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Sept. 8, 2023 - Dr. Oz Podcast
42:42
Duped! "Dirty John Has Nothing on My Ex-Husband's Double Life" | Dr. Oz | S11 | Ep 18 | Full Episode
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Time Text
What I found on the internet left me sick.
She had falsified bank documents.
Over the course of about two years, you gave him one million dollars.
Over a million.
Outrageous stories of deception.
She's very convincing.
I had no reason to not trust him.
He was going to try to con me back in and basically gaslight me.
This is an unbelievable con.
Coming up next.
Season 11 starts now. . you Today's show is about extreme deception and shocking betrayal you would never see coming.
All hour, we've got true stories of being duped by the people closest to you.
A romantic partner with a secret double life using fake identities to prey on parades of women around the world.
A best friend who fooled and conned a whole city into believing she was a filthy rich heiress.
And a potential lover posing as a successful businessman to woo a widowed intelligence officer out of one million dollars.
An insider who has lived through being duped is here to help uncover why people we love can betray us so badly.
Benita Alexander was an award-winning investigative television producer when she was assigned a story involving a dashing Italian doctor.
They got engaged, and he told her the Pope would marry them, in front of guests that would include the Clintons and Obamas.
So after 17 years, I quit my job.
But there was a twist.
Every single stone you turned over, there was a lie.
A doctor is there to save lives, not to kill them.
Everything was about to come crashing down.
I found out that I'm not the only one he did this to.
There were, in addition to the wife and me, there were at least two other families.
Now Benita is using the power of one to help other women who have been duped share the truth about what happened to them.
Journalist and love con expert Benita Alexander joins us now with our first duped story.
Here's the deal.
More than half a dozen women were scammed by this man, William Allen Jordan, who duped them into believing he was a secret government agent.
But in reality, he was a sex offender who was married and engaged to multiple women at the same time.
So Benita, first, if you don't mind, walk us through this basic story.
He was an international con artist.
Yeah, I mean, like all of these con men, he was charismatic and charming, but this guy was something.
His cons spanned two continents, both England and the U.S. He made his way, and that's part of his secret.
Secondly, he had an interesting cover.
What was it?
He was very clever.
He told some women he was a CIA agent, others that he worked for the British government, and he had everything that goes with that.
He had aliases.
He spoke with an accent.
He carried a gun.
He went on secret missions.
He had all the documents, and it all seemed real.
Yeah.
Perfect cover.
Perfect cover.
If you're a con artist.
And finally, he told women he was single.
Was he single?
He definitely was not single.
He told some women that he couldn't have children.
He wasn't fertile.
In reality, he fathered at least 13 kids with at least six different women.
At one point, he had two wives, two fiancés, and a girlfriend.
So, eight women total, as I count it.
At least.
Okay.
And across two continents, and we don't know how many others there are.
All right.
So, Michelle was one of those women that William duped.
Michelle, thank you for joining us.
I've got a couple simple questions, and I know it's difficult to talk about this, so I thank you for being here.
But first off, at the beginning, you meet this gentleman, and what did he tell you about himself?
He was very charismatic.
He was very well read.
We met for coffee.
We met on a dating website at the time I was ending my marriage.
And we seemed to just get on so well.
You know, I kind of felt myself come alive again and really enjoy life and companionship.
You're emotionally in a good place with him, you get along, you're compatible, and yet a few months in, a few things start to happen that raise doubts, things that weren't adding up for you.
What were they?
A few months in, he started to seem a little withdrawn, and I thought, oh, we're gonna have, like, the bottom's gonna fall out.
But instead, he told me that his job wasn't exactly what he said it was.
He said he really worked for the Ministry of Defense for the UK and that he kind of was a person who was almost kind of like a chauffeur but also did like personal security and that he would often shuttle embassy workers between New York and Washington DC, something that seemed like someone would really have that kind of a job.
And then to add to that, you're asked to participate in a security clearance for him.
Yes.
How did that go down?
One day he had come to me with this manila envelope with a large packet of papers that had Ministry of Defense logos all over them, and he said that this was the beginning of a vetting process that I needed to go through in terms of security clearance in order for us to have Kind of more exchange of information because this way when he was,
what we would say, on the map, off the map, when he was unavailable, when he was working, and I was led to be very paranoid about my movements and my conversations and how I said things and what I looked up.
