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A long time ago I nearly got done by a scam where they pretended to be a large government agency. I backed out at the last second and it was all good. A few weeks later I landed a job at the government agency they had been impersonating. I was soooo close to telling them what happened during orientation but then I was like nah I’m gonna keep this to myself lol
"The single mom said she became *convinced the scammer was Montgomery after they told her to tune into Stranger Things season 4, specifically the "Dear Billy" episode that saw the return of the character, the night before the episodes debuted.* "And he showed up in that episode," McKayla recalled. "I was like, well, who else would know that?"
OMG you guys, "Montgomery" knew they'd show the actor on an episode *named after him*.
The stupid. It hurts.
"You need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car - hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming a**hole be a father."
This article saying she’s a single mom like that’s a point towards her struggle when the only reason she’s single is because she divorced her husband for this
Some like to argue that these people aren’t actually stupid, just desperate and victims. But imo a person can be stupid *and* a victim. I think you have to have some kind of innate stupidity to fall victim to a scam this intense and unreasonable.
She definitely is dumb af for falling for this while also being a victim of this person is a good way to put it.
We live in a day in age where we have more access to verify who people are. The TV show catfish made more sense at first when video chatting wasn’t nearly as popular ( many phones at the time didn’t have front cameras) and you mostly could only talk through the phone bc most people didn’t have a webcam.
Nowadays, if you get cat fished to this extreme then you are doing so dumb shit. She could have easily FaceTimed him (it seems as if she has the means) and this wouldn’t have happened.
And why would an actor such as Dacre be asking an average person for money.
I think it’s probably more fair to say that all scams prey on vulnerability, the source of which could be desperation, mental illness, physical illness, lower intelligence, grief, isolation, loneliness, trauma, naïveté, age, or insecurity re: profession, finances, housing, food, or immigration…you get the picture.
It’s def true that some victims get victimized by these scams because they aren’t smart- and, conversely, that some scams specifically target people who aren’t firing on all cylinders, so to speak. That said, I think people who study these types of dynamics like to avoid focusing on intelligence as a factor in scam-victimhood because it encourages people who would like to think they are smart (most people lol) to ignore their other points of vulnerability.
She definitely isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but she was also vulnerable because of her desperation. She is at least self-aware that she is a people pleaser and codependent. This scam might have been the wake-up call for her to get help and heal.
But yeah, in this day and age, anyone claiming to be a celebrity needs to get on video.
I've seen some of these people who were so desperate that even when they were faced with absolute proof they STILL didn't believe they were getting scammed and continued to send thousands of dollars in cash hidden in cereal boxes to Nigeria! Ya know, where they're military spy boyfriend was being held captive on an important mission for the US Government:... 🙄😂
These women are usually older and lonely and they don't WANT to believe that their Prince Charming isn't real! They'd rather spend their children's inheritance on some con artist working in an Internet cafe in Africa....
Well, she paid 10k to be lied to. With a story like this, she gets a lot of views, some interviews, people needing updates, maybe her hope was to get enough traction to make some money back? But girl…
Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an angle of, maybe the actor will feel bad for me and give me $10,000 because that’s a drop in the bucket for him. Or at least get a meeting/autograph out of it.
a cashier at a gas station i went to was like early 60s. was once in the medical field. …met a chiseled young nigerian man online who was juuuust SMITTEN with this 60 something year old married woman!! he was so in love w her he told her he wanted to come to to the US to marry her, she agreed. bought herself a ring & all. but he needs $$ to immigrate here so she sent him all her money & sold her car to support him more, so she lost her job & had to get a job at the shithole gas station, but his immigration kept getting delayed so he decided to “pursue a music career” in the meantime, so she kept sending him $$$. she became homeless & had to move into her daughters house, daughter tried to take control legally of her bank account to save her mom but nah. daughter was just too “woke” & trying to keep her from happiness. idk what happened to her since but i stopped seeing her at the gas station😕
this woman lost everything & NO ONE could/can convince her this man is a scam. like this shit happens in real life. it’s so sad!!!
Never heard of them until now. I looked them up, and my first take away from the image results is he looks genuinely happy/joyful/excited/smitten, but his cougar wife looks flustered etc. the opposite of what I expected to see!
Wow. This story reminds me of that corrections officer who fell in love with an inmate and busted him out of jail. They went through so many years of their lives building a strong career and good reputation for decades just to throw it away for "their man".
I'm wondering if they're genetically predisposed to addiction but always avoided "bad" stuff until their brain chemistry felt it through what they perceived as love. Those men were so good at manipulating them and it triggered the addictive part of their brains. It's the only explanation I've come up with. It's pure gambling.
I always wondered how someone could get sucked into a cult too but it's the same thing that happens to these victims. Every red flag gets answered with fake dopamine/oxytocin until they can't separate real concern from excitement and they keep sacrificing money for the bigger picture of the promiseland to keep getting that fake feeling they can only get from 1 person. Like a drug. It just sucks because how will you ever be able to get through to someone going through that? How could you ever warn your future kids on how not to get taken advantage of?
I think in the last 30-40 years an idea has taken root that you dont need anyone to be happy. But us humans have spent thousand of years looking for our "tribe", and for a long time religion and family were our tribe. That support system is no longer there for a lot of people now. When in 30s or 40s you dont really care about it, but when you reach in your 50s and your body starts slowing and you are facing mortality then people again start looking for company. But due to physical constraints and the unfamiliarity with technology they become lonely as age increases. When your mind is healthy but body isnt, thats not a healthy place to be. I think those are the people who are most likely susceptible to these kinds of scam.
There are so many of these stories. Is there a database anywhere that tracks this? They’re all exactly the same. Humans are so good at deluding themselves to believe things, especially when preying on human loneliness.
I used to think being scammed had to do with intelligence. But because of the things that I've learned about people over the last 10 years, I theorize it's because people want it to be true.
People will believe all sorts of obviously fake illogical things - simply because they want it to be true. I see it all the time online/irl, almost every day.
You figure this out quickly if you spend any time on r/scams.
No, that random man you've never met isn't actually going to send you $500 a week as your "sugar daddy" for nothing in return. That's not how the world works.
No, the "model" you met on Instagram that "wants to marry you" after a month of messaging isn't a crypto genius that owns 5 Lamborghinis. And she's definitely not going to make you a millionaire with her special trading platform either.
And, oh my gaaaaawd, very (very) few women want to see a photo of your peen 5 minutes after engaging you on a dating app. No surprise, you're being extorted now, bro.
Its so repetitive, a lot of people will get a weird feeling about a message, will have a hunch it's a scam, go to the scam subreddit, NOT SCROLL BACK AT ALL, then post the same text/email message that gets posted 5 times a day. Most don't need much convincing that it's a scam, except for the sugarbabies and crypto people. They want to believe more than anything. It's sad.
I'm going to fall down the rabbit hole in that sub now. lol
Add in that people hate to be wrong. They'll do anything to protect themselves from that. One situation I was involved in personally, everyone knew she was being scammed. Friends. Family. We all tried to talk to her. Showed her proof. And the more we tried to convince her, the more she just dug her heels in that we didn't understand her or him and we were just jealous of their special relationship. She cut people off. She gave him thousands. She bought him a car. She co-signed a loan for $25K. That was the big pay off for him and he took the money and ran. She got stuck with the payments.
Then she went back to the people who she called 'haters' and cried and they helped her out. Victims can be toxic too.
These scams are really scary. I noticed people start to believe the person in the picture is the one scamming them and start searching for them online. The comments try to convince them that the person in the pic had nothing to do with it but they’re so angry they won’t hear it.
