The Girlfriends S5/E3: The Sting

Novel.

Hey girlfriends, Anna here just quick heads off on what to expect in this episode of the Girlfriends. We'll be exploring themes of coercive control, and there'll be a reference to non consensual drug use. But it's also a story, as always, of true friendship, and there's going to be some cool as hell nurses. If any of the themes feel difficult, you'll find links to mental health and support organizations in the episode description, Last time on the Girlfriends, Trust me, babe?

Are you dearck Aldridge and he goes yes.

Lisa is walking through baggage plane when two cops on Segways arrest the man she thought was named Steel And I.

Looked at him like, what the hell?

One?

You're good to go about barticking him? I'm like, what the hell's going on?

Lisa and Derek formerly known as Steele, have just turn from what should have been a romantic holiday in Hawaii. Now they're standing face to face with two airport cops.

Time for mister steel Fins to start explaining himself.

Steele goes, Oh, it's probably my brother. He impersonates me alad gets me in a lot of trouble, So there's probably some warrant dead or something for him now.

Steele had told Lisa he had a good for nothing twin brother, but that doesn't explain why he just answered to the name Derek.

He hands me his suit kiss He's like, here, just take this. You know, everything's okay, babe, don't worry. I'll see you soon.

After a week of increasingly irritating assurances, the power of Derek's patented don't worry babe has really begun to wane, especially now as he's parted away by an airport cop and.

The other cap goes your feet to go.

Lisa's left standing alone in a state of shock. She doesn't know what to do with herself. When suddenly, rays of light beamed down, a choir of cherubs sing. A phone vibrates in her pocket. Stephanie texts me, her guardian angel from the past week, who has stopped at nothing to get her girl home.

She goes, did you n edited? Yes, she says good.

It strikes Lisa in that moment. All holiday, her friends had been calling and texting. They've been unusually persistent about her whereabouts, her flight details, the license plate of her jeep rental, even her boss's very chill attitude over Lisa missing her morning shift seemed.

A little unusual.

Suddenly, looking down at that text from Steph, it all makes sense.

Steph knows something.

She says, let me know when you get home. I need to talk to you. And they said, oh, hell no, I'm not waiting, Like, what the hell is going on?

Lisa calls Steph as soon as she can.

Okay, a man on the shutter bus, what is going on? And so she then says, well, I'll tell you.

Sitting on the bus with her luggage and steals carry on briefcase. Lisa learns the truth. One, there is no Steel Aldridge.

No, that is not his name.

The guy Lisa thought was her boyfriend is actually Derek Aldred. Two, She's not the only woman who screwed over. Steph tells her he also dated a colleague's friend.

He had swindled her out of money. She dated him before you.

Three.

The reason he was arrested in baggage claim has absolutely nothing to do with a dastardly twin brother. There is actually no twin brother.

By the way, he wasn't supposed to be the stick because he's a falon.

And four, oh, that's just a casual one. Turns out, almost ten months before their first date, Steele had been the target of a multi agency undercover sting operation.

I want to get this Jabe because he was just a parasite.

But that sting operation didn't quite go to plan trap. I'm Anna Sinfield and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcasts. You're listening to the Girlfriends Trust Me Babe, episode three, The Sting You. It's the fall of twenty fourteen, about a year before Lisa witnessed that dramatic airport arrest. Paul Meskin is sitting in the office of the US Marshal Services Fugitive Task Force in Minneapolis. His job is to catch people on the run from the law.

Murderers, rapists, guncases, bad people that really need to get off the street.

He's printing out a few documents when an assistant grabs his attention.

Hey, can you take this call from this lady who has concerns about and information on a guy that's wanted. Okay, I had no problem.

It's a concerned mum.

She was almost in tears.

Her adult daughter, Joanne, has recently been the victim of fraud.

Her daughter was a teacher met this guy named Derek that claimed all this stuff and built her for a lot of money, thousands of dollars.

Our least favorite man, Derek Aldred reportedly racks up twenty K on her credit cards before she discovers the truth and reports him to the police. And in a story that's becoming depressingly familiar, she's told taking her case any further would be a waste of time.

