The Face of Fraud: How General Townsend Became the Poster Boy for Romance Scams

not even knowing that we were husband and wife. I imagine that. Yeah. So so we our own, our own merits, our own individual talents got us there. It was so funny though, because I was with my mom when I got my email that I was cast in it, right, and you had already gotten a call back and I hadn't, so I know, it's kind of in my head about it. And I was like, don't be mad, it's gonna be awesome. I want him to get cast. It's fine, but it's

okay if you don't know, it's okay whatever. And then I got home and you were like, so I got the part, and I was like, all right, I got the parts. I know both a little a little nervous about telling each other make you feel something. And in fact I got a call back. You didn't even have to do a callback. You've got cast right off your first audition. Anyway, we'll tell you more about that as it develops when we when we know more, um, but

we have been recording that this week. It's been really fun. Yeah, I'm so excited to be doing some like performance. Were not that we're not performing for you all all the time right here on this show, and we're going to

perform for you today. A fascinating story. It kind of it's one of those stories that just grew out of something else, right, because today's story starts off with Stephen J. Townsend, who was a retired general from the U. S. Army, and he was born in Germany, but he was adopted at a young age, and when he found out who his biological parents were, it turned out that he'd been lied to for most of his life and this totally

shook his beliefs. It opened him up to a whole new perspective on the world, and it turns into a really interesting story about adoption and and sort of where your parents came from and all this stuff. But we gotta go way beyond that, because somehow General Townsend has also become the poster boy for romance scams. Oh so we're gonna talk about how those work, who falls for them, and just how much money they're worth. So I say we get into this general's life and the general calamity

that followed after him. There yet, lurk, hey their French. Come listen, Well, Elia and Diana got some stories to tell. There's no match making, no romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships. A lover, it might be any type of person at all, and abstract cons at are a concrete wall. But if there's a story, were the Second Glance Ridiculous Romance a production of I Heart Radio. So our story today starts out with a little bit of a bonus romance.

Stephen J. Towns And was born in Scheinfeld, Germany, in nineteen fifty nine, and he was soon adopted by an American military family had been stationed there. He grew up in Griffin, Georgia, just up the road here, and he received a bachelor's degree of psychology from the North Georgia College in eighty two. While he was in school, he

was commissioned as a second lieutenant the Army Infantry. Eventually, this guy went on to get master's degrees in military arts and sciences as well as strategic studies, so really just shot up through the military ranks very quickly. According to The Washington Post, Townsend learned from his mother when he was very young that he was adopted, and his mother told him exactly what the German authorities told her. His biological parents were a German woman and an Italian

immigrant to Germany. Ah, the access powers coming together. I'm just yeah, nothing in nineteen fifty nine like find another air product of Germany and Italy working together. But when Townsend was just thirty one years old, he was contacted by his biological German mother, who invited him to come meet her, and when they spoke, she told him the truth quote, your father was a lovely Afghan man I

knew at university whoa so not Italian. After all, the father had studied in Germany, where his family eventually fled when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in the early nineteen eighties, and eventually they ended up in the United States. Now, his biological father had died years earlier. But he was a doctor who had lived in Fairfax, Virginia, so he really wasn't that far away. Yeah, he'd been close the whole time. He had no idea a few states away.

How interesting too, for that the German authorities like basically were I don't know if they just checked the wrong box or if they were deliberately like, don't tell anyone his father was from Afghanistan get adopted, Like, I don't know it was racism, you know, maybe or yeah, maybe they just whatever. We don't know right right, I don't know very Joerman. To me, I feel like they're very ordered right right, the information right, But who knows? That

is kind of a weird lie if it is a lie. Now, although his first father had passed, he still had plenty of family in northern Virginia. And one of these guys, Stephen Townsend said, was his uncle Nasir Shan sub who is a businessman and a writer. And this guy once had dinner with Osama bin Lad and called him quote incredibly arrogant in an interview with an Ivy business journal. It sounds like an understatement that this Osama bin Lad

guy thinks pretty highly of himself. It's almost like he wants to be in Chargers Townsend also has several cousins in the northeast US as well. He said, all these Afghan immigrants in the US welcomed him quote with just open arms and called him my long lost nephew. I love that. I don't know if I have this in my family where it's just like if you find out someone is related to you, boom they are. They might as well be your brother. Your family has that because

they're very Southern. You've got that like, oh you're you're you know from such and such, fifteen time for moves related to my blood, Well, you got a place to stay anytime you want a little bit, I will say there is um. I don't know. I think there's a little bit of like, of course you must be given a chance if you're related, unlike unrelated people who are don't have to be getting a chance. But it doesn't it's not like an immediate in like we're totally all

