Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show. How's it going,
Speaker 1: How's how's the week been? How you been? I've been
Speaker 1: all right, yeah. Yeah, So it's been a busy week,
Speaker 1: but a good one. It has been very excited. I
Speaker 1: don't think we can probably talk about it too much yet,
Speaker 1: but Diane and I were each individually, severately cast in
Speaker 1: a audio project to be doing some voice acting narrative podcast.
Speaker 1: So we get to play characters, which is really fun,
Speaker 1: super fun, and it's been great. And they cast us
Speaker 1: not even knowing that we were husband and wife. I
Speaker 1: imagine that. Yeah. So so we our own, our own merits,
Speaker 1: our own individual talents got us there. It was so
Speaker 1: funny though, because I was with my mom when I
Speaker 1: got my email that I was cast in it, right,
Speaker 1: and you had already gotten a call back and I hadn't,
Speaker 1: so I know, it's kind of in my head about it.
Speaker 1: And I was like, don't be mad, it's gonna be awesome.
Speaker 1: I want him to get cast. It's fine, but it's
Speaker 1: okay if you don't know, it's okay whatever. And then
Speaker 1: I got home and you were like, so I got
Speaker 1: the part, and I was like, all right, I got
Speaker 1: the parts. I know both a little a little nervous
Speaker 1: about telling each other make you feel something. And in
Speaker 1: fact I got a call back. You didn't even have
Speaker 1: to do a callback. You've got cast right off your
Speaker 1: first audition. Anyway, we'll tell you more about that as
Speaker 1: it develops when we when we know more, um, but
Speaker 1: we have been recording that this week. It's been really fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to be doing some like performance. Were
Speaker 1: not that we're not performing for you all all the
Speaker 1: time right here on this show, and we're going to
Speaker 1: perform for you today. A fascinating story. It kind of
Speaker 1: it's one of those stories that just grew out of
Speaker 1: something else, right, because today's story starts off with Stephen J. Townsend,
Speaker 1: who was a retired general from the U. S. Army,
Speaker 1: and he was born in Germany, but he was adopted
Speaker 1: at a young age, and when he found out who
Speaker 1: his biological parents were, it turned out that he'd been
Speaker 1: lied to for most of his life and this totally
Speaker 1: shook his beliefs. It opened him up to a whole
Speaker 1: new perspective on the world, and it turns into a
Speaker 1: really interesting story about adoption and and sort of where
Speaker 1: your parents came from and all this stuff. But we
Speaker 1: gotta go way beyond that, because somehow General Townsend has
Speaker 1: also become the poster boy for romance scams. Oh so
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about how those work, who falls for them,
Speaker 1: and just how much money they're worth. So I say
Speaker 1: we get into this general's life and the general calamity
Speaker 1: that followed after him. There yet, lurk, hey their French.
Speaker 1: Come listen, Well, Elia and Diana got some stories to tell.
Speaker 1: There's no match making, no romantic tips. It's just about
Speaker 1: ridiculous relationships. A lover, it might be any type of
Speaker 1: person at all, and abstract cons at are a concrete wall.
Speaker 1: But if there's a story, were the Second Glance Ridiculous
Speaker 1: Romance a production of I Heart Radio. So our story
Speaker 1: today starts out with a little bit of a bonus romance.
Speaker 1: Stephen J. Towns And was born in Scheinfeld, Germany, in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine, and he was soon adopted by an
Speaker 1: American military family had been stationed there. He grew up
Speaker 1: in Griffin, Georgia, just up the road here, and he
Speaker 1: received a bachelor's degree of psychology from the North Georgia
Speaker 1: College in eighty two. While he was in school, he
Speaker 1: was commissioned as a second lieutenant the Army Infantry. Eventually,
Speaker 1: this guy went on to get master's degrees in military
Speaker 1: arts and sciences as well as strategic studies, so really
Speaker 1: just shot up through the military ranks very quickly. According
Speaker 1: to The Washington Post, Townsend learned from his mother when
Speaker 1: he was very young that he was adopted, and his
Speaker 1: mother told him exactly what the German authorities told her.
Speaker 1: His biological parents were a German woman and an Italian
Speaker 1: immigrant to Germany. Ah, the access powers coming together. I'm
Speaker 1: just yeah, nothing in nineteen fifty nine like find another
Speaker 1: air product of Germany and Italy working together. But when
Speaker 1: Townsend was just thirty one years old, he was contacted
Speaker 1: by his biological German mother, who invited him to come
Speaker 1: meet her, and when they spoke, she told him the
Speaker 1: truth quote, your father was a lovely Afghan man I
Speaker 1: knew at university whoa so not Italian. After all, the
Speaker 1: father had studied in Germany, where his family eventually fled
Speaker 1: when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: and eventually they ended up in the United States. Now,
Speaker 1: his biological father had died years earlier. But he was
Speaker 1: a doctor who had lived in Fairfax, Virginia, so he
Speaker 1: really wasn't that far away. Yeah, he'd been close the
Speaker 1: whole time. He had no idea a few states away.
Speaker 1: How interesting too, for that the German authorities like basically
Speaker 1: were I don't know if they just checked the wrong
Speaker 1: box or if they were deliberately like, don't tell anyone
Speaker 1: his father was from Afghanistan get adopted, Like, I don't
Speaker 1: know it was racism, you know, maybe or yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: they just whatever. We don't know right right, I don't
Speaker 1: know very Joerman. To me, I feel like they're very
Speaker 1: ordered right right, the information right, But who knows? That
Speaker 1: is kind of a weird lie if it is a lie. Now,
Speaker 1: although his first father had passed, he still had plenty
Speaker 1: of family in northern Virginia. And one of these guys,
Speaker 1: Stephen Townsend said, was his uncle Nasir Shan sub who
Speaker 1: is a businessman and a writer. And this guy once
Speaker 1: had dinner with Osama bin Lad and called him quote
Speaker 1: incredibly arrogant in an interview with an Ivy business journal.
