apparently it's just in kind of like marketing and merch sales. But I think most of it is.
Oh my word, this is okay. This is perfect when it comes to romance stuff. This is the title of the article, Taylor Swift's romance with tight End Travis Kelcey is worth three hundred and thirty one million to kill the Kansas City Chiefs and NFL. Could you imagine if our romance, if our companionship with someone meant three hundred and thirty one million dollars, my romance is worth about ten I think dollars. Yeah, I think because of our.
Love, my romance, my romance with Travis has cost him money. It is an expense, not an asset.
Oh my goodness, I don't I don't understand. I don't think I get it.
Yeah, apparently airline marketing teams are capitalizing adding flight numbers inspired by their but flight numbers inspired by the pair?
Is this like modern day arranged merit like reasons? You know when kings yeah, married daughters of other nations to have alliances? Is that? Is that what's happening? Like we need this alliance because of what it means for football from the American public.
This is not a joke. American Airlines the flights from Kansas City to Las Vegas, which is where the Super Bowls was held. Essentially, the flight there is nineteen eighty nine and the flight back is eighty seven, which is Travis Kelsey's numbers. The world has lost.
It it's mind.
So this is part of the money, right, people pay for these big faces, cardboard faces of Travis Kelcey and Taylor's with Yeah.
But how is how's how's the NFL making money.
Off of that?
I don't know, but here, here you go, here you go, folks, that's how could your romance be worth three hundred and thirty million dollars.
Just to just to Kansas City. Imagine what their romance is worth to get airlines to Staples to clear these large heads. Yeah, oh my goodness, I don't need to stop this.
Yeah, we need to stop. We'll just do another episode on this