You also missed some of these warning signs.
Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that I missed was what I call the vanishing act.
My guy was an international surgeon, and he would conveniently, always at the last minute, disappear for these emergency surgeries.
I mean, sometimes I was at the airport, supposed to go to his house in Barcelona.
Oh, I have an emergency surgery.
You said William kind of did the same thing to you.
How did he explain that?
He did.
There were some times, especially once we started getting into the fall holidays, when he was supposed to show up.
And he suddenly didn't, and he had to suddenly rush off.
And he would send me a photo that seemed like it was like 500 feet in the air from a helicopter.
Yeah, they make it so believable, right?
Yeah, and he was starting to miss some days that were really important.
But then you went into his wallet.
What happened?
I did.
It was after the new year and he left his wallet behind one day and I don't know some women's gut intuition said look in it and I did and the first thing I pulled out had a completely different name on it.
It said William Allen Jordan and I googled the name William Allen Jordan and what I found on the internet Left me viscerally sick.
Yeah, this guy was not just a bigamist, right?
He was a sex offender.
He was a sex offender.
He'd been with a girl who was under 13 for years and actually got her pregnant, right?
Yes.
And it was just mortifying.
And he had pled guilty to it.
He went to prison for it.
Then he was convicted of bigamy and fraud and a weapons offense, because in the UK you can't have anything.
And he had a stun gun.
And I found through the internet that his one ex-wife had written a book.
And I immediately reached out to her website and said, oh my god, I'm with him now.
The book's called The Bigamist, which is perfectly named for him.
This is an unbelievable con.
It...
You hear about it, but it was like a tunnel syndrome.
I literally was sitting there and I felt like the world was going away from me.
I was literally sick because I had been with this person for a year.
I had exposed him to my children.
He was a horrible person.
Through his one ex-wife, I got introduced to victim after victim after victim after victim and heard all of their stories.
They were very supportive of me.
And without them, I absolutely would not have survived it because I really didn't know what to do.
The first feeling I felt was shame.
I felt so shameful.
Like, I'm a college-educated woman and I have a great career.
How could I have fallen for something like this, you know?
But at the same time, I knew I had this deep feeling.
I didn't want anybody else to feel like this either.
And the fact that there was a trail of people who did, I wanted the cycle to stop.
So that's the question, right?
Where is William Allen Jordan today?
And why Michelle and his other victims believe he may be duping others?
Stick around.
Millions of disturbing online images.
Are we talking about pornography?
Oh, yes.
For the first time, we joined an undercover sting operation and busted pedophiles hiding in plain sight.
Got any weapons on you?
Plus, the public outrage-facing rapper T.I. Stand on the controversial virginity test.
I think he did it out of protection.
It's up to you.
It's your choice, your body.
We're weighing in.
It's a wake-up call for the entire nation.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
We're back uncovering stories of extreme betrayal.
Michelle was duped by a man who told her he was a government spy, but turned out he was a sex offender who had been married to two other women.
Mary, one of those ex-wives, joins us now via Zoom from Scotland.
She says William Allen Jordan left her homeless with two children and over $300,000 in debt.
Mary, thanks for being with us.
I just spoke to Michelle who told us that she discovered who William Allen Jordan was through you.
How did you actually meet this man?
I met William Jordan online in the year 2000. He asked me to marry him within a couple of months of meeting him.
We were engaged for two years.
We were married for four.
And the thing was, from the very first email he sent me, he told me he was infertile and he couldn't have children because of a bad bout of mumps as a child.
And so it was a bit of a surprise when I found I was pregnant in 2002. Turns out that not only was he a bigamist and a con man, but he also...
His wife and their nanny were both pregnant when he wrote me that email saying he was infertile.
Help me understand a bit more about how you figured out you had been duped.
So he's got this whole elaborate story that's hard to pierce, but you hadn't found out about these other pregnant women when obviously you got pregnant.
So how did you finally figure it out?
I got a phone call from his other wife.
She phoned me on the 6th of April 2006 and said, you know, are you Mary Turner Thompson?
I said, yes.
She said, are you also Mrs Jordan?
And I said, yes.
She said, I'm the other Mrs Jordan.
And proceeded to tell me that she had five children to him.