Speaker 1: It sounds like an understatement that this Osama bin Lad
Speaker 1: guy thinks pretty highly of himself. It's almost like he
Speaker 1: wants to be in Chargers Townsend also has several cousins
Speaker 1: in the northeast US as well. He said, all these
Speaker 1: Afghan immigrants in the US welcomed him quote with just
Speaker 1: open arms and called him my long lost nephew. I
Speaker 1: love that. I don't know if I have this in
Speaker 1: my family where it's just like if you find out
Speaker 1: someone is related to you, boom they are. They might
Speaker 1: as well be your brother. Your family has that because
Speaker 1: they're very Southern. You've got that like, oh you're you're
Speaker 1: you know from such and such, fifteen time for moves
Speaker 1: related to my blood, Well, you got a place to
Speaker 1: stay anytime you want a little bit, I will say
Speaker 1: there is um. I don't know. I think there's a
Speaker 1: little bit of like, of course you must be given
Speaker 1: a chance if you're related, unlike unrelated people who are
Speaker 1: don't have to be getting a chance. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: it's not like an immediate in like we're totally all
Speaker 1: about you. Okay, So I don't know's I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: next time I'm in Kentucky. I've like, listen, I want
Speaker 1: to know how far this family feeling goes. I feel
Speaker 1: like my family. It's we're all very close. But also
Speaker 1: if someone walked up and was like, hey, I'm a
Speaker 1: Banks relative, your immediate reaction be like, oh no, that
Speaker 1: was just got here. Oh. So Townsend meets his Afghan
Speaker 1: family all over the northeastern United States, and after meeting them,
Speaker 1: he started really wanting to visit Afghanistan. Now, eventually he
Speaker 1: did get to, but he said in an interview quote,
Speaker 1: I didn't think I would do it with a rifle
Speaker 1: in my hand. Yeah. For years, his Afghan family argued
Speaker 1: with Stephen Townsend about whether or not the US should
Speaker 1: intervene in Afghanistan, and they felt that the US did
Speaker 1: need to be more involved, but Townsend did not agree.
Speaker 1: He said quote, I used to argue that there was
Speaker 1: no compelling interest for the US, right, which we've heard
Speaker 1: many times about countries where people have said, you know,
Speaker 1: the US could really lend a hand here, and you
Speaker 1: hear from US like, well, yeah, what's in it for us?
Speaker 1: From me? I know, which you know it's cold hearted,
Speaker 1: but it is. You know, you kind of do have
Speaker 1: to be like, well, what's the hook? How do I
Speaker 1: get other people to want me to do this? How
Speaker 1: do I sell it? You know well. And the other
Speaker 1: side of it too is I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people as many places in the world, maybe not as
Speaker 1: much as they used to, have sort of a magical
Speaker 1: idea of what the US is and what they would
Speaker 1: do if they came here. And then the then the
Speaker 1: U S shows up and they're like, oh, this isn't
Speaker 1: what I was wanting. We do what we do, yeah, constantly,
Speaker 1: because we have such a for so long, especially we
Speaker 1: we projected such a global image of when we show up,
Speaker 1: we just make everything better. And so if you didn't know,
Speaker 1: you might be like, God, I wish the U. S
Speaker 1: Would come here and get us out of this mess
Speaker 1: we're in, right, And then we show up and we don't.
Speaker 1: Maybe we do get you out of the mess you're in,
Speaker 1: and we give you a few new mess and then
Speaker 1: it's kind of like in good Place when Jason's like,
Speaker 1: whenever I have a problem, I just throw a Molotov
Speaker 1: cocktail and boom, I have a new problem. But in
Speaker 1: March of two two, Stephen Townsen said that September eleven,
Speaker 1: six months earlier, quote provided that compelling interest which is it?
Speaker 1: And changed his mind. Right now, twenty years later, there's
Speaker 1: no update on that opinion right after we've now seen
Speaker 1: how it all played out right in that country. But
Speaker 1: but that's what he thought at the time. And of course,
Speaker 1: so he did end up back in Afghanistan with a
Speaker 1: rifle in his hand. Washington Post said in their article
Speaker 1: in two thousand to quote, with five hundred heavily armed
Speaker 1: men under his command, Townsend, were he an independent entity,
Speaker 1: would have ranked as a fairly important warlord on the
Speaker 1: Afghan sea. So he just had so many guys under
Speaker 1: him that he's basically like, you know, this superpower of
Speaker 1: his in his own right Afghanistan. But his heritage worked
Speaker 1: mostly in his favor. According to the Daily Press, they
Speaker 1: say that during his time there, some Afghan army leaders
Speaker 1: referred to him affectionately as cousin. It's the same thing
Speaker 1: your family, Yeah, I just one of us. Your biological
Speaker 1: dad was an Afghan person, absolutely, or one of them.
Speaker 1: So Stephen Townsend is an interesting story of adoption and
Speaker 1: how discovery of your heritage can lead to complex feelings
Speaker 1: in relationship. Townsend is someone who is raised in a
Speaker 1: white military family. He has all the associated privileges growing
Speaker 1: up um For example, how having a father who retired
Speaker 1: as a master's sergeant certainly did not hurt Steven's rapid
Speaker 1: rise through the rank. In an article in The New
Speaker 1: York Times about minority leadership being disproportionately small in the U. S. Military,
Speaker 1: they write, quote, the Army has sometimes counted Stephen Townsend
Speaker 1: as a minority commander, so it's implied that someone who
Speaker 1: was of full Afghan heritage might have a much harder
Speaker 1: time advancing in the military. Meanwhile, the Army is propping
Speaker 1: up Townsend as a token of diversity. So it's kind
Speaker 1: of like, oh good, we have this extremely white presenting
Speaker 1: person who we can say, Oh good, you're you're our guy.
Speaker 1: We're doing great. Oh here ei yeah, right right, and
Speaker 1: uh and he is I mean, like Stephen Townsend looks
Speaker 1: like I mean, he's got a tan. You know, you
Speaker 1: would believe that he's maybe part Mediterranean and part German, right,
Speaker 1: and that that was his believed heritage for most of
Speaker 1: his life until he was thirty one. Right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: you can see where racism in the military objectively exists,
Speaker 1: was not working against him throughout his life as he
Speaker 1: worked up and then, like you said, once it was
Speaker 1: a good thing. Diverse. They're like, oh, man, look at
Speaker 1: this guy we got Yeah, we're crushing it over here.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but it is it's such an interesting conversation
Speaker 1: around race, um and ethnicity in that way, because we
Speaker 1: were talking about this with I believe it was Portuguese
Speaker 1: or Venezuelan people who are often very white their blonde hair,
Speaker 1: blue eyes, um so, but they come to our country
Speaker 1: and they're kind of considered people of color because of
Speaker 1: different ethnicity, not white Caucasian, you know. So it's a
Speaker 1: question of, well, you're not presenting as a person of color.
Speaker 1: It's your skin color is not causing a problem for
Speaker 1: you every day when you're out there in the street
Speaker 1: just walking around me and yourself in the same way
Speaker 1: that it does for someone who has a darker skin color.