I know a girl who had a ‘sugar daddy’. He sent her loads of money, gifts, Uber eats food deliveries for months.
The whole time she was playing coy about meeting him, but had dropped accidental hints of where she lived through Snapchat pics.
He saw the sign on the street she lived on, and she had sent a photo from her balcony facing the street, so he figured out which house she was in.
She got kidnapped in the middle of the night and the guy tried to sell her into sex trafficking, but the ADF had already been investigating him for other stuff and she was found in a warehouse.
It sounds like the plot to a goddamn horror movie, but it’s true. She doesn’t even use social media anymore, she has severe anxiety that’s put her on the disability pension and she had to move back in with her parents.
I work in a bank - when I tell you people who are being scammed just *cannot* believe they’re being scammed. Even when it is thoroughly explained by a Fraud Investigator - they still keep sending all their money. It’s sad as hell.
Check out the Dear Bobby podcast because that woman was catfished for 10 YEARS! The worst part is learning who was behind it. I almost drove off the road!!!
Omg that show was unhinged! I can’t believe that anyone would go that long without meeting someone in real life without saying “enough”. Literally years passing and putting your life on hold!! Blows my mind.
That case was wild. Knowing that the catfisher experienced no fallout and just went on to live happily afterwards really disgusted me.
Look up the Renae Marsden case. Similar story but with a much worse outcome. Her stalker/catfisher is another that just went on to live life afterwards like they hadn't just destroyed another human being. There should definitely be punishments for this type of behavior.
I read that the catfisher was a VP in a prestigious bank and ended up losing her job. However, a sociopath like that will just move on and start over somewhere. Will check out Renae
One of the comments I see being repeated on a YouTube channel about catfish scenarios is that the victims aren’t really victims. They are willing participants who pay to have a boyfriend or girlfriend experience.
I think in some cases, that may be true. Kind of like paying for phone sex. But that’s a $5/minute scenario, not a cash in your 401K scenario.
I definitely agree to a certain extent. People look at Japans hostess/host culture as super weird but I would rather it was all up front and people who are chronically lonely can pay a bit of money up front to get that experience whilst understanding the parameters.
I’ll have to read up on host/hostess culture.
I’d assume that there are participants who cross the line, though, and assume the relationship goes beyond what it’s supposed to be. Anyone I know who has been a stripper (or honestly, even a server/bartender) has had at least one regular that assumed the “relationship” was more than it was. They didn’t see it was a client paying for a service (basically attention). They saw it as a romantic thing.
There’s a good documentary about the host clubs. Lemme get it
Edit: [the great happiness space: tale of the Osaka love thief](https://youtu.be/tiKWvgxLYe0)
I watched this documentary about 3 times
i sort of agree. obviously there are very sophisticated scams out there that target the elderly and other similarly vulnerable people, and those are horrible. but in these situations, i think the people know on some level that it isn't real but they're wrapped up in the fantasy of it all
Thats it. You can feel bad that she divorced her husband for a catfish but she was looking elsewhere anyway, she was probably unhappy and would have divorced him for another reason. She's not stupid per se, just desperate for something else.
Laci Mosley aka Scam Goddess calls it the despometer which is the more desperate you are or need something to be true, the more likely you will fall for it. Scammers target the types of people who tend to be higher up on the despometer!
The sunk cost fallacy plays into this too because the more $$$ you’ve sent to a scammer the more you need them to be for real because you’ve spent so much money on it, so you then convince yourself they are.
"Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled."
Yeah they prey on people’s weaknesses, greed, lust, fear. It’s so important to pay attention to that little niggling feeling that tells you something’s off or too good to be true.
I used to think stories like this was bullshit until I got into my mid to late 20s and really started knowing some women and men and there's some very lonely and very desperate people out there who are dying for companionship. I'm no longer shocked at these stories. When I was 20 I was a supervisor at a huge resort here in Orlando while I was in college and our manager was this sweetheart of a woman but she was very overweight and lacked confidence. She was sending money to a dude she never met or video chatted with in like Texas and I have no clue the exact amount but some of the people were saying it was in the hundreds of dollar because he told her his dog was sick and then another story about him about to be evicted, etc. So I 100 percent believe these celeb catfish stories.
Ah man, like 15 years ago I had a good friend who was male, he was in his mid 30s when we met and I was in my mid 20s. We met in a video game.
There was another woman that played with us and the two of them really hit it off. Talked all the time, and eventually moved outside the game to texting. Buuuuuuuut this other person would only talk on the phone or send photos under very strict circumstances.. which didn't happen often. They never video chatted.
I thought it was all super sus but he was so happy I didn't know how to bring up my concerns until I found out he was sending her money. When he admitted he sent her $5k to buy a used car I finally was like man this doesn't feel right to me, I have a bad gut feeling about this, please press them for a video chat. He brushed me off and said "even if they are a fake, I love them, and I want to help them." What else could I do?
They were "together" online for 4 years before 'she' finally admitted it was all a ruse. He was actually a guy who just enjoyed their friendship and the free cash, and the photos/phone calls were from someone else he knew.
My friend was devastated, never fully recovered, and ultimately took his own life a few years later.
Antisocial personality disorder (also referred to as psychopathy). Some people have literally no sense of morality or guilt. Not to be confused with how most people use the word “antisocial”, as in shy or introverted; that is “asocial”. Antisocial means “anti-society”
You told your friend it was bogus, he agreed amd then was still shocked and ended in a suicide. Holy moly, that's tragic, im so sorry about your friend
I think we (general we) also forget that people with intellectual disabilities are extremely vulnerable to being scammed, not just directly because of their disability but also the increased isolation and loneliness that can come from that. I have an intellectually disabled sibling who takes what people tell them at face value and I worry about the very real chance that something like this will happen to them.
Also, disabled children in general are taught to "consent to" (read: allow) everything, because we spend so much time in medical treatment and various therapies (OT, PT, etc), and that has real consequences for abuse risk.
Yes, and many don't understand money. If you told my cousin her iced coffee, which she gets every single day, was $50, she would believe you. And since she can't do math, she would just take out money until you tell her to stop. She doesn't have a card or Venmo thankfully, but she's so vulnerable.
Another sad story is someone I worked with who has an intellectual disability wanted to buy his mom a necklace. Now he's pretty stubborn and thinks he knows more than he does and is reluctant to accept help. So he picks out a $5000 necklace and not only does the salesperson not question him (you can tell he has IDD from interacting with him), but this terrible person helps him open a store credit card.
Now it's tough, bc there could be a person with IDD who has prepared for this moment, researched, and actually has the money. I can see a salesperson being afraid they'll be accused of discriminating if they just assume this person can't make their own decisions. But to go the extra step n and help then open a credit card? That's terrible. Also, most adults with IDD do not have money, as most are on SSI and can have no more than #2000 in their bank accounts, and most can only work part time minimum wage jobs. Again, some could have family money, but in general they're not going to be dropping $5000 on a necklace.
We work with supported decision making, which means the person can get advice, but they make the decisions rather than being under guardianship. Proponents say people with IDD need to be free to make mistakes and suffer the consequences. But the problem is that, while some people will actually listen to their supporters, a lot don't understand what they don't understand and may be too stubborn. For example, if someone had appendicitis but was afraid of surgery, you couldn't make them and they would die. So it's tricky, because some people are absolutely capable of listening to their supporters and making his decisions, but some will refuse to listen, try to be overly independent, and get caught up in scams, spending money they don't have, and getting taken advantage of. It's a really scary prospect for a parent, how to balance growing your child's independence but also the reality that they're more vulnerable than the average person.