about you. Okay, So I don't know's I'm gonna ask next time I'm in Kentucky. I've like, listen, I want to know how far this family feeling goes. I feel like my family. It's we're all very close. But also if someone walked up and was like, hey, I'm a Banks relative, your immediate reaction be like, oh no, that was just got here. Oh. So Townsend meets his Afghan family all over the northeastern United States, and after meeting them,

he started really wanting to visit Afghanistan. Now, eventually he did get to, but he said in an interview quote, I didn't think I would do it with a rifle in my hand. Yeah. For years, his Afghan family argued with Stephen Townsend about whether or not the US should intervene in Afghanistan, and they felt that the US did need to be more involved, but Townsend did not agree.

He said quote, I used to argue that there was no compelling interest for the US, right, which we've heard many times about countries where people have said, you know, the US could really lend a hand here, and you hear from US like, well, yeah, what's in it for us? From me? I know, which you know it's cold hearted, but it is. You know, you kind of do have to be like, well, what's the hook? How do I get other people to want me to do this? How

do I sell it? You know well. And the other side of it too is I think a lot of people as many places in the world, maybe not as much as they used to, have sort of a magical idea of what the US is and what they would do if they came here. And then the then the U S shows up and they're like, oh, this isn't what I was wanting. We do what we do, yeah, constantly, because we have such a for so long, especially we we projected such a global image of when we show up,

we just make everything better. And so if you didn't know, you might be like, God, I wish the U. S Would come here and get us out of this mess we're in, right, And then we show up and we don't. Maybe we do get you out of the mess you're in, and we give you a few new mess and then it's kind of like in good Place when Jason's like, whenever I have a problem, I just throw a Molotov

cocktail and boom, I have a new problem. But in March of two two, Stephen Townsen said that September eleven, six months earlier, quote provided that compelling interest which is it? And changed his mind. Right now, twenty years later, there's no update on that opinion right after we've now seen how it all played out right in that country. But but that's what he thought at the time. And of course, so he did end up back in Afghanistan with a

rifle in his hand. Washington Post said in their article in two thousand to quote, with five hundred heavily armed men under his command, Townsend, were he an independent entity, would have ranked as a fairly important warlord on the Afghan sea. So he just had so many guys under him that he's basically like, you know, this superpower of his in his own right Afghanistan. But his heritage worked

mostly in his favor. According to the Daily Press, they say that during his time there, some Afghan army leaders referred to him affectionately as cousin. It's the same thing your family, Yeah, I just one of us. Your biological dad was an Afghan person, absolutely, or one of them. So Stephen Townsend is an interesting story of adoption and how discovery of your heritage can lead to complex feelings in relationship. Townsend is someone who is raised in a

white military family. He has all the associated privileges growing up um For example, how having a father who retired as a master's sergeant certainly did not hurt Steven's rapid rise through the rank. In an article in The New York Times about minority leadership being disproportionately small in the U. S. Military, they write, quote, the Army has sometimes counted Stephen Townsend as a minority commander, so it's implied that someone who was of full Afghan heritage might have a much harder

time advancing in the military. Meanwhile, the Army is propping up Townsend as a token of diversity. So it's kind of like, oh good, we have this extremely white presenting person who we can say, Oh good, you're you're our guy. We're doing great. Oh here ei yeah, right right, and uh and he is I mean, like Stephen Townsend looks like I mean, he's got a tan. You know, you would believe that he's maybe part Mediterranean and part German, right, and that that was his believed heritage for most of

his life until he was thirty one. Right, So yeah, you can see where racism in the military objectively exists, was not working against him throughout his life as he worked up and then, like you said, once it was a good thing. Diverse. They're like, oh, man, look at this guy we got Yeah, we're crushing it over here.

Yeah yeah, but it is it's such an interesting conversation around race, um and ethnicity in that way, because we were talking about this with I believe it was Portuguese or Venezuelan people who are often very white their blonde hair, blue eyes, um so, but they come to our country and they're kind of considered people of color because of different ethnicity, not white Caucasian, you know. So it's a question of, well, you're not presenting as a person of color.

It's your skin color is not causing a problem for you every day when you're out there in the street just walking around me and yourself in the same way that it does for someone who has a darker skin color. Um So. On the other hand, you're still counted with a certain voting block. You're still you know, at least in this country, there are still some things that apply.