Speaker 1: Um So. On the other hand, you're still counted with
Speaker 1: a certain voting block. You're still you know, at least
Speaker 1: in this country, there are still some things that apply.
Speaker 1: So it's just an interesting kind of conversation, interesting ongoing conversation,
Speaker 1: you could say, And where just a couple of black
Speaker 1: people talking about this. So I know, what do we know? Right?
Speaker 1: I can't I mean, I am half Italian and I
Speaker 1: can't get a tan here's to her. That's so true,
Speaker 1: the paleless Italian. Ever, I'm Scottish, so I was never
Speaker 1: meant to have a tan. My skin is like you
Speaker 1: should be shrouded in fog at all times. I don't
Speaker 1: understand what you're doing in Atlanta, Georgia. I always complained,
Speaker 1: because I don't know if I've said this on the
Speaker 1: show before, but my mom's side of the family all
Speaker 1: very tall, pasty Irish family and my dad's side of
Speaker 1: a family all very short, olive skinned Italian family members.
Speaker 1: And so what do I get? Do I get? Am
Speaker 1: I a tall, Mediterranean, olive skinned person? No? I got
Speaker 1: the short Italian height and the pasty Irish skin. Mmm, tall,
Speaker 1: Mediterranean looking alive. You'd be a very different person probably today, think,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I would be much more confident, probably a
Speaker 1: big probably a big I don't know, Maybe you'd be
Speaker 1: a little sweete. Yeah. Well. General Stephen Jay Townsend retired
Speaker 1: this summer of two as the commander of the U.
Speaker 1: S Africa Command, according to the New York Times, and
Speaker 1: he was replaced by General Michael E. Langley, who is
Speaker 1: the first black four star general in marine history. Um,
Speaker 1: but look, I know we've been going off about a
Speaker 1: lot of this, but we are not here to get
Speaker 1: into military ranking and the military, who invaded whom, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. The story of General Townsend's birth parents is,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly interesting. I don't know if it's ridiculous,
Speaker 1: But what is ridiculous is the romance scams that have
Speaker 1: followed General Townsend around for years. And we're just gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break and we'll come back and get
Speaker 1: into all that mess and welcome back to the show, everybody. Well,
Speaker 1: we've heard Stephen Townsend's interesting family background, but I'll bet
Speaker 1: you won't believe this one. A woman in Scotland was
Speaker 1: contacted on Skype by Major Steven Townsend of the U. S. Army,
Speaker 1: who was working in Afghanistan at the time for NATO.
Speaker 1: He told her that his wife had been unfaithful and
Speaker 1: he was now divorced. Not only that, but recently Major
Speaker 1: Townsend had adopted an orphaned Afghan boy whose parents had
Speaker 1: been killed in a bomb blast. That a selfless guy. True,
Speaker 1: although there was a story in the news this week
Speaker 1: that I want to do on the show about a
Speaker 1: white military family who adopted boy I think in Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: very similar story and his family. His actual family is
Speaker 1: now suing to get him back. They said he was
Speaker 1: basically kidnapped. Ye. Interesting, I gotta I gotta look more
Speaker 1: into that. Yeah, anyway, this Scottish woman chatted with General
Speaker 1: Townsend on Skype for a few days, and she started
Speaker 1: to notice that his English wasn't very good, such as,
Speaker 1: for example, when he asked her, quote, what do you
Speaker 1: do to sustain your lifestyle in this economy and this economy?
Speaker 1: Like an AI asked that sustain my lifestyle. It's very
Speaker 1: overly formal. This is why we need to make sure
Speaker 1: we teach grammar in schools. Because they said catch catch scammers.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they don't be know and how to put their
Speaker 1: sentence structure together. So she thought that didn't really sound
Speaker 1: like a major in the U. S. Army, so she
Speaker 1: decided to confront him. She said, yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: you're the real Major Townsend actually, sir, And then he
Speaker 1: called her on Skype and she heard this guy say
Speaker 1: that basically like, oh, you must be on drugs, lady,
Speaker 1: or smoking something, because I would never pretend to be
Speaker 1: someone else. Well, how dare you imply such a thing.
Speaker 1: I'm a general, but the U. S. Army I don't
Speaker 1: need to pretend to be someone else. That's a red
Speaker 1: flag too. I feel like if if you were really
Speaker 1: not pretending, you'd just be like, oh, I see why
Speaker 1: you would ask. But now it's you know here, I am,
Speaker 1: you know whatever, Like you wouldn't be so immediately like
Speaker 1: offended and like fiery about it. No, Well, her red
Speaker 1: flag meter went off. She hung up on him. He
Speaker 1: called again a few times, but she just ignored them,
Speaker 1: and then on his Skype account, the pictures of General
Speaker 1: Townsend started disappearing. In her post on scammel lot dot com,
Speaker 1: the woman said, quote, as the real major has had
Speaker 1: such a distinguished career, are really don't see him contacting
Speaker 1: a complete stranger on Skype, especially one who lives in Scotland?
Speaker 1: Smart lady. Yeah, Now, for what it's worth, retired General
Speaker 1: Townsend is still married to Melissa Townsend, a nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three graduate of the Medical College of Georgia. You're doing fine,
Speaker 1: doing great. Obviously this profile was fake. But what's crazy
Speaker 1: is that's not the only time General Townsend has been
Speaker 1: used by scammers in romance schemes. In fact, Popular Mechanics
Speaker 1: reported in that there are so many fake profiles claiming
Speaker 1: to be General Townsend that the US Army had to
Speaker 1: put out a statement reading quote General Stephen J. Townsend
Speaker 1: is not on Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Instagram, Google Hangout, dating sites,
Speaker 1: chat rooms, etcetera. These impostors attempt to harass and scam individuals.
Speaker 1: I gotta wonder until I get a list of all websites.
Speaker 1: I gotta wonder if that's the first time the US
Speaker 1: Army has ever had a tweet about Google Hangouts and
Speaker 1: dating sites Google Hangouts. It was like Google or for
Speaker 1: Google hang Someone's using us, Someone's finally using us out
Speaker 1: of GARBT scammers. And the comments on that statement are
Speaker 1: full of people posting screenshots of fake messages they've received
Speaker 1: from fake accounts using Townsend's name and picture. That is
Speaker 1: so crazy, it's wild. Like one of them is from
Speaker 1: a Stephen J. Townsend on Twitter and it just says, quote,
Speaker 1: I would like to use this opportunity to introduce myself
Speaker 1: to you. I am General Stephen Townsend from Griffith, Georgia,
Speaker 1: U s A. I am presently working in Aleppo, Syria
Speaker 1: for the peacekeeping mission with the U N Government. And
Speaker 1: you what may I call you? And where are you?