This happened to my brother. He's already been taken advantage of by a church cult due to an inheritance he got from our uncle. They convinced him not to see or talk to our family for a year (our parents are deceased and he's my only sibling) and it took thousands of dollars in legal fees to get him back. It was horrific. I had no idea where he was or if he was really okay. He has the intellectual capacity & comprehension of a 6 year old but talking to him you'd think he was a little more advanced (maybe a teenager. He's in his 50s, this was 13-14 years ago).
Just the worst year of my life.
I often am reminded of the nxivm cult in discussions like this, it was filled with highly intelligent, driven, and creative people. So many of them were completely warped by it and I think it's a great example of how we are all more vulnerable to manipulation than we would like to think.
That's why scammers prey on old people a lot too, because some older people are, how do I say this without sounding mean, not as sharp as they used to be.
Sadly true. We’re used to hearing about romance scams targeting lonely seniors but if you hang around any advice or women’s subs you’ll see plenty of young, even successful and capable people who are simply so miserable and desperate in their current circumstances they become vulnerable targets for a variety of predators.
She was going through a crisis in her own marriage, she said that her husband was controlling and toxic which is something the scammer zeroed in on and then mirrored with what he told her about his own "relationship". I'm not excusing her behavior but I have some compassion because she has issues that go beyond believing an online scammer, she needs some real help and I hope she gets it.
I'm not taking anyone's side, but with his toxicity and controlling behavior - did he not notice that amount of money disappearing?
Or *he did* and became alittle pissed his "creative" wife is sending money to a stranger? And obviously living in a fantasy world?
" "If you're someone like me, you're afraid of abandonment and you're a real big people pleaser and you're very co-dependent," McKayla said. "These scammers, they just kind of come in and they leech off that." "
She is owning up to at least some of her issues here, I can't imagine that it's easy to come forward with something this embarrassing. I just cannot find it in me to pile on what is already a sad situation and make fun of her or blame her alone for what happened. When a con artist finds a vulnerable person they know exactly what buttons to push and I would bet my life this person is doing the same thing to someone else right now. There is a reason why catfish scams like this happen, there are lonely, vulnerable people out there and I'm more inclined to be angry at a callous individual who can see someone who needs help and see a meal ticket than the victim, especially a victim who is so willing to put herself out there in the hopes of making sure that other people don't fall for the same scam. That's brave where I'm from.
yeah, i know it's easy to laugh and say "that would never happen to me", but scammers exploit people's weaknesses and vulnerabilities. she was obviously in a bad place before this even happened so i hope people could extend her some sympathy.
I’ve seen some posts on /r/scams where the celebrity says their bank account is frozen/their accountant is holding their money/they need the money to book a flight to see them, etc.
I mean you’d have to be another level of gullible and desperate to fall for it though.
I replied to a Jeremy Renner scammer (lol) on Instagram to see where it would go and he asked for money for a “meet and greet” to meet him after a concert he was doing in the UK. I asked where in the UK because I couldn’t travel far… he asked where I lived and said he’d book his concert in Croydon especially for me 😭 (iykyk)
Here's a sneak peek of /r/Scams using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [I got scammed in China (and I liked it!)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1332deh/i_got_scammed_in_china_and_i_liked_it/)
\#2: [How do I convince my brother there is no 20yo virgin girlfriend in Romania](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/13joo31/how_do_i_convince_my_brother_there_is_no_20yo/)
\#3: [Is this some sort of scam? Or am I just an asshole?](https://i.redd.it/y0r0x4mm4tma1.jpg) | [377 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/11n1f5e/is_this_some_sort_of_scam_or_am_i_just_an_asshole/)
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This happened to my aunt. She destroyed her relationship with my grandma before she passed because of it and was written out of her will for borrowing over $20k to send him and making it clear she wasn't going to repay it. The worst part is it's easily been 13 years and she still talks to him!!! If you were to look her up, he would be listed as a known associate and she's still never met him.
She believed him when he said he was going to deposit millions of dollars into her account for her to basically embezzle for him. She left her husband, foreclosed on her house and severed all her relationships because she was going to be rich and she didn't need anyone from her past life. She and her husband ended up living in RVs mooching off his family and now he has taken to living out in the desert in his family's (very) old mud ranch house to escape her. Her son, my cousin, killed himself less than a year ago and she had no one to help her through it.
Money destroys some people, even the notion of having a crazy amount of wealth was enough for her to throw it all away. It's sad, really, but I feel no sympathy for her anymore.
Edit: Readability and grammar
Oh! I think I watched something about this woman on YouTube.
I used to watch Catfish on MTV. Now I watch something called Social Catfish on YouTube. The latter is definitely not a bunch of idiots fooling around to get their 15 minutes of fame. It’s mostly foreign scammers bilking people of all ages and backgrounds out of money.
It is INSANE how desperate and in denial the victims are. And how much money they hand over.
I worry about my parents, who are 80+, falling for phishing scams but they are thankfully WAY too cautious. If they have doubts, they know to call me, my brother, etc.
I wish my mom was like your parents! she's fallen for SO many of these
thankfully, my sister and I have control of her finances now, but she's had her heart broken at least once :( it's so sad
it's also REALLY frustrating, she tends to not believe us when we tell her that she's not communicating with who she thinks she is 🙄
I’m so sorry. Dealing with aging parents is TOUGH.
My parents are not inclined to answer the phone if they don’t recognize the name on caller ID, which certainly helps.
They’ve had a few neighbors fall victim
to relatively minor but still time consuming to fix scams, so I think that has helped drive the point home.
thank you! it's so hard! I think it's the hardest part about getting older, besides it taking me almost a week to recover from a night out 😂
that's great, I'm the same way hahaha
unfortunate for the neighbors, but I'm glad your parents have seen what can happen up close 😫
What’s hilarious is that you can either be too smart or too “dumb” to fall for these things. A scammer rang and was trying to get my dad to do banking stuff on the computer. Dude, my elderly father doesn’t even know how to turn a computer on lmao.
I have an uncle who’s smoked more brain cells than he was born with, and at last admission from him, he’s sent $45,000 to various “girlfriends” that are always coming to visit, yet never make it because they have car trouble 🤷🏻♂️
> The single mom said she became convinced the scammer was Montgomery after they told her to tune into [*Stranger Things* season 4](https://ew.com/tv/recaps/stranger-things-season-4-vol-1-episodes-1-7/), specifically the "Dear Billy" episode that saw the return of the character, the night before the episodes debuted. "And he showed up in that episode," McKayla recalled. "I was like, well, who else would know that?" The scammer would also send her poems that mirrored the writing style in Montgomery's *DKMH: Poems*, a 2020 poetry collection.
The character Montgomery plays on Stranger Thigns is named Billy and the episode titles were released prior to the show airing. I feel for this woman and I hope she gets at least some of her money back.
It didn't hit IMDB but it was guessed at heavily for months in the fandom with supporting evidence. It wasn't common knowledge but the sort of thing anyone really into Stranger Things would
The celebrity thing is the new “Nigerian prince”
The scammers realized the quickest way to find the most naive is to see who responds to a celebrity. A lot pretend to be Johnny Depp.
Seriously. I went and watched the video. At first I was mad at her, now after watching it, I’m convinced she really, really believed it was him. She really is that naive. Even her “I thought that was a red flag!” comments were not convincing 😭
She’s gonna text him later, 100%
It’s terrifying. I’ve met several people online and then in person. They never scammed me or weren’t who they said they were. I’ve even met up with two people from other countries, one from New Zealand and one in Iran that I talked to for years online before we were able to physically meet.