So it's just an interesting kind of conversation, interesting ongoing conversation, you could say, And where just a couple of black people talking about this. So I know, what do we know? Right? I can't I mean, I am half Italian and I can't get a tan here's to her. That's so true, the paleless Italian. Ever, I'm Scottish, so I was never meant to have a tan. My skin is like you should be shrouded in fog at all times. I don't

understand what you're doing in Atlanta, Georgia. I always complained, because I don't know if I've said this on the show before, but my mom's side of the family all very tall, pasty Irish family and my dad's side of a family all very short, olive skinned Italian family members. And so what do I get? Do I get? Am I a tall, Mediterranean, olive skinned person? No? I got the short Italian height and the pasty Irish skin. Mmm, tall,

Mediterranean looking alive. You'd be a very different person probably today, think, oh yeah, I would be much more confident, probably a big probably a big I don't know, Maybe you'd be a little sweete. Yeah. Well. General Stephen Jay Townsend retired this summer of two as the commander of the U. S Africa Command, according to the New York Times, and he was replaced by General Michael E. Langley, who is

the first black four star general in marine history. Um, but look, I know we've been going off about a lot of this, but we are not here to get into military ranking and the military, who invaded whom, all that stuff. The story of General Townsend's birth parents is, you know, certainly interesting. I don't know if it's ridiculous, But what is ridiculous is the romance scams that have followed General Townsend around for years. And we're just gonna take a quick break and we'll come back and get

into all that mess and welcome back to the show, everybody. Well, we've heard Stephen Townsend's interesting family background, but I'll bet you won't believe this one. A woman in Scotland was contacted on Skype by Major Steven Townsend of the U. S. Army, who was working in Afghanistan at the time for NATO. He told her that his wife had been unfaithful and he was now divorced. Not only that, but recently Major Townsend had adopted an orphaned Afghan boy whose parents had

been killed in a bomb blast. That a selfless guy. True, although there was a story in the news this week that I want to do on the show about a white military family who adopted boy I think in Afghanistan, very similar story and his family. His actual family is now suing to get him back. They said he was basically kidnapped. Ye. Interesting, I gotta I gotta look more

into that. Yeah, anyway, this Scottish woman chatted with General Townsend on Skype for a few days, and she started to notice that his English wasn't very good, such as, for example, when he asked her, quote, what do you do to sustain your lifestyle in this economy and this economy? Like an AI asked that sustain my lifestyle. It's very overly formal. This is why we need to make sure we teach grammar in schools. Because they said catch catch scammers.

Sometimes they don't be know and how to put their sentence structure together. So she thought that didn't really sound like a major in the U. S. Army, so she decided to confront him. She said, yeah, I don't think you're the real Major Townsend actually, sir, And then he called her on Skype and she heard this guy say that basically like, oh, you must be on drugs, lady, or smoking something, because I would never pretend to be someone else. Well, how dare you imply such a thing.

I'm a general, but the U. S. Army I don't need to pretend to be someone else. That's a red flag too. I feel like if if you were really not pretending, you'd just be like, oh, I see why you would ask. But now it's you know here, I am, you know whatever, Like you wouldn't be so immediately like offended and like fiery about it. No, Well, her red flag meter went off. She hung up on him. He called again a few times, but she just ignored them, and then on his Skype account, the pictures of General

Townsend started disappearing. In her post on scammel lot dot com, the woman said, quote, as the real major has had such a distinguished career, are really don't see him contacting a complete stranger on Skype, especially one who lives in Scotland? Smart lady. Yeah, Now, for what it's worth, retired General Townsend is still married to Melissa Townsend, a nineteen eighty three graduate of the Medical College of Georgia. You're doing fine,

doing great. Obviously this profile was fake. But what's crazy is that's not the only time General Townsend has been used by scammers in romance schemes. In fact, Popular Mechanics reported in that there are so many fake profiles claiming to be General Townsend that the US Army had to put out a statement reading quote General Stephen J. Townsend is not on Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Instagram, Google Hangout, dating sites,

chat rooms, etcetera. These impostors attempt to harass and scam individuals. I gotta wonder until I get a list of all websites. I gotta wonder if that's the first time the US Army has ever had a tweet about Google Hangouts and dating sites Google Hangouts. It was like Google or for Google hang Someone's using us, Someone's finally using us out of GARBT scammers. And the comments on that statement are full of people posting screenshots of fake messages they've received

from fake accounts using Townsend's name and picture. That is so crazy, it's wild. Like one of them is from a Stephen J. Townsend on Twitter and it just says, quote, I would like to use this opportunity to introduce myself to you. I am General Stephen Townsend from Griffith, Georgia, U s A. I am presently working in Aleppo, Syria for the peacekeeping mission with the U N Government. And you what may I call you? And where are you? From UH also to say, Griffith Georgia, USA, proves to