Speaker 1: From UH also to say, Griffith Georgia, USA, proves to
Speaker 1: me that you're not from the USA. Everyone from the
Speaker 1: USA knows there's no other country specifying had to clarify.
Speaker 1: We know you're already thinking we're her American. As Griffith
Speaker 1: Griffin ethan, he got a lot of things wrong. Another
Speaker 1: one is a woman named Lisa Lee who said General
Speaker 1: Townsend told her that his wife died of cancer four
Speaker 1: years ago, and quote, he needs an Amazon gift card
Speaker 1: so he can call home to the States and send
Speaker 1: his fourteen year old son some money. And then she
Speaker 1: ends there with he loves me. How you can tell,
Speaker 1: let's say, Amazon gift card, he's been swept off his
Speaker 1: feet by my beauty. How about this one? On Facebook Messenger,
Speaker 1: someone got this message saying, quote, hello charming beauty, the
Speaker 1: happy New Year. I hope you're doing well over there.
Speaker 1: I was so attracted to your beautiful profile when I
Speaker 1: came across. If you don't mind, I would love to
Speaker 1: be your friend, but I don't want to barge into
Speaker 1: your privacy by sending you a friend request. Kindly send
Speaker 1: me a friend request so we can talk and get
Speaker 1: to know ourselves better. A couple of questions, okay, many one.
Speaker 1: I see this a few times where they say I
Speaker 1: don't want to send you a request, you send me one.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's supposed to make it more believable,
Speaker 1: or if they can't send friends. Maybe their settings are
Speaker 1: set where only friends of friends can friend them or
Speaker 1: something like that. Maybe, or um, I think there is
Speaker 1: a thing where you can't, like they don't let you
Speaker 1: send out too many friend requests the same day, tame accounts,
Speaker 1: like because of scammers or maybe even bots trying to
Speaker 1: make your account really inflated out of nowhere. So maybe
Speaker 1: there's something like that where they're just like, I've I've
Speaker 1: hit my moment. Now I have to ask you to
Speaker 1: send me a request. Lisaly came back into the comments
Speaker 1: later and followed up with quote, he got mean and ugly,
Speaker 1: told me I didn't care, harassed me for two days
Speaker 1: for a fifty Amazon card, sent me all these pictures
Speaker 1: of men being shot and dying. Good storyteller. Hello, where's
Speaker 1: he getting pictures of people? Get? Are they like Google?
Speaker 1: I don't know where he's from. Maybe it's a real
Speaker 1: crazy place, but that's weird too to be like, no,
Speaker 1: I really am a general Army. Look, there's all these
Speaker 1: dead bodies around me. I'll prove it. Didn't you say
Speaker 1: it's a peacekeeping mission? We like, there's one way to
Speaker 1: keep the peace. I'll tell you what. Well, just this week,
Speaker 1: on December twelve, Daily Beast put out an article talking
Speaker 1: about a recently unsealed criminal complaint in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 1: A woman named Nancy was contacted by General Townsend in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen on Facebook. She was a seventy four year
Speaker 1: old widow and she'd never heard of this guy, General Townsend,
Speaker 1: but he told her that quote, his portfolio had been
Speaker 1: held up by customs officials demanding large fees to release it.
Speaker 1: Could she help? And then he said her photos, saying
Speaker 1: quote that's me and that's my passport, So I'm legit.
Speaker 1: What customs officials are holding up stuff for large blackmail fees?
Speaker 1: That seems like not thing. Well. Fortunately this woman must
Speaker 1: have had people telling HERLN Okay, this sounds crazy, don't
Speaker 1: trust this message, because later messages from him said quote,
Speaker 1: it hurts me so much that you were letting people
Speaker 1: just spoil your mind towards me, and then you keep
Speaker 1: hurting me. He said, quote I have never loved any
Speaker 1: woman like I love you, but you have hurt me
Speaker 1: so deeply. You are making me sad. God knows my
Speaker 1: heart and he knows that I will never do anything
Speaker 1: to hurt you, but you have hurt me so much.
Speaker 1: Are you going to help me claim my portfolio or not? Nancy?
Speaker 1: I know, right? Also, like, how do you? I would
Speaker 1: be so suspicious? And I know we've even done stories
Speaker 1: where people are like I was fully on board the
Speaker 1: moment I met this person, But I find that suspicious
Speaker 1: to be, Like, we haven't even spoken. You found my
Speaker 1: picture online, and now you're telling me you've never loved
Speaker 1: anybody like this. I don't know, but I guess it's
Speaker 1: like a bomb to the heart. Yeah, and we'll we'll
Speaker 1: get into that in the third part. We talk about
Speaker 1: how people fall for these it right, they are good
Speaker 1: at it. But whatever warnings she got must have come
Speaker 1: too late, because unfortunately she had already sent him a
Speaker 1: ton of money. Oh no, he had told her to
Speaker 1: send checks. And they went to a group of men
Speaker 1: in Vineyard, Utah, and they all in all totaled over
Speaker 1: a hundred and forty thousand dollars, not from a seventy
Speaker 1: four year old woman. You know, she can't afford to
Speaker 1: lose that. Now, the men who got them would keep
Speaker 1: some of the money and then they transferred some more
Speaker 1: of it to Nigerian bank accounts. Daily Beast reports that
Speaker 1: the two men are now in federal prison and a
Speaker 1: third was ordered to pay eight point four million dollars
Speaker 1: in restitution to his various victims. And this guy also
Speaker 1: had a two million dollar mansion in Houston, Texas that
Speaker 1: was seized, and as of this week, his attorney told
Speaker 1: Daily Beast that he still owes the government seven point
Speaker 1: two million dollars. Jeez. He's like, well, if you don't
Speaker 1: let me scam anybody, I can't pay you back. A
Speaker 1: second widow was contacted by the men, again posing his townsend,
Speaker 1: telling her that he was stuck in Syria and quote
Speaker 1: couldn't get military transport out. He needed fifty grand to
Speaker 1: fly out on a jet that was specially equipped with
Speaker 1: missile detection or he wouldn't make it a top gun
Speaker 1: three for real. It's she's like, oh, this is my time.