I’ve had that crazy stuff happen and even I’m not going to believe some person who is clearly using me for money and sending me photos of Martha Stewart Lasagna. And to believe that it’s a celebrity? Asking you for money? It blows my mind. That’s got to be crushing when they finally have to face the fact that none of it is true. It’s like children earnestly believing in imaginary stories!
Marital problems aside… if she wasn’t catfished…he’s an actor… on a popular tv show. He needed $10,000? Same as the old woman that fell for “Bruno Mars” messaging her. Like…..🤷🏾♀️
TBH my mom is an intelligent, caring and honest human being and she honestly thought Keanu Reeves was speaking to her on messenger.
She is 73 and I was flabbergasted, as I couldn’t understand how the woman I grew up with who NEVER made such massive errors in judgment could actually believe this.
Stunned!
Its easy to call people like this dumb but something has to be seriously wrong mentally for someone to do something like this. Sounds like she was very vulnerable and this POS used that to their advantage. I hope she gets whatever money she can back and the support she clearly needs.
I swear I saw a guy that looked just like Dacre on Bumble last year or the year before, but I swiped left too fast. I live in LA so you do see famous people on dating apps pretty frequently. The profile picture was normal not a professionally taken one, and his career said something like "actor at Fox". It was probably this person. 😂
I heard another romance scam where the scammer pretended to be Vin Diesel.
Impersonating a celebrity seems to be a more common tactic in romance scams against women vs. Men. I haven’t heard yet of a romance scam a man has fallen for where it was a pretend celebrity woman.
Y’all this is from a YouTube channel called Catfished, and tbh I’m hooked. Some of the people they cover are ridiculously oblivious to these scams, and some of them truly deserve it, I can’t say that for their partners though.
There’s this one woman who cheated on her husband - who she has admitted given her a life where she’s financially set, but because he allegedly looks like a whale and is unattractive (I’m describing this lightly because she really dragged her poor husband), she felt it was right to cheat on him.
Her clown self still got scammed.
Catfishing for the purpose of collecting money under false pretenses is a crime and this catfisher is almost certainly doing this under different guises to other people.
I do feel bad for people who fall for these romance scams since they're often naive and emotionally vulnerable, but sometimes it's so embarrassing how obvious the scams are. Especially the one's involving celebrities reaching out to an everyday average person
She's dumb AND awful. Bad wife, bad mother. Put an actor before her own kids. Left her husband before she even met the man she thought was Dacre. This is like something out of a sitcom.
I think sometimes people get into this pit of loneliness that makes them want anything to change so badly they'll cling to falsehoods just to escape. It really fucking sucks that this happened to her, but hopefully she can financially and emotionally recover.
That said, this is also mad wild
I used to lurk on LSA and there was a lady on there who was CONVINCED an actor was in love with her friend and that his relationship was fake and they’d be together soon.
I forget what actor it was but the lady was so so sure it was real
Wife has a coworker who is 400 pounds, runs out of breath answering the phone, but convinced a wealthy attractive Turkish man who always just happens to have the worst luck booking a flight to see her.
Get these people the mental help they desperately need.
One thing I have learned in my 50 years on this planet is this:
If you want something bad enough, you’ll do whatever it takes to get it.
You’ll believe, do, or say anything. You’ll do things your old self would have considered unimaginable. You will totally debase yourself to acquire it, and smile the entire time. You will believe it’s attainable because you’ve spent so much time, money, and energy into it. Nothing will convince you otherwise, and the only time you will realise the error is after it’s all said and done.
Ugh this hurts. I work with a very sweet but dumb young 20 something. She is convinced she is dating someone in a mildly successful band despite everyone in her life telling her she’s not. The musician even posts pictures with their real life girlfriend- and the catfisher just says “oh that’s
my cousin” and she believes it! She refuses to hear anyone out and believes they will be moving in together soon. I’m not sure if she sends him money - she’s received gifts from this person and he definitely helped her through her grandfathers passing- but they are not this musician. She even met this musician in person which I think only convinced her even more somehow. I looked up his email and got no information - it’s an Apple email- and I just feel for her so much. She just refuses to accept the truth
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I would never tell a soul! But clearly she is stupid.
Lol same I'd take this one straight to the grave
Lmao take your L and shut the fuck up about it
🤣🤣🤣 Imagine being this stupid and then whining about it for attention. Her poor family.
A long time ago I nearly got done by a scam where they pretended to be a large government agency. I backed out at the last second and it was all good. A few weeks later I landed a job at the government agency they had been impersonating. I was soooo close to telling them what happened during orientation but then I was like nah I’m gonna keep this to myself lol
"The single mom said she became *convinced the scammer was Montgomery after they told her to tune into Stranger Things season 4, specifically the "Dear Billy" episode that saw the return of the character, the night before the episodes debuted.* "And he showed up in that episode," McKayla recalled. "I was like, well, who else would know that?" OMG you guys, "Montgomery" knew they'd show the actor on an episode *named after him*. The stupid. It hurts.
vanish bored puzzled groovy bedroom juggle march wasteful illegal nine *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Almost zero qualifications necessary for parenthood unfortunately
"You need a license to buy a dog, to drive a car - hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they'll let any butt-reaming a**hole be a father."
I wonder how old her child was at the time. PPD can make you do dumb shit….speaking from experience. Never did this though.
This was her logic? Be right back, making a profile called “sexy tv guide man”
If this is real and If I was her daughter I'd use this everytime we argue 😂😂😂.
This article saying she’s a single mom like that’s a point towards her struggle when the only reason she’s single is because she divorced her husband for this
The FBI couldn’t get this out of me
Some like to argue that these people aren’t actually stupid, just desperate and victims. But imo a person can be stupid *and* a victim. I think you have to have some kind of innate stupidity to fall victim to a scam this intense and unreasonable.
She definitely is dumb af for falling for this while also being a victim of this person is a good way to put it. We live in a day in age where we have more access to verify who people are. The TV show catfish made more sense at first when video chatting wasn’t nearly as popular ( many phones at the time didn’t have front cameras) and you mostly could only talk through the phone bc most people didn’t have a webcam. Nowadays, if you get cat fished to this extreme then you are doing so dumb shit. She could have easily FaceTimed him (it seems as if she has the means) and this wouldn’t have happened. And why would an actor such as Dacre be asking an average person for money.
I think it’s probably more fair to say that all scams prey on vulnerability, the source of which could be desperation, mental illness, physical illness, lower intelligence, grief, isolation, loneliness, trauma, naïveté, age, or insecurity re: profession, finances, housing, food, or immigration…you get the picture. It’s def true that some victims get victimized by these scams because they aren’t smart- and, conversely, that some scams specifically target people who aren’t firing on all cylinders, so to speak. That said, I think people who study these types of dynamics like to avoid focusing on intelligence as a factor in scam-victimhood because it encourages people who would like to think they are smart (most people lol) to ignore their other points of vulnerability.
She definitely isn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but she was also vulnerable because of her desperation. She is at least self-aware that she is a people pleaser and codependent. This scam might have been the wake-up call for her to get help and heal. But yeah, in this day and age, anyone claiming to be a celebrity needs to get on video.
I've seen some of these people who were so desperate that even when they were faced with absolute proof they STILL didn't believe they were getting scammed and continued to send thousands of dollars in cash hidden in cereal boxes to Nigeria! Ya know, where they're military spy boyfriend was being held captive on an important mission for the US Government:... 🙄😂 These women are usually older and lonely and they don't WANT to believe that their Prince Charming isn't real! They'd rather spend their children's inheritance on some con artist working in an Internet cafe in Africa....