The nanny had two children to him.
She knew of a child in America.
She knew of another child in the UK. At the time, we thought we knew of ten children.
And she then dropped everything, drove up to Edinburgh, and three hours later we sat down and we sat and talked for 12 hours.
So he ends up getting pulled in by law enforcement, in the UK. So when Michelle reached out to you from the United States, were you surprised?
Not at all.
She wasn't the first.
The thing that made Michelle different and the thing that makes her so awesome is that unlike any of the other victims, she wasn't so ashamed she needed to hide from it.
And one thing I advocate for so strongly is we have nothing to be embarrassed about.
Nothing at all.
We believed somebody loved us.
That is not a ridiculous thing to do.
It is utterly mad that we feel that victims of a con man should be ashamed.
How does it make you feel to know this man is still out there harming other women, doing to them what he did to you and should have been punished for?
It's one of the reasons why I went public.
It is so awful to think that this guy is doing, and he will never stop.
He is a psychopath.
He will never stop.
He'll get better at what he does.
He gets more practice at it.
He gets more brazen at it.
He'll just keep going.
He won't stop.
The man is very dangerous.
You know, if you steal £10 off somebody or $10 off somebody, you know, and you lie to them to get that money, it's called fraud.
If you impregnate somebody, it's going to cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars their entire life to look after that child, and yet it's not a crime.
And I think it's despicable.
I think it really is.
What he does is awful.
Mary, thank you for sharing your story.
You represent the power of one.
We all have it.
I appreciate it.
We bring back in LoveCon, Eckford, Danita Alexander, and Michelle.
So, when you spoke to Mary, and I see how passionate she is about this, and I'm sure you felt this equally strongly, you decided to go to the police.
How did you help them arrest him?
I actually went undercover for nine weeks and basically played his game back at him.
So for nine weeks I had undercover cameras, like I had hidden cameras.
I had one hidden in a button in a shirt, one hidden in the rivet of a purse.
And I would meet him to try to get him to incriminate himself about the money that he took from me, which was about $5,000, which is far, far less than he had gotten from Mary.
I mean, by the time it had come to me, the total is over a million dollars that he has stolen from people.
Yes.
So because of your work, William was picked up and charged with sexual assault, theft by deception, and impersonating law enforcement.
He served three years in jail for those charges.
But, Benita, he is out of jail now.
Yes.
So, why is it so hard for authorities to put this guy away?
I think the biggest reason is what we've been touching on here, what Mary said, is you feel ashamed.
And a lot of women don't speak up.
They're too afraid to speak up, or they're too ashamed to speak up, and so they just don't.
So, actually, the numbers of how many of these types of con men are out there are far more than we know, because women are afraid to speak up.
And I think that's the reason...
I know it's the reason I feel so strongly about speaking up, and I'm hearing that also for Michelle and Mary.
It's very important, if you can, to talk about it and to educate people and let other women know that you're not alone.
And we need to speak up about this.
We need to let people know that this...
There are a lot more limbs out there.
Yeah.
It's not...
If we don't talk about it, it's not going to stop.
And if we don't let other women know that, yes, this does happen to really smart, really intelligent women all the time.
And we've got to talk about it and we've got to stop it.
Thank you for sharing your story, Michelle.
I appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me.
Very courageous.
Up next, what if someone you thought was your best friend duped you?
The truth about a fake heiress who scammed a whole city and her closest friends.
Thank you.
Public Meltdown.
Don't f***ing touch me!
Caught on tape.
That's okay!
Why'd you unleash?
I just snapped.
I had enough.
And Mel Robbins on overcoming your personal demons.
That's coming up on Monday.
Anna Delvey, a mysterious heiress, stepped into the New York social life scene in early 2016. At the time, she had over 40,000 followers on Instagram and claimed to have a $67 million trust fund from her billionaire father.
Anna made her home in some of the city's most luxurious hotels and was dressed in the latest fashions.
She took trips on private jets and ate, drank, and partied in New York's hottest spots.
Anna spoke about opening an exclusive arts club and seemed to live a life of luxury.
But that all came crashing down when she was arrested for not being able to pay a lunch bill at a hotel.
And Anna went from posh to prison for duping hotels, banks, and a private jet company out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But the question still remains.