Speaker 1: I always knew that's gonna be part of it too,
Speaker 1: Like make you feel like a hero for saving this
Speaker 1: army General that's true. That's very true. These guys didn't
Speaker 1: only pose as Townsend. They also pretended to be an
Speaker 1: oil engineer in Oman, a wealthy Texan trapped under house
Speaker 1: arrest in Sweden, and a businessman in Turkey on a
Speaker 1: big municipal sewer project. And I wish I was in
Speaker 1: the writer's room and they would rack to come up
Speaker 1: with these characters. It is just come up with these
Speaker 1: guys that are just like, you know, someone who believably
Speaker 1: would have a bunch of money, right but might not
Speaker 1: have access to it. Write something weird going on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you helped me out a little bit here, I'll
Speaker 1: make you real rich later. Do you think that they
Speaker 1: went trolling first to find like trustworthy faces and then
Speaker 1: they print them out right, and they put them all
Speaker 1: up and they're like, Okay, who's this guy? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Let's say it's like a textan. Yeah, he's got some
Speaker 1: money and he's uh, went to I don't know, Sweden,
Speaker 1: I don't know. And then his sisters a dentist. He's
Speaker 1: got a dog named Spike. It's a creative job, very creative.
Speaker 1: They have a lot of out of work. Yeah, who
Speaker 1: says he can't make a good living. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a writer. I bet ai is going to take this
Speaker 1: from those writers all the jobs, oh God, are going
Speaker 1: to take the scammers job? All right? Well, all these
Speaker 1: do sound so outrageously absurd, right, and we sit here
Speaker 1: and we laugh at them. They sound crazy. So how
Speaker 1: does this work? How is this viable enough to keep happening?
Speaker 1: Who is falling for these scams? And how could it
Speaker 1: possibly be financially viable? Now we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the function of the romance scam and try and answer
Speaker 1: all those questions right after this quick break, Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the show. Okay, So, romance schemes may seem very
Speaker 1: obvious to a lot of us. Sometimes after the fact,
Speaker 1: they can sound so absurd and dumb that the people
Speaker 1: who fall for them just look foolish, right, probably feel yeah,
Speaker 1: come on, how could you not see what you believe?
Speaker 1: This oil baron needed fifty grand from me? I mean,
Speaker 1: a lot of the ones you hear about, like the
Speaker 1: guy who needed fifty grand to fly out on a jet,
Speaker 1: Unlike and I'm the only person you could ask for that.
Speaker 1: You couldn't reach back out to the US military too.
Speaker 1: Maybe you feel like, say, they're dude, there's got to
Speaker 1: be a better number in your road, random lady. Well,
Speaker 1: the FBI says that quote criminals who carry out romance
Speaker 1: scams are experts at what they do and will seem genuine,
Speaker 1: caring and believable. A special agent, Christine Binding, says that
Speaker 1: generally scammers target women over fifty, but men can be
Speaker 1: targets as well, and it's usually people who are forced
Speaker 1: or widowed or maybe more vulnerable. So you're already looking
Speaker 1: at a you know, a target who probably is a
Speaker 1: little adrift and looking for answers and maybe struggling and
Speaker 1: trying to find that magic solution, right, and that can
Speaker 1: get all of us right. Yeah, that's very true. The
Speaker 1: scammeras will often propose marriage very quickly. They developed very
Speaker 1: intense relationships very quickly, and the people they target, like
Speaker 1: you said, are usually already desperately looking for love and companionship,
Speaker 1: you know. So the scammers will then claim that they
Speaker 1: have an emergency, either they're trapped overseas in Sweden under
Speaker 1: house arrest, or they have a medical emergency um and
Speaker 1: they'll request money and they'll promise to repay them, and
Speaker 1: you know, you can trust me because we have such
Speaker 1: a close relationship. Of course, they never do pay anyone back,
Speaker 1: and Asian Binding says, these are usually criminal organizations that
Speaker 1: work together. It's not just like one guy here and there,
Speaker 1: She says. Quote. Once a victim sends money, they will
Speaker 1: often be placed on what's called a sucker list, and
Speaker 1: their names and identities are shared with other criminals. Sucker list. Yeah, because,
Speaker 1: like I mean, to get scamped twice, right, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: especially if you didn't sometimes these people. Sometimes this happens
Speaker 1: that people don't know they got scammed. You know. Oh,
Speaker 1: I sent fifty grand to that guy so he could
Speaker 1: get the jet and fly out of there, and I
Speaker 1: never heard from him again. I guess he didn't make it,
Speaker 1: n you know. So then someone comes along and it
Speaker 1: happens all over again, and they haven't really learned a
Speaker 1: lesson because they didn't know they did something wrong. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although I have to say I'm jealous of anyone in
Speaker 1: the position of being able to get somebody at the
Speaker 1: drop of a hat. In the case of the Stephen
Speaker 1: Townsend scammers that we talked about before the break, Chuck
Speaker 1: what Hekalu was the man who was ordered to pay
Speaker 1: over eight million dollars investitution that we talked about about
Speaker 1: is Texas mansion sees. He was basically the money mule
Speaker 1: in this particular scheme. Everything went between him and where
Speaker 1: it needed to go. He came to the US on
Speaker 1: a student visa in and between and twenty nineteen, this
Speaker 1: guy deposited nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars into six
Speaker 1: different banks and credit unions. When his conspirators were arrested
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, the two guys who ended up in
Speaker 1: a federal prison, he had already fled to Canada along
Speaker 1: with his wife and their baby daughter when he was
Speaker 1: deported back to the US for quote serious criminality and
Speaker 1: organized criminality based on US charges a his wife and
Speaker 1: daughter were allowed to stay in Canada under refugee status,
Speaker 1: and there was a whole thing there where he tried
Speaker 1: to appeal and basically say, if you send me back
Speaker 1: to the US, they're gonna send me back home to Africa,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna be tried really viciously. My my wife
Speaker 1: and daughter would be left with nothing and all this stuff,
Speaker 1: and he had they had to get an agreement from
Speaker 1: the US that that wouldn't happen before they would deport him,
Speaker 1: but they did get that in writing, so fleet it's
Speaker 1: not that bad. But he is set to be sentenced
Speaker 1: in March, and he faces a maximum of twenty years
Speaker 1: in prison. I mean that's a lot of money. You know,
Speaker 1: you have to assume they did ruin somebody's life definitely,
Speaker 1: or make them extremely uncomfortable for a long time. Now,
Speaker 1: we went to learn more about these scammers, and we
Speaker 1: saw an episode of the National geographic show Trafficked from
Speaker 1: host Marianna van Zella meets with two romance scammers, a
Speaker 1: man and a woman in Ghana. Now they're set up
Speaker 1: in a fancy looking living room. The woman is making
Speaker 1: a video call to her victim. The woman, who goes
Speaker 1: by the Miami Queen, handles the video side of the calls,
Speaker 1: but the man, known as the Punisher, handles most of
Speaker 1: the text based conversation. So she's the face, but he's
Speaker 1: the actual right word for some of them. And they said,
Speaker 1: what's interesting is a lot of the time they just
Speaker 1: work out of a warehouse or their living room or whatever.