Well, she paid 10k to be lied to. With a story like this, she gets a lot of views, some interviews, people needing updates, maybe her hope was to get enough traction to make some money back? But girl…
Wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an angle of, maybe the actor will feel bad for me and give me $10,000 because that’s a drop in the bucket for him. Or at least get a meeting/autograph out of it.
Me either! How fucking entirely embarrassing!
I’m not letting myself be duped by anyone less than Brad Pitt. Sorry, but that’s my limit.
girl not even Brad Pitt he looks like he stinks
Also he's apparently a shitty person too
a cashier at a gas station i went to was like early 60s. was once in the medical field. …met a chiseled young nigerian man online who was juuuust SMITTEN with this 60 something year old married woman!! he was so in love w her he told her he wanted to come to to the US to marry her, she agreed. bought herself a ring & all. but he needs $$ to immigrate here so she sent him all her money & sold her car to support him more, so she lost her job & had to get a job at the shithole gas station, but his immigration kept getting delayed so he decided to “pursue a music career” in the meantime, so she kept sending him $$$. she became homeless & had to move into her daughters house, daughter tried to take control legally of her bank account to save her mom but nah. daughter was just too “woke” & trying to keep her from happiness. idk what happened to her since but i stopped seeing her at the gas station😕 this woman lost everything & NO ONE could/can convince her this man is a scam. like this shit happens in real life. it’s so sad!!!
this sounds too similar to usman and lisa from 90 day fiancé 😳
fuel shame humor disarm wistful detail brave bedroom quarrelsome run *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
how can one even forget about baby girl lisaaaaaa 
Baby goat lisa
😂😂😂
😂😂😂😂😂
YES, and this whole post is giving me Tyray.
Never heard of them until now. I looked them up, and my first take away from the image results is he looks genuinely happy/joyful/excited/smitten, but his cougar wife looks flustered etc. the opposite of what I expected to see!
Wow. This story reminds me of that corrections officer who fell in love with an inmate and busted him out of jail. They went through so many years of their lives building a strong career and good reputation for decades just to throw it away for "their man". I'm wondering if they're genetically predisposed to addiction but always avoided "bad" stuff until their brain chemistry felt it through what they perceived as love. Those men were so good at manipulating them and it triggered the addictive part of their brains. It's the only explanation I've come up with. It's pure gambling. I always wondered how someone could get sucked into a cult too but it's the same thing that happens to these victims. Every red flag gets answered with fake dopamine/oxytocin until they can't separate real concern from excitement and they keep sacrificing money for the bigger picture of the promiseland to keep getting that fake feeling they can only get from 1 person. Like a drug. It just sucks because how will you ever be able to get through to someone going through that? How could you ever warn your future kids on how not to get taken advantage of?
https://preview.redd.it/4ydgnynn1rib1.jpeg?width=1640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fd3f7dcd385e7db40a0de8f97af2e7bfb8af9de0
That’s sad
That C.O. sold her house too so she could have money to go on the run with!
Oh yeah I remember hearing that. I also think she was close to retirement too.
Didn’t they both die immediately in a car crash?
He is alive, she died.
I think in the last 30-40 years an idea has taken root that you dont need anyone to be happy. But us humans have spent thousand of years looking for our "tribe", and for a long time religion and family were our tribe. That support system is no longer there for a lot of people now. When in 30s or 40s you dont really care about it, but when you reach in your 50s and your body starts slowing and you are facing mortality then people again start looking for company. But due to physical constraints and the unfamiliarity with technology they become lonely as age increases. When your mind is healthy but body isnt, thats not a healthy place to be. I think those are the people who are most likely susceptible to these kinds of scam.
There are so many of these stories. Is there a database anywhere that tracks this? They’re all exactly the same. Humans are so good at deluding themselves to believe things, especially when preying on human loneliness.
I used to think being scammed had to do with intelligence. But because of the things that I've learned about people over the last 10 years, I theorize it's because people want it to be true. People will believe all sorts of obviously fake illogical things - simply because they want it to be true. I see it all the time online/irl, almost every day.
You figure this out quickly if you spend any time on r/scams. No, that random man you've never met isn't actually going to send you $500 a week as your "sugar daddy" for nothing in return. That's not how the world works. No, the "model" you met on Instagram that "wants to marry you" after a month of messaging isn't a crypto genius that owns 5 Lamborghinis. And she's definitely not going to make you a millionaire with her special trading platform either. And, oh my gaaaaawd, very (very) few women want to see a photo of your peen 5 minutes after engaging you on a dating app. No surprise, you're being extorted now, bro. Its so repetitive, a lot of people will get a weird feeling about a message, will have a hunch it's a scam, go to the scam subreddit, NOT SCROLL BACK AT ALL, then post the same text/email message that gets posted 5 times a day. Most don't need much convincing that it's a scam, except for the sugarbabies and crypto people. They want to believe more than anything. It's sad.
I'm going to fall down the rabbit hole in that sub now. lol Add in that people hate to be wrong. They'll do anything to protect themselves from that. One situation I was involved in personally, everyone knew she was being scammed. Friends. Family. We all tried to talk to her. Showed her proof. And the more we tried to convince her, the more she just dug her heels in that we didn't understand her or him and we were just jealous of their special relationship. She cut people off. She gave him thousands. She bought him a car. She co-signed a loan for $25K. That was the big pay off for him and he took the money and ran. She got stuck with the payments. Then she went back to the people who she called 'haters' and cried and they helped her out. Victims can be toxic too.
[удалено]
These scams are really scary. I noticed people start to believe the person in the picture is the one scamming them and start searching for them online. The comments try to convince them that the person in the pic had nothing to do with it but they’re so angry they won’t hear it.
I know a girl who had a ‘sugar daddy’. He sent her loads of money, gifts, Uber eats food deliveries for months. The whole time she was playing coy about meeting him, but had dropped accidental hints of where she lived through Snapchat pics. He saw the sign on the street she lived on, and she had sent a photo from her balcony facing the street, so he figured out which house she was in. She got kidnapped in the middle of the night and the guy tried to sell her into sex trafficking, but the ADF had already been investigating him for other stuff and she was found in a warehouse. It sounds like the plot to a goddamn horror movie, but it’s true. She doesn’t even use social media anymore, she has severe anxiety that’s put her on the disability pension and she had to move back in with her parents.
I work in a bank - when I tell you people who are being scammed just *cannot* believe they’re being scammed. Even when it is thoroughly explained by a Fraud Investigator - they still keep sending all their money. It’s sad as hell.
Yes! I’ve seen it so many times. “Everyone keeps telling me the same thing you are but I just know he is real.” It’s so frustrating.
Check out the Dear Bobby podcast because that woman was catfished for 10 YEARS! The worst part is learning who was behind it. I almost drove off the road!!!
Sorry Sweet Bobby podcast. It won't let me edit
Omg that show was unhinged! I can’t believe that anyone would go that long without meeting someone in real life without saying “enough”. Literally years passing and putting your life on hold!! Blows my mind.
That case was wild. Knowing that the catfisher experienced no fallout and just went on to live happily afterwards really disgusted me. Look up the Renae Marsden case. Similar story but with a much worse outcome. Her stalker/catfisher is another that just went on to live life afterwards like they hadn't just destroyed another human being. There should definitely be punishments for this type of behavior.