How did this fake heiress dupe an entire city, the socialite circle she ran with, and her closest friends?
We're back examining accounts of extreme and shocking betrayals of people being duped by those closest to them.
As you just saw, Anna Delvey, also known as the fake heiress, made headlines all around the world for duping people into thinking she was living a life of luxury that most of us can only dream of.
Even her closest friends believed this big lie.
Now, she was sentenced to 4 to 12 years in prison, but she told the court, the thing is, I'm not sorry.
Today, new details into how her former best friend exposed the truth about Anna and what she thinks Anna is up to right now, even behind bars.
Anna Delby's best friend, former best friend, Rachel Williams, is here.
Thanks for being here, Rachel.
Thank you so much for having me.
So, take us back to the beginning.
What were you doing when you first met Anna?
I was working at Vanity Fair, which was my dream job.
I'd been there for six years at the time.
It was 2016. I'd worked my way up from assistant to associate to photo editor.
And I was happy.
I lived in the city.
I had really close, great friends.
And I was working in a field I had long admired and was happy to be a part of.
And working there, you probably meet lots of interesting folks.
One night you're out at a lounge and you meet Anna Delvey.
What was your first impression of her?
She was cheerful, fun-loving.
I was intrigued by her because I had seen her on social media in photos with some of my friends and had noticed that she had a really large Instagram following.
So I was curious about who this new person in our group was and I was excited to meet her.
I mean, she's taking her Instagram feeds.
You know, it is a life many of us would dream of.
What did she do to pass herself off as a rich heiress?
Did she overtly say that, or did you just intuit that from watching her actions?
She was a very good study of character.
I'd say she was more subtle in the way that she presented her wealth.
She lived full-time in hotels, which was, I think, a big tip-off.
But she did expensive beauty treatments, like $400 eyelash extensions.
Ooh.
She shopped a lot.
She insisted on going to a personal trainer that cost $300 a session.
She had very expensive taste.
So in reality, Anna was racking up thousands of dollars in unpaid hotel bills, private jet flights, also taking out loans to cover these lavish expenses.
She even tried, if I get this correct, to dupe a hedge fund out of $25 million for her foundation.
Yes.
So you're hanging with her, you're becoming friendly, really friendly, and she invites you to go to Morocco with her.
And you don't have a ton of money to take everyone to Morocco.
Right.
And she spent a lot of money in Morocco.
What kind of luxurious things did she do?
And walk us through what you began to notice was happening while you were there.
Sure.
So she first pitched the idea of taking a trip to somewhere warm when she needed to leave the United States because her visa was expiring.
And she proposed we take a trip to, at first it was Turks and Caicos or somewhere a little closer.
And then it sort of grew from there into, actually I want to do research for my, this art foundation she was working to build.
But then it evolved into, I want to go to Marrakesh, I'm going to invite the personal trainer to come with us.
I'm going to invite...
The $300 an hour personal trainer.
She came with us.
And then she also invited a videographer because she wanted to make a documentary about the creation of this foundation.
And she framed Marrakesh as sort of a business expense.
And she, having invited these other people, she asked me, you know, what are they going to expect me to pay for?
And I said, well, you're hiring them to do a job, so they're going to expect you to pay for their expenses and their travel.
And she was like, oh, that makes perfect sense and I'd love to get yours too.
And it just sort of, I know, it snowballed from there.
She booked this amazing private villa at this hotel called La Mamunia in Marrakesh.
And I have, I've traveled for Rick, I've been nice places, but I have never been anywhere like that.
There are these men in traditional Moroccan attire.
They welcome you.
It's this walled palace, this enormous hotel.
And you go through and there are like four different restaurants and three different bars.
And we like walk through the sprawling gardens and we're shown to this little private house that has three bedrooms and a butler and a pool.
And it's extremely over the top.
And it's $7,000 a night.
When we come back, the moment when Rachel realized her best friend had been duping her the whole time.
She wasn't an heiress at all.
And Anna Delvey wasn't actually even her real name.
Find out how the so-called heiress was finally unmasked as just a fake.
The public outrage facing rapper T.I. Stan on the controversial virginity test.
All nuance.
That's coming up tomorrow.
We are back with how a fake heiress duped everyone, including her best friend, into believing her luxurious lies.