Speaker 1: But they rented this room in order to do the
Speaker 1: video call in to make it look like he was
Speaker 1: in a you know, an expensive apartment or something. Okay, interesting,
Speaker 1: these two, the Miami Queen and the Punisher, great names,
Speaker 1: but the Miami Queen is such an interesting choice. Maybe Anyway,
Speaker 1: the Miami Queen and the Punishers say that actually men
Speaker 1: are far easier to scam than women because there are
Speaker 1: simply more of them on dating sites and they're more
Speaker 1: likely to give money. But in the States, the host,
Speaker 1: Marianna van Zeller says, far fewer men report being victims
Speaker 1: than women. Yeah, so perhaps our agent binding who says
Speaker 1: that women are more often targeted, maybe doesn't actually know
Speaker 1: because the reporting is so often. That could be a
Speaker 1: big part of it, because I mean, you look at
Speaker 1: the stigma surrounding either case, right, Like seventy four year
Speaker 1: old woman a widower gets told by some fake army
Speaker 1: general to send all her money and she does and
Speaker 1: it's heartbreaking that that poor woman. Right. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: some fifty five year old goal guy gets hit up
Speaker 1: by some hot girl on a dating site that tells
Speaker 1: her tells him, you know, I'm at school, will you
Speaker 1: send my tuition? Can you help me buy my books? YadA,
Speaker 1: YadA YadA, and he ends up sender. You know, fifty grand,
Speaker 1: a hunter grand or something, and it's like, well, maybe
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have been thinking with your dick, you know.
Speaker 1: And and he's not really a sympathetic and I think
Speaker 1: the guys feel that so they don't report it. They're like, well, man,
Speaker 1: I'm going to look like a real horn dog if
Speaker 1: I go and tell somebody what happened to me. It's
Speaker 1: kind of embarrassing, that is. Yeah, that's a good point.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. I kind of I'm assuming you
Speaker 1: know that that's why those numbers are skewed in the
Speaker 1: direction they are, right, Um, well, I mean that's true
Speaker 1: about sexual assault and domestic violence as well. Is that
Speaker 1: you know they say the numbers are very much show
Speaker 1: women being the victims more frequently than men, right, right.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that it's even or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but we do know that the reporting from men is
Speaker 1: much much less pretty on those two things as well.
Speaker 1: So men do stuff in silence. I got a lot
Speaker 1: of things. I guess guys, if you get scam just
Speaker 1: speak up, even if it makes you sound to horny. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: we gotta know what they're out here doing. Now, these
Speaker 1: two Ghanans say that they have dozens of friends who
Speaker 1: are also romance scammers. Their friends all get rich. They're
Speaker 1: all building houses and buying fancy cars. They said, quote,
Speaker 1: everybody's out here making money. Imagine the water cooler at
Speaker 1: the office. They're like, Oh, today, I'm playing a guy
Speaker 1: named Trevor, and I'm from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I decided
Speaker 1: to make him like a pro football player. I think
Speaker 1: that'd be fun. Somebody comes in, yeah today on playing
Speaker 1: Tiffany Wisconsin Jesus swimsuit model. Oh wow, Yeah, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get a lot of money for that. Now. The punisher
Speaker 1: says that his current victim, Michael, has no idea that
Speaker 1: he's actually talking to a man in Ghana. He probably
Speaker 1: thinks he's talking to Tiffany from Wisconsin or something. But
Speaker 1: Unasher says, quote, I started falling in love with Michael,
Speaker 1: not for intercourse or whatever, but I felt for him.
Speaker 1: He is kind hearted. I think Michael has been too
Speaker 1: good to me. He doesn't say how long they've been talking,
Speaker 1: but he says that Michael has given the girl he's
Speaker 1: posing as more than ten thousand dollars for things like
Speaker 1: school fees and rent. It's got to be such a
Speaker 1: tough part of the scam too, Like you can't you
Speaker 1: can't fall in love with these people. You're gonna be
Speaker 1: having very intimate conversations with them, getting to know them
Speaker 1: at a very deep personal level, and and he turned
Speaker 1: that off. I imagine there's similar challenges for sex workers,
Speaker 1: you know, strippers, things like that, where you're like, you're
Speaker 1: my job is to make you feel loved, and you
Speaker 1: might respond to that in a really wonderful way, and
Speaker 1: I have to make sure that I don't feel anything back. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: But I mean I don't. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: feel better or worse that they have feelings for the
Speaker 1: people who're talking to because it almost makes it work,
Speaker 1: like I know this guy is a good person, and
Speaker 1: I'm still continuing to scam him instead of like, I
Speaker 1: don't care if he's a good or bad person. I'm
Speaker 1: out here scamming, Like you know what I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know if I which one I preferred had been,
Speaker 1: Like Michael's too good for me. I'm going to break
Speaker 1: up with him because I can't take anymore his money.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna move on to that that yacht owning asshole. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: poor Michael. These these Uh, these romance scammers should vet
Speaker 1: they're victims and make sure that they're like racists or something,
Speaker 1: only go after bad people. It's like the Boondock Saints
Speaker 1: of romance SAMs. Now here's how some of these video
Speaker 1: scams work against people like Michael. When the scammer video
Speaker 1: calls Michael, Michael answers and he sees instead of the punisher, obviously,
Speaker 1: some beautiful woman sitting on her bed on her phone,
Speaker 1: and they don't. The woman does not respond to him vocally.
Speaker 1: This is a pre recorded video of a woman on
Speaker 1: her phone, and she just ocasionally like giggles and types
Speaker 1: away on her phone as if she's texting the person.
Speaker 1: That's that their video chatting with Michael speaks to her.
Speaker 1: The scammer, the punisher is sitting there typing out messages
Speaker 1: in response. Of course, Michael thinks it's the woman typing
Speaker 1: on her phone in the video it's responding to him.