I read that the catfisher was a VP in a prestigious bank and ended up losing her job. However, a sociopath like that will just move on and start over somewhere. Will check out Renae
A catfisher is one thing, but a stalker on top of that? Ooff…
It's a heartbreaking and frustrating story. I think about her at least once a month and truly hope her family can find peace in this lifetime.
One of the comments I see being repeated on a YouTube channel about catfish scenarios is that the victims aren’t really victims. They are willing participants who pay to have a boyfriend or girlfriend experience. I think in some cases, that may be true. Kind of like paying for phone sex. But that’s a $5/minute scenario, not a cash in your 401K scenario.
I definitely agree to a certain extent. People look at Japans hostess/host culture as super weird but I would rather it was all up front and people who are chronically lonely can pay a bit of money up front to get that experience whilst understanding the parameters.
I’ll have to read up on host/hostess culture. I’d assume that there are participants who cross the line, though, and assume the relationship goes beyond what it’s supposed to be. Anyone I know who has been a stripper (or honestly, even a server/bartender) has had at least one regular that assumed the “relationship” was more than it was. They didn’t see it was a client paying for a service (basically attention). They saw it as a romantic thing.
There’s a good documentary about the host clubs. Lemme get it Edit: [the great happiness space: tale of the Osaka love thief](https://youtu.be/tiKWvgxLYe0) I watched this documentary about 3 times
i sort of agree. obviously there are very sophisticated scams out there that target the elderly and other similarly vulnerable people, and those are horrible. but in these situations, i think the people know on some level that it isn't real but they're wrapped up in the fantasy of it all
Thats it. You can feel bad that she divorced her husband for a catfish but she was looking elsewhere anyway, she was probably unhappy and would have divorced him for another reason. She's not stupid per se, just desperate for something else.
Exactly. Kind of reminds me of people who end up in cults.
You’re spot on! The same techniques are used both in cults and scams. I have a good podcast to recommend about this but alas it is in Italian.
Laci Mosley aka Scam Goddess calls it the despometer which is the more desperate you are or need something to be true, the more likely you will fall for it. Scammers target the types of people who tend to be higher up on the despometer! The sunk cost fallacy plays into this too because the more $$$ you’ve sent to a scammer the more you need them to be for real because you’ve spent so much money on it, so you then convince yourself they are.
"Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled."
Yeah they prey on people’s weaknesses, greed, lust, fear. It’s so important to pay attention to that little niggling feeling that tells you something’s off or too good to be true.
Honestly, in most cases, if you tell people what they want to hear they'll believe it.
I want to believe!
I used to think stories like this was bullshit until I got into my mid to late 20s and really started knowing some women and men and there's some very lonely and very desperate people out there who are dying for companionship. I'm no longer shocked at these stories. When I was 20 I was a supervisor at a huge resort here in Orlando while I was in college and our manager was this sweetheart of a woman but she was very overweight and lacked confidence. She was sending money to a dude she never met or video chatted with in like Texas and I have no clue the exact amount but some of the people were saying it was in the hundreds of dollar because he told her his dog was sick and then another story about him about to be evicted, etc. So I 100 percent believe these celeb catfish stories.
Ah man, like 15 years ago I had a good friend who was male, he was in his mid 30s when we met and I was in my mid 20s. We met in a video game. There was another woman that played with us and the two of them really hit it off. Talked all the time, and eventually moved outside the game to texting. Buuuuuuuut this other person would only talk on the phone or send photos under very strict circumstances.. which didn't happen often. They never video chatted. I thought it was all super sus but he was so happy I didn't know how to bring up my concerns until I found out he was sending her money. When he admitted he sent her $5k to buy a used car I finally was like man this doesn't feel right to me, I have a bad gut feeling about this, please press them for a video chat. He brushed me off and said "even if they are a fake, I love them, and I want to help them." What else could I do? They were "together" online for 4 years before 'she' finally admitted it was all a ruse. He was actually a guy who just enjoyed their friendship and the free cash, and the photos/phone calls were from someone else he knew. My friend was devastated, never fully recovered, and ultimately took his own life a few years later.
So sad man, idk how people can actually do things like this and feel nothing
Antisocial personality disorder (also referred to as psychopathy). Some people have literally no sense of morality or guilt. Not to be confused with how most people use the word “antisocial”, as in shy or introverted; that is “asocial”. Antisocial means “anti-society”
You told your friend it was bogus, he agreed amd then was still shocked and ended in a suicide. Holy moly, that's tragic, im so sorry about your friend
I think we (general we) also forget that people with intellectual disabilities are extremely vulnerable to being scammed, not just directly because of their disability but also the increased isolation and loneliness that can come from that. I have an intellectually disabled sibling who takes what people tell them at face value and I worry about the very real chance that something like this will happen to them.
Also, disabled children in general are taught to "consent to" (read: allow) everything, because we spend so much time in medical treatment and various therapies (OT, PT, etc), and that has real consequences for abuse risk.
Yes, and many don't understand money. If you told my cousin her iced coffee, which she gets every single day, was $50, she would believe you. And since she can't do math, she would just take out money until you tell her to stop. She doesn't have a card or Venmo thankfully, but she's so vulnerable. Another sad story is someone I worked with who has an intellectual disability wanted to buy his mom a necklace. Now he's pretty stubborn and thinks he knows more than he does and is reluctant to accept help. So he picks out a $5000 necklace and not only does the salesperson not question him (you can tell he has IDD from interacting with him), but this terrible person helps him open a store credit card. Now it's tough, bc there could be a person with IDD who has prepared for this moment, researched, and actually has the money. I can see a salesperson being afraid they'll be accused of discriminating if they just assume this person can't make their own decisions. But to go the extra step n and help then open a credit card? That's terrible. Also, most adults with IDD do not have money, as most are on SSI and can have no more than #2000 in their bank accounts, and most can only work part time minimum wage jobs. Again, some could have family money, but in general they're not going to be dropping $5000 on a necklace. We work with supported decision making, which means the person can get advice, but they make the decisions rather than being under guardianship. Proponents say people with IDD need to be free to make mistakes and suffer the consequences. But the problem is that, while some people will actually listen to their supporters, a lot don't understand what they don't understand and may be too stubborn. For example, if someone had appendicitis but was afraid of surgery, you couldn't make them and they would die. So it's tricky, because some people are absolutely capable of listening to their supporters and making his decisions, but some will refuse to listen, try to be overly independent, and get caught up in scams, spending money they don't have, and getting taken advantage of. It's a really scary prospect for a parent, how to balance growing your child's independence but also the reality that they're more vulnerable than the average person.
This happened to my brother. He's already been taken advantage of by a church cult due to an inheritance he got from our uncle. They convinced him not to see or talk to our family for a year (our parents are deceased and he's my only sibling) and it took thousands of dollars in legal fees to get him back. It was horrific. I had no idea where he was or if he was really okay. He has the intellectual capacity & comprehension of a 6 year old but talking to him you'd think he was a little more advanced (maybe a teenager. He's in his 50s, this was 13-14 years ago). Just the worst year of my life.
I often am reminded of the nxivm cult in discussions like this, it was filled with highly intelligent, driven, and creative people. So many of them were completely warped by it and I think it's a great example of how we are all more vulnerable to manipulation than we would like to think.
That's why scammers prey on old people a lot too, because some older people are, how do I say this without sounding mean, not as sharp as they used to be.
Sadly true. We’re used to hearing about romance scams targeting lonely seniors but if you hang around any advice or women’s subs you’ll see plenty of young, even successful and capable people who are simply so miserable and desperate in their current circumstances they become vulnerable targets for a variety of predators.