Any court in the country is going to say, well, you know you did that willingly because you were in a relationship. Yeah, well it was a relationship. It was all a fraud. But there's no prosecutor that would ever charge her to it's like that.

But John's mum, Scott Hutzpur So she does some of her own research.

On the guy.

She found out that in June of twenty fourteen, Derek stayed at the swanky Saint Paul Hotel, racking up a significant bill while pretending to be a doctor, drinks room service the whole hog, and then when it came time to pay the bill, he disappeared. By the time of sentencing hearing came around, yet again, he was nowhere to be found. Authorities had issued a warrant for Derek's arrest, but was anyone actually looking for him? And that's where

Receipts, credit card bills, here's a business card, and what's this business card to? Hey on don't address.

It's not the kind of case that Paul's unit would normally prioritize, but something about this call gets to him, so it gets to work. First, he heads to Derek's office, the one on that business card.

I went to the address and showed pictures, never heard him, met the law firm that who's listed as working forward never existed there. In fact, the suite number that they had never existed in this building.

Paul now even more perplex It is the help of a financial investigator on the team who.

Comes up with an idea.

They know that Derek still has one of Joanne's credit cards. She blocks it once she learned the truth, but the investigator reckons if she unblocks it and Derek uses it someplace, they'll know where he is and so.

I reactivated and that's when we learned of the Amtrak ticket.

Derek had used Joanne's card to buy a train ticket I.

Of Saint Paul to go to Portland.

The six forty am train on November seventh, twenty fourteen. The cops have a time and a location. Now all they need to do is wait. It's stakeout time. Saint Paul Union Depot is a big, ostentatious station, grand columns, large vaulted ceilings, people everywhere, and dotted around the station. Oh so casually are about a dozen undercover officers.

We had three guys on the train platform, other guys that were up in the train station itself, a couple of parking lots, couple parking ramps on the streets around.

They've been in place since four thirty five am, scanning faces, waiting for the appearance of one balding, middle aged.

White guy about ya tall.

Pall's in charge of the whole operation, so he's waiting in his truck outside the station, listening in over the radio.

Any updates, any updates, any updates here anymore.

They could be waiting for some time, but no worry. Paul is guaranteed to bring supplies.

Honey rolls, to peanuts, dry roast, liquorice, gum drops, crackers, skittles. The guys on my team always called me snacks.

Then something interrupts the picnic.

As the train approaches, Paul decides he has to see this guy taken down with his own eyes.

I came inside kind of like I was coming to pick somebody up, and Jenda watched the train.

Derek is due to catch.

Pulls in at the platform. Undercover officers board, searching faces among the passengers. No sign of him. As the clock ticks down, the train prepares to leave.

The train pulls off. Let's just give a couple of minutes.

Maybe he'll come tearing down the station lobby, running late. Maybe he noticed suspicious police like activity and didn't board.

Everybody, just hold your position.

And then it's gone, trundling into the distance, headed for the West Coast.

The only people that left the train station were those that had gotten off the train.

The message from surveillance is unanimous. There's no Derek in a nearby car watching. He's not scanned his ticket at all.

There's no way we missed him. It's like, damn that was about his cut and dried and perfect as we thought it was going to be.

Next day, Paul gets a call from the financial investigator. Paul's still not sure how it happened.

He's on the train, which confirmed he's on the train.

Maybe Derek missed a local service, had to board the train at a later station.

Maybe he got tipped off.

Somehow, whatever the reason, they're sure of his location.

Now he's an hour and a half out of Portland Orion.

On the literal other side of the country from where Paul's team is trap. But no matter, because Paul snacks Meskan has won some friends over the years.

Paul sevin, here's my situation.

And those friends have some of their own friends.

And he reached out to his contact in Portland.

And they assembled a team and arrived just in time to see the train pulling in.

Derek came walking off and they took him into custody without incident, got shipped back to Minnesota and went to court and got sentenced to the county workhouse.

Derek is finally sentenced for theft by swindle of the Saint Paul Hotel on top of his sentence for skipping court. Derek is released back into the community after a grand total of nine months a reformed man.

He would literally had just gotten out of prison like a week or two before I met him, so he wasted no time.