Speaker 1: So I don't know that sounds kind of obvious when
Speaker 1: you lay it out, but these horny, lonely dudes with
Speaker 1: money despair or sometimes not despair, it clearly can be
Speaker 1: a very convincing trick. It is so interesting because these
Speaker 1: videos like you think that sounds like you would know
Speaker 1: there's a fake video, but they're really good, Like they
Speaker 1: look like this person is like maybe probably doing something
Speaker 1: else on her phone while she's talking to you, and
Speaker 1: you know, might pause to be like, well let me
Speaker 1: think about what you just said for a second, and
Speaker 1: I'll start typing again. She never quite know when she's
Speaker 1: responding to you or not. It's it's very tricky. Why
Speaker 1: would you not question, like why are we video chatting?
Speaker 1: If we're just going to tech anyway? Because I think
Speaker 1: speculation station. I think there's an element in situations like
Speaker 1: these of I don't want to know, Like I want
Speaker 1: to keep believing this is real, So I think that
Speaker 1: I think there are a bunch of red flags in it.
Speaker 1: And some of these guys are like I'd rather keep
Speaker 1: looking at this video of this girl and believe that
Speaker 1: she's talking to me, then question why aren't why aren't
Speaker 1: we speaking? Or she'll be like, oh, my microphone's broken,
Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that. You can't hear were like
Speaker 1: my microphone's broken, or the video isn't good enough. And
Speaker 1: they've developed a culture where that's the norm. Right when
Speaker 1: you are video chatting, some hot girl, they don't speak
Speaker 1: to you. They don't like to do that. They'll just
Speaker 1: text back with you. Oh really, Well, I'm just saying
Speaker 1: I think that's what I don't know, this kind of money.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you know a little too. But hey,
Speaker 1: that's what I'll do. I'll start video chatting with you,
Speaker 1: but I don't want you to say anything. Good luck
Speaker 1: up now. The host Marianna Vanzeller, learns from another scammer that,
Speaker 1: like Agent Binding said, these are groups of organized scammers,
Speaker 1: not lone wolves working on their own right. One guy
Speaker 1: that she spoke to under extreme anonymity, I mean full
Speaker 1: mask everything in a parking lot. It was like a
Speaker 1: deep threat situation told her that he was very concerned
Speaker 1: because his boss was quote a very rich man, and
Speaker 1: if he knew that he was speaking to a reporter
Speaker 1: even though his face was completely covered, he could be
Speaker 1: in big trouble. He said that these bosses have tons
Speaker 1: of he said. He said, he's got all these boys
Speaker 1: working for him like me. And he said, quote, the
Speaker 1: boys go online and find good clients, and once they
Speaker 1: know that they're a good client that they can get
Speaker 1: money out of. We pushed them to the boss and
Speaker 1: he works it out from there. So he's like the closer.
Speaker 1: The boss is the guy who actually makes the money happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just kind of like a bot farm, right where they
Speaker 1: have so many people just with a billion iPhones in
Speaker 1: front of them, happen on things all day long and
Speaker 1: you don't even know You're not even talking to the
Speaker 1: same person the whole time. And honestly, truly to your
Speaker 1: point earlier, I didn't haven't seen this in my research,
Speaker 1: but come on, this is going to turn into AI.
Speaker 1: It's going to turn into one guy with fifty iPhones
Speaker 1: that are all having is AI conversations. He could probably
Speaker 1: plug it into Replica. I was gonna say, we talked
Speaker 1: about replica, and those are not extremely convincing conversations, but
Speaker 1: if you wanted them to be, they could be, and
Speaker 1: they will get there and they will get a later. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so the closer now doesn't have to pay other
Speaker 1: guys because they just get a cut. Yeah. Now he
Speaker 1: just does it himself. AI is really coming for all
Speaker 1: of us, all the workers of the world. According to
Speaker 1: Popular Mechanics, this kind of identity theft is quote plaguing
Speaker 1: the US military, the U S Army Criminal Investigation Command
Speaker 1: says hundreds of reports come in every month from scams
Speaker 1: involving people imitate members of the military at all levels.
Speaker 1: So it's not just Steven Townsend, even though they like
Speaker 1: him a lot for whatever. And this is probably because
Speaker 1: there are plenty of publicly available images of soldiers. People,
Speaker 1: especially older people, tend to implicitly trust members of the military,
Speaker 1: and they're typically seen as responsible, financially secure people who
Speaker 1: would believably be lonely and looking for love. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of reasons to use a soldier. I guess
Speaker 1: is yours your um what would you call that your costume?
Speaker 1: But for lack of a better word, But the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army says, quote, victims of these scams can lose tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of dollars and face a slim likelihood of
Speaker 1: recovering any of it. Right, it means so often these
Speaker 1: are reported, But what can they do? I mean that
Speaker 1: the tracking is really difficult. Everything's done you know, with
Speaker 1: extreme anonimity and through VPNs and stuff like that. You
Speaker 1: can't just like, you know, look, we triangulate the signal
Speaker 1: and find out where it's coming from. Enhanced enhanced, It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's no there's no insurance for that. Sorry, you gave
Speaker 1: your running away. I know. That's really sad though, because
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, um, I remember getting something stolen
Speaker 1: from me and had to fill out a police report
Speaker 1: and it was so it made me upset because it
Speaker 1: was mad. Of course I had just been stolen from
Speaker 1: and I was telling the cop about it and they
Speaker 1: were like, Okay, I mean stereo, some cash. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got it in writing. But it's not like the stereo
Speaker 1: is gonna suddenly appear on the black market or something.
Speaker 1: The cash is gone. You're never seeing that again, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like John McClean is not going
Speaker 1: to go out there and like storm a building and
Speaker 1: find your stereo justice for me. But yeah, I was
Speaker 1: just like I remember being like, why did I even
Speaker 1: call you because there's nothing. I mean, it was good
Speaker 1: to have the report and everything, but I was just like,
Speaker 1: there's nothing you can do. And it was even like
Speaker 1: I wasn't even mad at the cop. I was just like,
Speaker 1: as I was talking, I was like, I don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm expecting him to do. Go to every thrift
Speaker 1: store and try to see if you can find my
Speaker 1: stupid eye home, Like you know that's not going to happen.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. It's just I was thinking about
Speaker 1: the Big Lebowski scene where his car gets stolen and
Speaker 1: he finds it. Yeah, and he asked the cop like,
Speaker 1: are you're going to catch the guys who did this?