me that you're not from the USA. Everyone from the USA knows there's no other country specifying had to clarify. We know you're already thinking we're her American. As Griffith Griffin ethan, he got a lot of things wrong. Another one is a woman named Lisa Lee who said General Townsend told her that his wife died of cancer four years ago, and quote, he needs an Amazon gift card so he can call home to the States and send his fourteen year old son some money. And then she

ends there with he loves me. How you can tell, let's say, Amazon gift card, he's been swept off his feet by my beauty. How about this one? On Facebook Messenger, someone got this message saying, quote, hello charming beauty, the happy New Year. I hope you're doing well over there. I was so attracted to your beautiful profile when I came across. If you don't mind, I would love to be your friend, but I don't want to barge into

your privacy by sending you a friend request. Kindly send me a friend request so we can talk and get to know ourselves better. A couple of questions, okay, many one. I see this a few times where they say I don't want to send you a request, you send me one. I don't know if that's supposed to make it more believable, or if they can't send friends. Maybe their settings are set where only friends of friends can friend them or

something like that. Maybe, or um, I think there is a thing where you can't, like they don't let you send out too many friend requests the same day, tame accounts, like because of scammers or maybe even bots trying to make your account really inflated out of nowhere. So maybe there's something like that where they're just like, I've I've hit my moment. Now I have to ask you to

send me a request. Lisaly came back into the comments later and followed up with quote, he got mean and ugly, told me I didn't care, harassed me for two days for a fifty Amazon card, sent me all these pictures of men being shot and dying. Good storyteller. Hello, where's he getting pictures of people? Get? Are they like Google? I don't know where he's from. Maybe it's a real crazy place, but that's weird too to be like, no, I really am a general Army. Look, there's all these

dead bodies around me. I'll prove it. Didn't you say it's a peacekeeping mission? We like, there's one way to keep the peace. I'll tell you what. Well, just this week, on December twelve, Daily Beast put out an article talking about a recently unsealed criminal complaint in Salt Lake City. A woman named Nancy was contacted by General Townsend in

twenty nineteen on Facebook. She was a seventy four year old widow and she'd never heard of this guy, General Townsend, but he told her that quote, his portfolio had been held up by customs officials demanding large fees to release it. Could she help? And then he said her photos, saying quote that's me and that's my passport, So I'm legit. What customs officials are holding up stuff for large blackmail fees?

That seems like not thing. Well. Fortunately this woman must have had people telling HERLN Okay, this sounds crazy, don't trust this message, because later messages from him said quote, it hurts me so much that you were letting people just spoil your mind towards me, and then you keep hurting me. He said, quote I have never loved any woman like I love you, but you have hurt me

so deeply. You are making me sad. God knows my heart and he knows that I will never do anything to hurt you, but you have hurt me so much. Are you going to help me claim my portfolio or not? Nancy? I know, right? Also, like, how do you? I would be so suspicious? And I know we've even done stories where people are like I was fully on board the moment I met this person, But I find that suspicious

to be, Like, we haven't even spoken. You found my picture online, and now you're telling me you've never loved anybody like this. I don't know, but I guess it's like a bomb to the heart. Yeah, and we'll we'll get into that in the third part. We talk about how people fall for these it right, they are good at it. But whatever warnings she got must have come too late, because unfortunately she had already sent him a ton of money. Oh no, he had told her to

send checks. And they went to a group of men in Vineyard, Utah, and they all in all totaled over a hundred and forty thousand dollars, not from a seventy four year old woman. You know, she can't afford to lose that. Now, the men who got them would keep some of the money and then they transferred some more of it to Nigerian bank accounts. Daily Beast reports that the two men are now in federal prison and a third was ordered to pay eight point four million dollars

in restitution to his various victims. And this guy also had a two million dollar mansion in Houston, Texas that was seized, and as of this week, his attorney told Daily Beast that he still owes the government seven point two million dollars. Jeez. He's like, well, if you don't let me scam anybody, I can't pay you back. A second widow was contacted by the men, again posing his townsend, telling her that he was stuck in Syria and quote

couldn't get military transport out. He needed fifty grand to fly out on a jet that was specially equipped with missile detection or he wouldn't make it a top gun three for real. It's she's like, oh, this is my time. I always knew that's gonna be part of it too, Like make you feel like a hero for saving this army General that's true. That's very true. These guys didn't

only pose as Townsend. They also pretended to be an oil engineer in Oman, a wealthy Texan trapped under house arrest in Sweden, and a businessman in Turkey on a big municipal sewer project. And I wish I was in the writer's room and they would rack to come up with these characters. It is just come up with these guys that are just like, you know, someone who believably would have a bunch of money, right but might not

