Many assume that dating scams only take place online. A scenario where they create an emotional connection over a period of time and eventually start asking for money. Today, we talk with someone who was deceived in person and how to see the warning signs in real life.
Today’s guest is Abby Ellin. Abby has been a freelance writer for 20 years. She has mostly written for The New York Times but has been published in countless other publications including Time and The London Daily Telegraph. Abby’s latest book Duped: Double Lives, False Identities, and the Con Man I Almost Married was published in 2019 and is the topic of today’s discussion.
Show Notes:
- [1:14] - The reason Chris wanted Abby on the podcast was because Abby’s experience is different from the more common online dating scams.
- [1:40] - Very briefly, Abby was engaged to a man who turned out to be a pathological liar. She felt something was off and left him within a year. But later she got a phone call.
- [2:14] - It turned out that the man was using Abby’s name to write prescriptions for drugs.
- [2:40] - Abby jumped into journalist mode and interviewed the people in the man’s life who he had also been deceiving.
- [4:17] - Abby explains the true things that were not deceptions: he had been a doctor in the Navy and was from Jacksonville, Florida.
- [4:42] - When he didn’t want Abby coming to Jacksonville with him it was because he was engaged to another woman who he lived with there. He would tell the other woman he was on a secret mission and would leave for long periods of time.
- [5:25] - Nothing was verifiable which drove the journalist side of Abby nuts.
- [6:14] - Abby initially met him during an interview. She was interviewing him as a doctor and when fact checking he shared that he was opening up a facility in Iraq and Afghanistan for kids with cancer. They kept in touch because of the story she could write.
- [7:25] - Abby describes his pattern starting with marrying someone, leaving them, and moving to another marriage.
- [8:07] - It wasn’t just “love fraud,” it was a real con. He was using names of people he had been with romantically as well as names of the people he worked with to get drugs for himself.
- [8:58] - Abby was suspicious and left him after a year. She shares a story about a time he lied to her parents so convincingly and it made her concerned about other possible lies.
- [10:17] - Some red flags Abby noticed were that he would always cancel plans last minute and unusual things would happen when she was out of town.
- [11:15] - Chris and Abby discuss how people use the claim of being in the military as their adopted persona because we don’t tend to question that. But the man she was engaged to was in fact in the military.
- [12:10] - He was a military doctor and you don’t ever expect someone in that kind of position to be a “bad egg.”
- [13:19] - Abby explains that he was caught for using drugs but he had gotten a hold of so much that she is also convinced that he was selling.
- [14:40] - For online scams, the goal is to receive money and the manipulation is a means to an end. For some in person scams, sometimes the manipulation is part of the goal, too.
- [15:51] - Because Abby had been suspicious and was not forthcoming about financial information, she did not lose any money. She says that if that had been his goal with her, she was a failed scam. But he did ask a few times about finances.
- [16:47] - When asked about trust, Abby explains that we are programmed to trust and that society will not function without it.
- [17:53] - Those gut feelings, intuition, or what Abby calls the “Spidey-sense,” can be right. Listen to your gut.
- [19:34] - Abby shares a story about a woman she just recently started seeing and how her gut feeling was actually wrong. She had been projecting her baggage to someone else’s scenario.
- [22:03] - When you see a photo of someone on a dating app who is in a military uniform, it is a scam. People who are truly in the military won’t be using a photo like that for their profile.
- [23:25] - There are some people who thrive on manipulating others. If the goal is to dupe someone for money, Abby thinks that scamming a freelance journalist was not the best plan for that goal.
- [24:58] - Abby shares that she called a scammer back one time just to see what would happen.
- [26:01] - Chris describes how sophisticated scams have gotten.
- [26:55] - The minute someone asks for money, that should be the end of the conversation.
- [28:01] - It is really hard to deal with an in-person situation like Abby was involved in because you have met them and you do have a relationship with them rather than an online dating scam where you don’t meet them in person.
- [28:58] - You need to know what someone’s baseline is. There is not a specific set of behaviors that indicate someone is lying. Everyone is different so take notice of things that are out of the ordinary for them.
- [29:44] - Abby discusses polygraph tests and how she needs to have hard evidence.
- [31:33] - In Abby’s situation, the man she was engaged to had duped his entire family.
- [33:02] - It became so much a problem for him, that lying became his default.
- [34:29] - Abby shares a story about another red flag about their living situation. She caught him in a lie and she is convinced he believed his own lies.
- [37:05] - Abby will be starting a podcast to share more details of her experience soon.
Thanks for joining us on Easy Prey. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and leave a nice review.
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