Speaker 1: And the cops starts laughing. He says, oh yeah, they
Speaker 1: got us working in shifts worried about it. We're not.
Speaker 1: I know that. There's just you got your car back,
Speaker 1: consider yourself lucky, you know well, or even think about
Speaker 1: this guy who owes eight million dollars. That's great that
Speaker 1: he owes it. Does he have it? Probably not, so
Speaker 1: you're never going to get it. I mean, what are
Speaker 1: they going to do with it? I don't think the
Speaker 1: government's gonna be like, all right, let's write a little
Speaker 1: check to everybody. You know, he got to right, So
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's tough to bummer poor Steven Townsen though,
Speaker 1: to be have his his face to scamming this ship out.
Speaker 1: I wonder how much he even knows about it, because
Speaker 1: he's not on social media at all. You know, did
Speaker 1: he have to get off social media because of this?
Speaker 1: I don't think he ever was. Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: so well, that's I'm glad he's not out there looking
Speaker 1: for a love right now, because right to escape a
Speaker 1: hostile country was me. I was thinking that with like
Speaker 1: low level celebrities that's still date. Like I heard Nicole
Speaker 1: byer on Um I think she's on weight weight don't
Speaker 1: tell me or something, and they were asking her about
Speaker 1: dating and she's like, oh, I'm still on bumble and
Speaker 1: you know, stuff like that. I was like, it's gotta
Speaker 1: there's gotta be some people who were like, no, I
Speaker 1: can't a celebrity. You're you stole her picture. That's not you, right,
Speaker 1: this is a lie. Ye. I wonder if people just
Speaker 1: swipe right by because they think it's not person. It's
Speaker 1: got to be tough. It's sort of like when Riya,
Speaker 1: the celebrity dating app came out and I was like,
Speaker 1: very inclined to roll my eyes, but then I was like,
Speaker 1: actually kind of makes sense. Like if you're Rhanna, like
Speaker 1: you don't want to get on Tinder. First of all,
Speaker 1: no one will believe you, and if they do, you
Speaker 1: don't want to talking reach that. You know, I need
Speaker 1: to make sure people I'm talking to like not you know,
Speaker 1: crazy is or some real insane fan person or star
Speaker 1: or whatever. You know, it's just some level I think
Speaker 1: you want to be, like I'd like to be in
Speaker 1: my own pool. Well, it is sad that most of
Speaker 1: these people won't get their money back. I guess. The
Speaker 1: Army says, like and and the FBI and everybody says,
Speaker 1: the best thing you can do is educate yourself and
Speaker 1: keep your head in the swivel, you know, be smart,
Speaker 1: be savvy, don't send random stranger's money. Let the red
Speaker 1: flags sad. Yeah, yeah, And I think that's the trick
Speaker 1: of it too. Like we talked about with some of
Speaker 1: the men who fall for this stuff, I have to
Speaker 1: wonder if a lot of those cases aren't just like
Speaker 1: low dollar amounts, you know that happened a couple of times,
Speaker 1: if if not even just once. And it's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I paid for a chat website, you know, where I
Speaker 1: through some girl, you know, a hundred dollars and it
Speaker 1: turns out it's some dude in Ghana with a fake video,
Speaker 1: you know whatever. Well that the guy doesn't care. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, I paid for the video, I don't care,
Speaker 1: don't tell me the truth. But obviously these larger cases
Speaker 1: ruining livelihoods. That makes sense though, because if you could
Speaker 1: get two thousand dollars from two people, that's better than
Speaker 1: getting one person to give you all their money, right right, Um,
Speaker 1: and and again such a small amount. Who's coming for you?
Speaker 1: Who's even noticing it? Yeah? Stay smart out there, everybody, seriously, Yeah,
Speaker 1: be careful. At least at the very least. We have
Speaker 1: talked about some romance scams in the past, like the
Speaker 1: Lonely Hearts killers. Yeah, and they were like, we're going
Speaker 1: to kill you. So at least at least people are
Speaker 1: not being murdered and thrown into closets while they go
Speaker 1: watch a movie. Yeah, yeah, that's true. But I think
Speaker 1: that you know, we we often assume and even the
Speaker 1: number of these stories are like elderly people, you know,
Speaker 1: people who aren't necessarily tech savvy, um, who might have
Speaker 1: money to spare or not either way. Um, but then
Speaker 1: we sort of think, oh, and so it can't happen
Speaker 1: to me. But it can. I mean if there are
Speaker 1: very good at what they do. The whole point is
Speaker 1: that you don't know what's happening. I've paid at carnivals
Speaker 1: to play games. I'm like, I know that this is
Speaker 1: a scam. I know I cannot win here, but I
Speaker 1: want to watch this guy work is magic and I
Speaker 1: feel like I lost twenty bucks, but I saw an
Speaker 1: incredible show, right, I got very well entertained. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's okay, But but you got to know what you're
Speaker 1: up against and what you're gonna lose and be willing
Speaker 1: to lose it. That's true too. You know, maybe have
Speaker 1: a little extra savings account to the side, whatever is
Speaker 1: in there. That's what I'm willing to lose to scams.
Speaker 1: That's the one. If there's if it's empty, that's it.
Speaker 1: No scam today. Can't can't get CanCon do that money? Sorry,
Speaker 1: Mr Army Pilot, you're gonna be stuck in Switzerland. Sorry
Speaker 1: Tiffany from Wisconsin, You're gonna have to pay your own
Speaker 1: tuition this semester. Has any of you been hit by
Speaker 1: a romance scam? Because I would love to hear about it,
Speaker 1: and we would love to share it with the world's
Speaker 1: they know better. We won't put your name out there
Speaker 1: if you don't want, but we'd love to hear the story.
Speaker 1: Or if you just want to say hi or tell
Speaker 1: us something about this episode or any episode, or if
Speaker 1: you have a suggestion for an episode? Yeah, please shoot
Speaker 1: us an email, ridic Romance at gmail dot com. Writer.
Speaker 1: We're on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dianamite Booms and
Speaker 1: I'm at Oh Great, It's Eli and the show is
Speaker 1: at ridic Romance. Thanks so much for tuning in for
Speaker 1: this one. We'll be back next week with another fun
Speaker 1: romantic history story and I can't wait to see on
Speaker 1: that one. Thanks for listening, Love you by so long. Friends,
Speaker 1: It's time to go. Thanks so listening to our show.
Speaker 1: Tell your friend's name was Uncle Sandez? To listen to
Speaker 1: a show ridiculous, well n