have access to it. Write something weird going on. Yeah, if you helped me out a little bit here, I'll make you real rich later. Do you think that they went trolling first to find like trustworthy faces and then they print them out right, and they put them all up and they're like, Okay, who's this guy? I don't know. Let's say it's like a textan. Yeah, he's got some money and he's uh, went to I don't know, Sweden, I don't know. And then his sisters a dentist. He's

got a dog named Spike. It's a creative job, very creative. They have a lot of out of work. Yeah, who says he can't make a good living. It's a it's a writer. I bet ai is going to take this from those writers all the jobs, oh God, are going to take the scammers job? All right? Well, all these do sound so outrageously absurd, right, and we sit here and we laugh at them. They sound crazy. So how does this work? How is this viable enough to keep happening?

Who is falling for these scams? And how could it possibly be financially viable? Now we're going to talk about the function of the romance scam and try and answer all those questions right after this quick break, Welcome back to the show. Okay, So, romance schemes may seem very obvious to a lot of us. Sometimes after the fact, they can sound so absurd and dumb that the people who fall for them just look foolish, right, probably feel yeah, come on, how could you not see what you believe?

This oil baron needed fifty grand from me? I mean, a lot of the ones you hear about, like the guy who needed fifty grand to fly out on a jet, Unlike and I'm the only person you could ask for that. You couldn't reach back out to the US military too. Maybe you feel like, say, they're dude, there's got to be a better number in your road, random lady. Well, the FBI says that quote criminals who carry out romance scams are experts at what they do and will seem genuine,

caring and believable. A special agent, Christine Binding, says that generally scammers target women over fifty, but men can be targets as well, and it's usually people who are forced or widowed or maybe more vulnerable. So you're already looking at a you know, a target who probably is a little adrift and looking for answers and maybe struggling and trying to find that magic solution, right, and that can get all of us right. Yeah, that's very true. The

scammeras will often propose marriage very quickly. They developed very intense relationships very quickly, and the people they target, like you said, are usually already desperately looking for love and companionship, you know. So the scammers will then claim that they have an emergency, either they're trapped overseas in Sweden under house arrest, or they have a medical emergency um and they'll request money and they'll promise to repay them, and you know, you can trust me because we have such

a close relationship. Of course, they never do pay anyone back, and Asian Binding says, these are usually criminal organizations that work together. It's not just like one guy here and there, She says. Quote. Once a victim sends money, they will often be placed on what's called a sucker list, and their names and identities are shared with other criminals. Sucker list. Yeah, because, like I mean, to get scamped twice, right, I mean, like,

especially if you didn't sometimes these people. Sometimes this happens that people don't know they got scammed. You know. Oh, I sent fifty grand to that guy so he could get the jet and fly out of there, and I never heard from him again. I guess he didn't make it, n you know. So then someone comes along and it happens all over again, and they haven't really learned a

lesson because they didn't know they did something wrong. Wow. Yeah, although I have to say I'm jealous of anyone in the position of being able to get somebody at the drop of a hat. In the case of the Stephen Townsend scammers that we talked about before the break, Chuck what Hekalu was the man who was ordered to pay over eight million dollars investitution that we talked about about is Texas mansion sees. He was basically the money mule

in this particular scheme. Everything went between him and where it needed to go. He came to the US on a student visa in and between and twenty nineteen, this guy deposited nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars into six

different banks and credit unions. When his conspirators were arrested in twenty nineteen, the two guys who ended up in a federal prison, he had already fled to Canada along with his wife and their baby daughter when he was deported back to the US for quote serious criminality and organized criminality based on US charges a his wife and daughter were allowed to stay in Canada under refugee status, and there was a whole thing there where he tried to appeal and basically say, if you send me back

to the US, they're gonna send me back home to Africa, and I'm gonna be tried really viciously. My my wife and daughter would be left with nothing and all this stuff, and he had they had to get an agreement from the US that that wouldn't happen before they would deport him, but they did get that in writing, so fleet it's not that bad. But he is set to be sentenced in March, and he faces a maximum of twenty years

in prison. I mean that's a lot of money. You know, you have to assume they did ruin somebody's life definitely, or make them extremely uncomfortable for a long time. Now, we went to learn more about these scammers, and we saw an episode of the National geographic show Trafficked from host Marianna van Zella meets with two romance scammers, a man and a woman in Ghana. Now they're set up in a fancy looking living room. The woman is making