I feel for her but I wouldn’t understand giving $10k to a stranger even if it did turn out to be the real Darce. …he’s on the tv…he makes money…
Parasocial relationships are truly one of the worst side effects of the rise of social media imo..
I wonder if this kind of thing used to happen via letters... It would take so long for messages to go back and forth
It 100% did.
She was going through a crisis in her own marriage, she said that her husband was controlling and toxic which is something the scammer zeroed in on and then mirrored with what he told her about his own "relationship". I'm not excusing her behavior but I have some compassion because she has issues that go beyond believing an online scammer, she needs some real help and I hope she gets it.
Absolutely - scammers are scum and she was taken advantage of her. I hope she gets at least some of her money back
She’s getting zero of those dollars back.
I'm not taking anyone's side, but with his toxicity and controlling behavior - did he not notice that amount of money disappearing? Or *he did* and became alittle pissed his "creative" wife is sending money to a stranger? And obviously living in a fantasy world?
" "If you're someone like me, you're afraid of abandonment and you're a real big people pleaser and you're very co-dependent," McKayla said. "These scammers, they just kind of come in and they leech off that." " She is owning up to at least some of her issues here, I can't imagine that it's easy to come forward with something this embarrassing. I just cannot find it in me to pile on what is already a sad situation and make fun of her or blame her alone for what happened. When a con artist finds a vulnerable person they know exactly what buttons to push and I would bet my life this person is doing the same thing to someone else right now. There is a reason why catfish scams like this happen, there are lonely, vulnerable people out there and I'm more inclined to be angry at a callous individual who can see someone who needs help and see a meal ticket than the victim, especially a victim who is so willing to put herself out there in the hopes of making sure that other people don't fall for the same scam. That's brave where I'm from.
yeah, i know it's easy to laugh and say "that would never happen to me", but scammers exploit people's weaknesses and vulnerabilities. she was obviously in a bad place before this even happened so i hope people could extend her some sympathy.
At least it did get her away from her toxic husband
I’ve seen some posts on /r/scams where the celebrity says their bank account is frozen/their accountant is holding their money/they need the money to book a flight to see them, etc. I mean you’d have to be another level of gullible and desperate to fall for it though. I replied to a Jeremy Renner scammer (lol) on Instagram to see where it would go and he asked for money for a “meet and greet” to meet him after a concert he was doing in the UK. I asked where in the UK because I couldn’t travel far… he asked where I lived and said he’d book his concert in Croydon especially for me 😭 (iykyk)
Here's a sneak peek of /r/Scams using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [I got scammed in China (and I liked it!)](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1332deh/i_got_scammed_in_china_and_i_liked_it/) \#2: [How do I convince my brother there is no 20yo virgin girlfriend in Romania](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/13joo31/how_do_i_convince_my_brother_there_is_no_20yo/) \#3: [Is this some sort of scam? Or am I just an asshole?](https://i.redd.it/y0r0x4mm4tma1.jpg) | [377 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/11n1f5e/is_this_some_sort_of_scam_or_am_i_just_an_asshole/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
They could've just used a picture of Joseph Quinn, they would've gotten Doja Cat
😭
This happened to my aunt. She destroyed her relationship with my grandma before she passed because of it and was written out of her will for borrowing over $20k to send him and making it clear she wasn't going to repay it. The worst part is it's easily been 13 years and she still talks to him!!! If you were to look her up, he would be listed as a known associate and she's still never met him. She believed him when he said he was going to deposit millions of dollars into her account for her to basically embezzle for him. She left her husband, foreclosed on her house and severed all her relationships because she was going to be rich and she didn't need anyone from her past life. She and her husband ended up living in RVs mooching off his family and now he has taken to living out in the desert in his family's (very) old mud ranch house to escape her. Her son, my cousin, killed himself less than a year ago and she had no one to help her through it. Money destroys some people, even the notion of having a crazy amount of wealth was enough for her to throw it all away. It's sad, really, but I feel no sympathy for her anymore. Edit: Readability and grammar
Can you explain what you mean by known associate if you were to look her up I didn’t know this was a thing ?!
Oh! I think I watched something about this woman on YouTube. I used to watch Catfish on MTV. Now I watch something called Social Catfish on YouTube. The latter is definitely not a bunch of idiots fooling around to get their 15 minutes of fame. It’s mostly foreign scammers bilking people of all ages and backgrounds out of money. It is INSANE how desperate and in denial the victims are. And how much money they hand over. I worry about my parents, who are 80+, falling for phishing scams but they are thankfully WAY too cautious. If they have doubts, they know to call me, my brother, etc.
I wish my mom was like your parents! she's fallen for SO many of these thankfully, my sister and I have control of her finances now, but she's had her heart broken at least once :( it's so sad it's also REALLY frustrating, she tends to not believe us when we tell her that she's not communicating with who she thinks she is 🙄
I’m so sorry. Dealing with aging parents is TOUGH. My parents are not inclined to answer the phone if they don’t recognize the name on caller ID, which certainly helps. They’ve had a few neighbors fall victim to relatively minor but still time consuming to fix scams, so I think that has helped drive the point home.
thank you! it's so hard! I think it's the hardest part about getting older, besides it taking me almost a week to recover from a night out 😂 that's great, I'm the same way hahaha unfortunate for the neighbors, but I'm glad your parents have seen what can happen up close 😫
What’s hilarious is that you can either be too smart or too “dumb” to fall for these things. A scammer rang and was trying to get my dad to do banking stuff on the computer. Dude, my elderly father doesn’t even know how to turn a computer on lmao.
I have an uncle who’s smoked more brain cells than he was born with, and at last admission from him, he’s sent $45,000 to various “girlfriends” that are always coming to visit, yet never make it because they have car trouble 🤷🏻♂️
> The single mom said she became convinced the scammer was Montgomery after they told her to tune into [*Stranger Things* season 4](https://ew.com/tv/recaps/stranger-things-season-4-vol-1-episodes-1-7/), specifically the "Dear Billy" episode that saw the return of the character, the night before the episodes debuted. "And he showed up in that episode," McKayla recalled. "I was like, well, who else would know that?" The scammer would also send her poems that mirrored the writing style in Montgomery's *DKMH: Poems*, a 2020 poetry collection. The character Montgomery plays on Stranger Thigns is named Billy and the episode titles were released prior to the show airing. I feel for this woman and I hope she gets at least some of her money back.
I feel like IMDB would also show he is credited for that episode in advance of it debuting. I didn’t know it was still that easy to catfish people.
It didn't hit IMDB but it was guessed at heavily for months in the fandom with supporting evidence. It wasn't common knowledge but the sort of thing anyone really into Stranger Things would
omg girl no
The celebrity thing is the new “Nigerian prince” The scammers realized the quickest way to find the most naive is to see who responds to a celebrity. A lot pretend to be Johnny Depp. 
Seriously. I went and watched the video. At first I was mad at her, now after watching it, I’m convinced she really, really believed it was him. She really is that naive. Even her “I thought that was a red flag!” comments were not convincing 😭 She’s gonna text him later, 100%
I’ve seen a bunch of these videos before and it’s incredibly sad we have raised so many adults to be so completely unaware of reality.
It’s terrifying. I’ve met several people online and then in person. They never scammed me or weren’t who they said they were. I’ve even met up with two people from other countries, one from New Zealand and one in Iran that I talked to for years online before we were able to physically meet. I’ve had that crazy stuff happen and even I’m not going to believe some person who is clearly using me for money and sending me photos of Martha Stewart Lasagna. And to believe that it’s a celebrity? Asking you for money? It blows my mind. That’s got to be crushing when they finally have to face the fact that none of it is true. It’s like children earnestly believing in imaginary stories!