So no, Derek is not a reformed man, but he's fast becoming a man with dangerous enemies. Derek's victims are about to find each other, and with him, I'd be very, very nervous. Lisa spent the whole journey home from the airport, all two hours of it, on the phone to her friends. She now knows all about the Saint Paul hotel scam, Derek's probation violation, his total and utter betrayal of her.

And I'm grateful there wasn't a lot to keep on us because I'm barring my eyes out.

Lisa finally gets back to her car.

By the time she makes it home, her friend's Steph is already there waiting with open arms.

We just embraced each other. I do think there are some tears. She goes, I have just been a nervous wreck since you've been gun in Hawaii. I was just relieved that she was home safe.

And the two of them waste no time. They start the search immediately for anything and everything they could find which might help them build a case against Derek.

I'm going through all his stuff, seeing his real name, like thinking, holy crap.

Searching the luggage he handed off to Lisa.

I'm finding his phone. He had this app fort people calling, like you could hit it and they could call you, pretending to be somebody where if you hit him, they would call him.

It's all starting to click into place. None of those calls were real. None of the text she got from his friends and family.

He had his roommate saying there, his sister's name there, his mom's name there.

So he'd be talking to no one.

Literally no one. I think he had the one friend that was pretending to be a sister, because I would actually hear a female voice when he was talking to his sister, but no one else.

Looking back, his calls had seen strangely well timed.

We'd be talking about his dad and then like two minutes later, oh, she would.

Car Even though Derek talked to various women he dated about sisters, brothers, a daughter. I want to make it really clear, none of Derek's family members have ever been implicated in any of his crimes or accused of any wrongdoing. When Lisa goes through her credit card statements, she finds that she isn't just out of pocket for the stuff

Howard did, I don't know because I always had my credit card and me and my Boddy. It was in my purse attached to me. Then I start going through a brief kiss and I'm finding these usb poort.

She opens one on her laptop.

It's just her my bank account, my AMEX stuff, my Wells far Ago account, anything that I had used on my computer, and then my social Security number.

Going through his phone, Lisa realizes that steal okay, Derek wasn't volunteering at the homeless shelter.

I found like he lived there, the hotels, the resort, the jeep and the er, visit this vision, that visit, the dinner cruise. I think it was close to almost ten grand.

Bombarded by all this new information, Lisa thinks back on her relationship, casting memories into a new light. She remembers the time she blacked out in Hawaii.

I really think he drugged me and brought me upstairs because I don't remember any of that. It just makes you feel so it's just I don't know, just used and just upset that someone can do that to a human being.

Derek says this allegation is completely untrue, but it's a suspicion as Starckward Lisa.

For years, I was just furious at him and furio set myself for trusting him all these times.

Lisa feels angry, but also like she's somehow to blame, which of course she isn't. It's a sort of moment when you want to regain some control, but Lisa doesn't get that. Normally, when you go through a breakup, you have a bit of time to process it on your own.

But in a way, Lisa is the last to know.

I just felt like the most stupidest person in the world, Like, how could I let this human do this to me when I'm not a stupid woman. I'm all educated. I thought, you know, I thought I knew him, but then looking back at like, oh, here's the spread flake, here's that red flake, here's that one, and here's that one, but I didn't listen. My heart was just broken, Like, how can I ever trust anybody again? Like he just got into my heart. I trusted everything you said and he just ripped it out.

But it's more than just heartbreak and angry ban worries. It's time for Derek to be held accountable. It's like November and it's cold out in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It's been just one day since Lisa learned the truth about Derek, and two officers are pulling into her driveway. The cops want Lisa to provide a statement. She tells them everything, the first date, the Hawaii trip, the credit card stuff.

He's kind of like, WHOA, I'm sorry this happened to you. But if he doesn't admit to it, we really can't do anything, and more or less, we have more important things to do.

The investigators explained to Lisa that the county's attorneys won't prosecute a case like this of all the theft that took place over the holiday. It's only really the initial flight purchases that land within their jurisdiction, and Derek brought those on her laptop, so he can just claim that she was well aware of the charges.

With me Henley Love on my laptop and saying sure you can use it. You know, I smari or less my help that I allowed him to do that, so.

Worth mentioning she gave steel Aldridge permission to use her laptop a man who does not actually exist. It's not exactly informed consent.