a video call to her victim. The woman, who goes by the Miami Queen, handles the video side of the calls, but the man, known as the Punisher, handles most of the text based conversation. So she's the face, but he's the actual right word for some of them. And they said, what's interesting is a lot of the time they just work out of a warehouse or their living room or whatever. But they rented this room in order to do the video call in to make it look like he was

in a you know, an expensive apartment or something. Okay, interesting, these two, the Miami Queen and the Punisher, great names, but the Miami Queen is such an interesting choice. Maybe Anyway, the Miami Queen and the Punishers say that actually men are far easier to scam than women because there are simply more of them on dating sites and they're more likely to give money. But in the States, the host, Marianna van Zeller says, far fewer men report being victims

than women. Yeah, so perhaps our agent binding who says that women are more often targeted, maybe doesn't actually know because the reporting is so often. That could be a big part of it, because I mean, you look at the stigma surrounding either case, right, Like seventy four year old woman a widower gets told by some fake army general to send all her money and she does and

it's heartbreaking that that poor woman. Right. Um, you know, some fifty five year old goal guy gets hit up by some hot girl on a dating site that tells her tells him, you know, I'm at school, will you send my tuition? Can you help me buy my books? YadA, YadA YadA, and he ends up sender. You know, fifty grand, a hunter grand or something, and it's like, well, maybe you shouldn't have been thinking with your dick, you know. And and he's not really a sympathetic and I think

the guys feel that so they don't report it. They're like, well, man, I'm going to look like a real horn dog if I go and tell somebody what happened to me. It's kind of embarrassing, that is. Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. I kind of I'm assuming you know that that's why those numbers are skewed in the direction they are, right, Um, well, I mean that's true

about sexual assault and domestic violence as well. Is that you know they say the numbers are very much show women being the victims more frequently than men, right, right. And I don't think that it's even or anything like that, but we do know that the reporting from men is much much less pretty on those two things as well. So men do stuff in silence. I got a lot of things. I guess guys, if you get scam just speak up, even if it makes you sound to horny. Yeah, right,

we gotta know what they're out here doing. Now, these two Ghanans say that they have dozens of friends who are also romance scammers. Their friends all get rich. They're all building houses and buying fancy cars. They said, quote, everybody's out here making money. Imagine the water cooler at the office. They're like, Oh, today, I'm playing a guy named Trevor, and I'm from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I decided to make him like a pro football player. I think

that'd be fun. Somebody comes in, yeah today on playing Tiffany Wisconsin Jesus swimsuit model. Oh wow, Yeah, you're gonna get a lot of money for that. Now. The punisher says that his current victim, Michael, has no idea that he's actually talking to a man in Ghana. He probably thinks he's talking to Tiffany from Wisconsin or something. But Unasher says, quote, I started falling in love with Michael, not for intercourse or whatever, but I felt for him.

He is kind hearted. I think Michael has been too good to me. He doesn't say how long they've been talking, but he says that Michael has given the girl he's posing as more than ten thousand dollars for things like school fees and rent. It's got to be such a tough part of the scam too, Like you can't you can't fall in love with these people. You're gonna be having very intimate conversations with them, getting to know them at a very deep personal level, and and he turned

that off. I imagine there's similar challenges for sex workers, you know, strippers, things like that, where you're like, you're my job is to make you feel loved, and you might respond to that in a really wonderful way, and I have to make sure that I don't feel anything back. Yeah, right,

But I mean I don't. I don't know if I feel better or worse that they have feelings for the people who're talking to because it almost makes it work, like I know this guy is a good person, and I'm still continuing to scam him instead of like, I don't care if he's a good or bad person. I'm out here scamming, Like you know what I mean, I don't know if I which one I preferred had been, Like Michael's too good for me. I'm going to break up with him because I can't take anymore his money.

I'm gonna move on to that that yacht owning asshole. Yeah, yeah, poor Michael. These these Uh, these romance scammers should vet they're victims and make sure that they're like racists or something, only go after bad people. It's like the Boondock Saints of romance SAMs. Now here's how some of these video

scams work against people like Michael. When the scammer video calls Michael, Michael answers and he sees instead of the punisher, obviously, some beautiful woman sitting on her bed on her phone, and they don't. The woman does not respond to him vocally. This is a pre recorded video of a woman on her phone, and she just ocasionally like giggles and types away on her phone as if she's texting the person. That's that their video chatting with Michael speaks to her.