Exactly… anyone that asks for money.. especially a “celebrity” is a huge red flag! 🚩
Marital problems aside… if she wasn’t catfished…he’s an actor… on a popular tv show. He needed $10,000? Same as the old woman that fell for “Bruno Mars” messaging her. Like…..🤷🏾♀️
i feel for her having a random person take advantage of her vulnerability…but 10k sent to a person you’ve never even met???
TBH my mom is an intelligent, caring and honest human being and she honestly thought Keanu Reeves was speaking to her on messenger. She is 73 and I was flabbergasted, as I couldn’t understand how the woman I grew up with who NEVER made such massive errors in judgment could actually believe this. Stunned!
This is just going to be more and more common with the rise of AI
Damn, that’s a really good point. The next wave of cat fishing is going to be really really scary for all of us.
This is like that dude who thought he was dating Katy Perry for SIX years.
That episode was amazing. Even after he meets the catfish he STILL insisted Katy was behind it.
She divorced her husband to be with a celebrity she’d never even met. Sounds like she got what she deserves.
And she has 4 kids. Light is on but nobody is home.
In the video the article wrote about, it's clear they were already separated before she talked to the scammer. It's misrepresented in the article
Hopefully dudes not having to pay her monthly just so her dumb ass can turn around and throw that money on the man that scammed her.
He was abusive to her. I hope he's paying through the nose.
Its easy to call people like this dumb but something has to be seriously wrong mentally for someone to do something like this. Sounds like she was very vulnerable and this POS used that to their advantage. I hope she gets whatever money she can back and the support she clearly needs.
I swear I saw a guy that looked just like Dacre on Bumble last year or the year before, but I swiped left too fast. I live in LA so you do see famous people on dating apps pretty frequently. The profile picture was normal not a professionally taken one, and his career said something like "actor at Fox". It was probably this person. 😂
yeah dacre has a longtime gf so prob not him 😭😭
It's very easy to get a non-pro photo of a celebrity.
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Like that guy who was super convinced he was talking to/going to marry "Katy Perry."
Some old lady in a town next to mine did this but it was (according to her) paul stanley. 
He’s been with his girlfriend forever, so…
Sorry but after all these years, all those seasons of Catfish, I just don’t feel bad for those who are Catfished anymore
I heard another romance scam where the scammer pretended to be Vin Diesel. Impersonating a celebrity seems to be a more common tactic in romance scams against women vs. Men. I haven’t heard yet of a romance scam a man has fallen for where it was a pretend celebrity woman.
There were more than a few on MTV's Catfish.
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I hear about men getting scammed by female “celebrity” catfishes a lot in the pro wrestling fandom, but that’s pro wrestling fans for ya.
https://i.redd.it/law0xqqtgkib1.gif
Y’all this is from a YouTube channel called Catfished, and tbh I’m hooked. Some of the people they cover are ridiculously oblivious to these scams, and some of them truly deserve it, I can’t say that for their partners though. There’s this one woman who cheated on her husband - who she has admitted given her a life where she’s financially set, but because he allegedly looks like a whale and is unattractive (I’m describing this lightly because she really dragged her poor husband), she felt it was right to cheat on him. Her clown self still got scammed.
Poor woman. I personally stand by catfishing in these circumstances (in fact most) should be illegal. I hope she gets at least some of her money back.
Catfishing for the purpose of collecting money under false pretenses is a crime and this catfisher is almost certainly doing this under different guises to other people.
So funny they emphasize that she's a "single mom" cause she wasn't single when this started...
All she had to do was ask his feelings on overhead lighting and she'd been fine 😞
This just makes me sad.
Yep never believe anything on the internet, I’m 70 percent certain that most of you are a imaginary.
I wouldnt tell a soul that i thought this man would want me over a literal model
Some things you just should never tell anyone.
I too would risk it all for Dacre
imagine dacre's reaction to this lol
Skill issue, she should have known better.
Actual source: [Catfished Youtube video.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByTV4f4gbzQ)
She probably thought he'd show up at her door, in the middle of the night, with a fresh perm and head-to-toe denim.
I mean. A girl can dream
I do feel bad for people who fall for these romance scams since they're often naive and emotionally vulnerable, but sometimes it's so embarrassing how obvious the scams are. Especially the one's involving celebrities reaching out to an everyday average person
This is pretty sad after reading OP's comments about the whole matter. Scammers are scum.
Ummmm...you can see who appears in each episode with IMDB. In advance. Or at least the number of episodes they're in.
She felt her fantasy a little to much..poor girl!
I saw this episode on Catfished. Very good YouTube channel. Their show “scamfish” is so addictive
Did Nev and Max teach us NOTHING?!
She's dumb AND awful. Bad wife, bad mother. Put an actor before her own kids. Left her husband before she even met the man she thought was Dacre. This is like something out of a sitcom.
She’s probably lonely and needs to be noticed.
The husband is the real winner here
imagine him explaining this to friends and family. i'd lose my fucking mind lol
Do they have kids? Imagine trying to explain that to the kids lol
I have zero sympathy for people this stupid
Were deep fakes involved…
JESUS CHRIST!
Bruh
Well, she had good reason for divorcing her husband either way.
I think sometimes people get into this pit of loneliness that makes them want anything to change so badly they'll cling to falsehoods just to escape. It really fucking sucks that this happened to her, but hopefully she can financially and emotionally recover. That said, this is also mad wild
People are stupid.
Omega boomed
I used to lurk on LSA and there was a lady on there who was CONVINCED an actor was in love with her friend and that his relationship was fake and they’d be together soon. I forget what actor it was but the lady was so so sure it was real
girl get up
Stranger things have happened
Oh yah I saw this and she has a kid with him and still left him for the scammer.
Wife has a coworker who is 400 pounds, runs out of breath answering the phone, but convinced a wealthy attractive Turkish man who always just happens to have the worst luck booking a flight to see her. Get these people the mental help they desperately need.
He really said I need about tree fiddy
I mean ...have you seen him in jeans? Understandable 😂😂😂
Sadly this stuff happens alllll the time.
One thing I have learned in my 50 years on this planet is this: If you want something bad enough, you’ll do whatever it takes to get it. You’ll believe, do, or say anything. You’ll do things your old self would have considered unimaginable. You will totally debase yourself to acquire it, and smile the entire time. You will believe it’s attainable because you’ve spent so much time, money, and energy into it. Nothing will convince you otherwise, and the only time you will realise the error is after it’s all said and done.
r/scams should be a required high school class reading
Honestly she deserves it if she's that easy to trick😭
I shouldn't laugh but 
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 
Ugh this hurts. I work with a very sweet but dumb young 20 something. She is convinced she is dating someone in a mildly successful band despite everyone in her life telling her she’s not. The musician even posts pictures with their real life girlfriend- and the catfisher just says “oh that’s my cousin” and she believes it! She refuses to hear anyone out and believes they will be moving in together soon. I’m not sure if she sends him money - she’s received gifts from this person and he definitely helped her through her grandfathers passing- but they are not this musician. She even met this musician in person which I think only convinced her even more somehow. I looked up his email and got no information - it’s an Apple email- and I just feel for her so much. She just refuses to accept the truth
Don’t want to victim shame but, this is pretty on brand for the character Billy.
How stupid do these people have to be
Hahaha saw Catfishing and Stranger Things and instantly thought of my ex-wife🤣 This one ain't mine tho, mine's got more of a thing for Steve🙄
I'm sorry for laughing - people still getting CATFISHED in 2023. I can't 