It's not like he broke in and took this information from me. I let him in my house. So I just feel like they think, oh, another super woman get swindled by a guy. I wasn't killed. I wasn't and beat. It was just money taken by somebody I dated.

The investigators tell Lisa she could try contacting local police in Hawaii, but otherwise he.

Mar or last just said, you know, I'm sorry. You know, if we don't have any more evidence against him, we can't do anything.

Then she says they offered her some off the record advice.

You can call him in prison and try to get him to confess, and the phone.

It's November twenty fifteen, Lisa is back from Hawaii, grappling with the news that her boyfriend is a con man and it doesn't seem like the cops can or will do much about it. And Derek he's back in prison over his robation violation, serving out the remainder of his sentence. Lisa has been informed that in just a few weeks time, Derek is due to be back out on the street.

So I bought a little recorder and I would, you know, call him and I would try to, you know, make him confess.

Lisa speaks to Derek over the phone from prison. It's the first time she's spoken to him as Derek, not a steal the man she thought she'd been building a life with, and.

Like, well, you bought these tickets. He's like, no, I told you I was putting him on your card and I'd pay you back. He would never confess to anything he did. I honestly believe he knew I was trying to record him, but he just he would not. I would fight with him on the phone and like you were lying to me, like you took my card. You said you pay me back, and he'd be like, Lisa, I didn't that, and he kind of would get angry in the phone. You misheard me. I never said that.

And you do the same on phone calls.

You know, I still love you. This is just a mistake and not this person that you think I am. He was getting out Christmas Day. He wanted me to go out to the prison and pick him up and you know, start over again.

Needless to say, Lisa doesn't pause the present unwrapping to pick Derek up from prison, but she does continue to call and text trying to get him to admit what he did.

I was so upset and so help better on getting him.

A couple of weeks after Derek's release, Lisa is at work when someone approaches her, asks her name, and hands her an envelope.

I remember opening an up point. Are you freaking kidding me?

It's a restraining order? Derek has taken one out against.

Her, and I start and I think I went home. How on earth did this happen?

Having already had ten grands stolen from her, Lisa now needs to hire a lawyer. She challenges the restraining order, and by February she is sitting in court. The park bench where Lisa and Steele had their first date just six months ago, is a five minute walk down the street from the courthouse. Lisa anxiously watches the door for a familiar face to appear.

And their attend The door opened, my heir, Just like Stab, he never shows up.

The judge dismisses the case cancels the restraining order.

I spent more money on him and this lawyer. You know I'd get this restraining order he had sold and then he doesn't shop up.

Not only was the justice system ignoring her, it was also being used against her by the man who'd lies and stolen from her.

Then she gets some news.

My niece texts me and says, I was googling him and found he had done this with this girl in California.

A woman in San Francisco.

That night I found her on Facebook, connecting with her and talking her. I was a holy cult.

Cindy, you heard about an episode two hadn't seen Derek in two years, but she had spent her time wisely.

She was hell bent on getting this guy. Sydney had started this big file going on him about his past women.

It's Cindy who puts Lisa in touch with all the other women who'd had the misfortune of dating Derek Aldred. They've got to shared Facebook group chat. By the time Lisa joins, they had already started plotting out Derek's moves.

Okay, show me when you dated him, Just keeping our chronological order of his little steps that he was doing where he was at. He gets at a prison, gets settled wherever he's standing, and then at the next person.

By now, it's a familiar story. Women who'd been targeted by Derek all seemed to be falling through a particular crack in the justice system, a crack that Derek appears to be taking full advantage of. Over only two years, Derek strikes three more times with three different women in the Minneapolis area alone.

My heart broker them thinking he's doing it again.

Lisa read's allegations that he'd opened credit cards, stolen jewelry, and even drained a retirement savings account of nearly two hundred thousand dollars in the space of a few months.

This was just his power trip of doing this to women because he just for some reason headed us.

Two of those women, once they learned of each other's existence, actually teamed up to try and stop him, and initially it works. An arrest warrant is issued for Derek Aldred on August eighth, twenty sixteen.

Words spreads through the group.

Chat that Derek has been arrested in Minnesota by local cops. It says at the top Wouldbury Public Safety Police Services incident report name Derek Mylan or Dread check forgery redacted.