The scammer, the punisher is sitting there typing out messages in response. Of course, Michael thinks it's the woman typing on her phone in the video it's responding to him. So I don't know that sounds kind of obvious when you lay it out, but these horny, lonely dudes with money despair or sometimes not despair, it clearly can be

a very convincing trick. It is so interesting because these videos like you think that sounds like you would know there's a fake video, but they're really good, Like they look like this person is like maybe probably doing something else on her phone while she's talking to you, and you know, might pause to be like, well let me think about what you just said for a second, and I'll start typing again. She never quite know when she's

responding to you or not. It's it's very tricky. Why would you not question, like why are we video chatting? If we're just going to tech anyway? Because I think speculation station. I think there's an element in situations like these of I don't want to know, Like I want to keep believing this is real, So I think that I think there are a bunch of red flags in it.

And some of these guys are like I'd rather keep looking at this video of this girl and believe that she's talking to me, then question why aren't why aren't we speaking? Or she'll be like, oh, my microphone's broken, you know, stuff like that. You can't hear were like my microphone's broken, or the video isn't good enough. And they've developed a culture where that's the norm. Right when you are video chatting, some hot girl, they don't speak to you. They don't like to do that. They'll just

text back with you. Oh really, Well, I'm just saying I think that's what I don't know, this kind of money. It sounds like you know a little too. But hey, that's what I'll do. I'll start video chatting with you, but I don't want you to say anything. Good luck up now. The host Marianna Vanzeller, learns from another scammer that, like Agent Binding said, these are groups of organized scammers,

not lone wolves working on their own right. One guy that she spoke to under extreme anonymity, I mean full mask everything in a parking lot. It was like a deep threat situation told her that he was very concerned because his boss was quote a very rich man, and if he knew that he was speaking to a reporter even though his face was completely covered, he could be in big trouble. He said that these bosses have tons of he said. He said, he's got all these boys

working for him like me. And he said, quote, the boys go online and find good clients, and once they know that they're a good client that they can get money out of. We pushed them to the boss and he works it out from there. So he's like the closer.

The boss is the guy who actually makes the money happen. Yeah, just kind of like a bot farm, right where they have so many people just with a billion iPhones in front of them, happen on things all day long and you don't even know You're not even talking to the same person the whole time. And honestly, truly to your point earlier, I didn't haven't seen this in my research, but come on, this is going to turn into AI. It's going to turn into one guy with fifty iPhones

that are all having is AI conversations. He could probably plug it into Replica. I was gonna say, we talked about replica, and those are not extremely convincing conversations, but if you wanted them to be, they could be, and they will get there and they will get a later. Yeah. And so the closer now doesn't have to pay other guys because they just get a cut. Yeah. Now he just does it himself. AI is really coming for all

of us, all the workers of the world. According to Popular Mechanics, this kind of identity theft is quote plaguing the US military, the U S Army Criminal Investigation Command says hundreds of reports come in every month from scams involving people imitate members of the military at all levels. So it's not just Steven Townsend, even though they like him a lot for whatever. And this is probably because

there are plenty of publicly available images of soldiers. People, especially older people, tend to implicitly trust members of the military, and they're typically seen as responsible, financially secure people who would believably be lonely and looking for love. So there's a lot of reasons to use a soldier. I guess is yours your um what would you call that your costume?

But for lack of a better word, But the U. S. Army says, quote, victims of these scams can lose tens of thousands of dollars and face a slim likelihood of recovering any of it. Right, it means so often these are reported, But what can they do? I mean that the tracking is really difficult. Everything's done you know, with extreme anonimity and through VPNs and stuff like that. You can't just like, you know, look, we triangulate the signal

and find out where it's coming from. Enhanced enhanced, It's like, yeah, there's no there's no insurance for that. Sorry, you gave your running away. I know. That's really sad though, because it's kind of like, um, I remember getting something stolen from me and had to fill out a police report and it was so it made me upset because it was mad. Of course I had just been stolen from and I was telling the cop about it and they were like, Okay, I mean stereo, some cash. Yeah, I've

got it in writing. But it's not like the stereo is gonna suddenly appear on the black market or something. The cash is gone. You're never seeing that again, you know what I mean, Like John McClean is not going to go out there and like storm a building and find your stereo justice for me. But yeah, I was just like I remember being like, why did I even call you because there's nothing. I mean, it was good to have the report and everything, but I was just like,

there's nothing you can do. And it was even like I wasn't even mad at the cop. I was just like, as I was talking, I was like, I don't know what I'm expecting him to do. Go to every thrift store and try to see if you can find my stupid eye home, Like you know that's not going to happen. So I don't know. It's just I was thinking about the Big Lebowski scene where his car gets stolen and he finds it. Yeah, and he asked the cop like, are you're going to catch the guys who did this?

And the cops starts laughing. He says, oh yeah, they got us working in shifts worried about it. We're not. I know that. There's just you got your car back, consider yourself lucky, you know well, or even think about this guy who owes eight million dollars. That's great that he owes it. Does he have it? Probably not, so you're never going to get it. I mean, what are they going to do with it? I don't think the government's gonna be like, all right, let's write a little

check to everybody. You know, he got to right, So I don't know. It's tough to bummer poor Steven Townsen though, to be have his his face to scamming this ship out. I wonder how much he even knows about it, because he's not on social media at all. You know, did he have to get off social media because of this? I don't think he ever was. Yeah, I don't think so well, that's I'm glad he's not out there looking for a love right now, because right to escape a

hostile country was me. I was thinking that with like low level celebrities that's still date. Like I heard Nicole byer on Um I think she's on weight weight don't tell me or something, and they were asking her about dating and she's like, oh, I'm still on bumble and you know, stuff like that. I was like, it's gotta there's gotta be some people who were like, no, I can't a celebrity. You're you stole her picture. That's not you, right, this is a lie. Ye. I wonder if people just

swipe right by because they think it's not person. It's got to be tough. It's sort of like when Riya, the celebrity dating app came out and I was like, very inclined to roll my eyes, but then I was like, actually kind of makes sense. Like if you're Rhanna, like you don't want to get on Tinder. First of all, no one will believe you, and if they do, you

don't want to talking reach that. You know, I need to make sure people I'm talking to like not you know, crazy is or some real insane fan person or star or whatever. You know, it's just some level I think you want to be, like I'd like to be in my own pool. Well, it is sad that most of these people won't get their money back. I guess. The Army says, like and and the FBI and everybody says, the best thing you can do is educate yourself and keep your head in the swivel, you know, be smart,

be savvy, don't send random stranger's money. Let the red flags sad. Yeah, yeah, And I think that's the trick of it too. Like we talked about with some of the men who fall for this stuff, I have to wonder if a lot of those cases aren't just like low dollar amounts, you know that happened a couple of times,

if if not even just once. And it's like, yeah, I paid for a chat website, you know, where I through some girl, you know, a hundred dollars and it turns out it's some dude in Ghana with a fake video, you know whatever. Well that the guy doesn't care. Yeah, he's like, yeah, I paid for the video, I don't care, don't tell me the truth. But obviously these larger cases

ruining livelihoods. That makes sense though, because if you could get two thousand dollars from two people, that's better than getting one person to give you all their money, right right, Um, and and again such a small amount. Who's coming for you? Who's even noticing it? Yeah? Stay smart out there, everybody, seriously, Yeah, be careful. At least at the very least. We have talked about some romance scams in the past, like the Lonely Hearts killers. Yeah, and they were like, we're going

to kill you. So at least at least people are not being murdered and thrown into closets while they go watch a movie. Yeah, yeah, that's true. But I think that you know, we we often assume and even the number of these stories are like elderly people, you know, people who aren't necessarily tech savvy, um, who might have money to spare or not either way. Um, but then we sort of think, oh, and so it can't happen to me. But it can. I mean if there are very good at what they do. The whole point is

that you don't know what's happening. I've paid at carnivals to play games. I'm like, I know that this is a scam. I know I cannot win here, but I want to watch this guy work is magic and I feel like I lost twenty bucks, but I saw an incredible show, right, I got very well entertained. Yeah, and that's okay, But but you got to know what you're up against and what you're gonna lose and be willing

to lose it. That's true too. You know, maybe have a little extra savings account to the side, whatever is in there. That's what I'm willing to lose to scams. That's the one. If there's if it's empty, that's it. No scam today. Can't can't get CanCon do that money? Sorry, Mr Army Pilot, you're gonna be stuck in Switzerland. Sorry Tiffany from Wisconsin, You're gonna have to pay your own tuition this semester. Has any of you been hit by

a romance scam? Because I would love to hear about it, and we would love to share it with the world's they know better. We won't put your name out there if you don't want, but we'd love to hear the story. Or if you just want to say hi or tell us something about this episode or any episode, or if you have a suggestion for an episode? Yeah, please shoot us an email, ridic Romance at gmail dot com. Writer.

We're on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dianamite Booms and I'm at Oh Great, It's Eli and the show is at ridic Romance. Thanks so much for tuning in for this one. We'll be back next week with another fun romantic history story and I can't wait to see on that one. Thanks for listening, Love you by so long. Friends, It's time to go. Thanks so listening to our show. Tell your friend's name was Uncle Sandez? To listen to a show ridiculous, well n