Told me that at the end the.

Report describes how woman files a report against Derek and the cops.

Go to a house to arrest him.

He was handcuffed using plastic cuffs in front of his body due to having a wrist brace on his left wrist. They're made using standard handcuffs impractical.

Also on this police report, Derek Aldread's long and complicated arrests history.

It's a long list and it's broken down by year, and we start in two thousand and five forgery, felony, burglary, obtain controled, substances by fraud, felony, impersonate fireman misdemeanor, and I'm sure that's not as a stripper burglary, second degree felony, false worker compensurance claim. What's frustrating is the list doesn't really tell us much about what happened in between all

Men moving out all of their belongings and the house has been foreclosed.

Producer le owner of fills me in on the details.

The woman that he married loses the house.

That's crazy.

There's another story about a woman who she's dating Derek. She loses her job and she can't afford the rent.

She'll explain to the investigators.

He told her that he was taking care of the rent at a new place one he had encouraged them to move into, but he wasn't. Not only that he'd put the property in her name, and once she learned the truth, she was evicted.

She goes on to lose her entire life savings because he's strained her bank accounts.

He's a proper, proper con man.

At the end of twenty thirteen, after Wendy, After Cindy, he meets another woman from Hawaii, and she's a doctor.

The two gone a holiday to Puerto Rico together, where Derek's charming facade seems to drop.

He takes her license, her passport. He basically holds her hostage. He re routes all of her calls and texts to his phone. At one point, she tries to run away and even flags a car down, and he chases her down. By the time she makes it home, she learns that he's wiped all her financial accounts of more than thirty five thousand. He's made sixty thousand dollars in fraudulent credit card payments. He's taken a twenty eight thousand dollar advance out from her job in like unworked shifts, so she's

Wow, that one feels scary.

All of these women are skilled, professional, smart educator women. One of them is a nuclear scientist. And it shouldn't matter. Obviously, it doesn't matter if they're not any of those things, or if they were manipulated into handing over money.

But it's not even that. What he's done is.

Convince them to be in a relationship with him and then stolen their money.

Yeah, they're not aware about what's going on.

So I just want you to a picture in your mind Derek standing out front of a house in Minnesota, plastic handcuffs on, and now the Woodbury police have arrested him.

When I first read the arrest thing, I was like, Oh, I'm struggling to get that excited because it just feels like this man gets away with everything. But having all of this information, it makes it feel like Derek's time is up.

But don't get too excited. My suspicions were right.

Earlier Woodbury Pude had released Derek while they built a case, and in a move right out of the Derek Alldred playbook, he simply disappeared again. Lisa was trying to move on with her life.

I'd forget about it for a while, and then another text had come.

An update from one of the girlfriends in the group chat, will bring all the pain back for Lisa.

Who he did this to?

Who? This and that?

And it just would make me cry. And let's just like this has got it and I need to let it go, needs to come out of my life.

And just when Lisa resolves to put this whole thing behind her, a new message pings into her inbox, an update so irresistible that Lisa is drawn right back in.

I vowed I will be his last target.

Next time.

On the Girlfriends Trust to Be Babe, Derek sets his sights on a new target in Texas.

I realize that I can stab him.

And he learns the hard way that you don't mess with Texas.

I moved my bookcase in front of my door. I went upstairs and I got my gun, and I just waited.

If you found any of the themes explored in this episode difficult and you need support or advice, please reach out to our charity partners No More at No More dot org. We'll add some useful links to the episode description look after Yourself. The Girlfriends Trust Me Babe is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcasts. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio. The series is hosted by me Annasinfield is produced by Leona Hamid. Our assistant producer is Valeria Rocker.

Our editor is Joe Wheeler.

Production management from Sharie Houston, Joe Savage, and Charlotte Wolfe. Fact checking by Dania Suleman, Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson and Nicholas Alexander. The Girlfriend's theme was composed by Daniel Kempson and Luisa Gerstein and performed by Daniel Kempson with vocals by Luisa Gerstein. Music supervision from Daniel Kempson and Anna Sinfield. The series artwork was designed by Christina Lemcol. Story development by Susie Baker and Olivia Smart.