That best friend, now former best friend, Rachel Williams says, a dream vacation became the moment of truth that left her reeling about who Anna Delvey really was.
So, you've been at this luxurious resort in Morocco for a couple days, and suddenly things just don't add up.
Yeah, they start to unravel.
I'd say, like, a day and a half in, we leave the hotel for the first time and go into the marketplace where Anna wants to buy some dresses, and her card doesn't go through.
And I'm standing there with her, and I ask her, well, did you tell your banks you're traveling?
We're in Marrakesh.
That makes sense.
My bank probably wouldn't have let me use my card there, either.
Well, my debit card.
And then Anna already owes me a little bit of money from the travel on our way over.
So she asks me to just add this to what she's going to pay me back.
So I begin sort of in for a penny, in for a pound, fronting costs outside of the hotel.
And then as the week goes on, it becomes obvious there's tension between Anna and the hotel managers because there isn't a functioning credit card on file for our reservation.
And I was pressured to use mine for what I thought was going to be temporary.
I was told the final bill would need to be settled when we checked out, and I was leaving before Anna and the rest of the guests.
So I didn't know at the time.
Of course, I later found out that it all went on my credit cards.
So you get home.
You thought it was maybe $30,000.
It turned out to be $62,000 on your credit card, which is more than your annual salary.
If I understand correctly.
Yes, that's correct, yeah.
So how do you put those pieces together?
What were you thinking was going on?
So I left on a Friday morning and I went on to France for work and when I landed in France I got a text from Anna saying I'm gonna wire you $70,000 on Monday to make sure all the expenses are covered.
So you kept texts of your efforts to get the money because it didn't come on Monday.
It didn't come ever.
So when did it sink in?
That she was never going to pay you back.
And these are the tax folks.
You've all been in this situation, probably, if you ever loaned anyone money.
Where is it?
It's coming.
When?
Must have been there.
Check your bank.
Call them.
Oh, it would have been easier had she just disappeared, but she kept in touch with me every day, every single day, with just excuse after excuse, fake wire confirmation numbers, promises of cashier's checks.
I showed up in her hotel one day when she got back to New York because she told me she had this cashier's check, so I decided, well, I know where you're staying.
I'm going to make this easy.
You can just give me the check.
It'll be over with.
I get there.
She's rifling through papers, pretending to have lost A check for $70,000 in her room.
I misplaced it.
I mean, of course, I knew it was a problem, but I was just trying to find ways forward.
That finally, I guess, that was the straw that broke the camel's back.
You call up the Attorney General in New York City County.
Mm-hmm.
Think you're letting them in on this big secret, and then you realize you're not the only one being duped.
Right.
What did they tell you?
They were already looking for her.
Yes.
I found out that Anna was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation.
But, I mean, that's when I started writing because I couldn't stop replaying every memory, every exchange, everything I knew about this person, and I didn't know what would be helpful for their investigation because I realized if she's doing it to me, she's doing it to other people.
Her real name?
Anna?
Sorokin.
Sorokin.
And who was she really?
She was born in Russia, just outside of Moscow, moved to Germany at 16, landed an internship at a fashion magazine in Paris, and then came to New York, I believe in 2016, and started living her life as Anna Delvey and manipulating the New York world.
She had falsified bank documents.
She had created fictitious email addresses for accountants.
She was very skilled at what she was doing.
So Anna ended up being arrested, was later found guilty of charges that included grand larceny and theft of services and selling more than $200,000.
However, those $200,000 do not include your $62,000.
She was found not guilty of bilking you out of the money that she conned you out of.
Why was that?
I mean, it's still painful for me and hard to understand since the evidence was there, but I think the prosecutors after the court case concluded told me that the jurors had had questions about Anna's intent.
You know, did she intend for me to take the fall?
Did she intend to pay me back?
When does intent need to form for something to be criminal?
I think the moment Anna gave me a non-functioning credit card to use to book these flights that I ended up Putting on my credit card, that's the moment.
You know, she was never going to be the one to pay for that trip.
It was never going to be her, and she needed to leave the country, so...
You all think that...
How many people would think that was what intent was, right?
Giving someone a fake credit card.
Thanks, guys.
I wish you were jurors.
Well, they are.
That's what a jury looks like.
I've always been so impressed that juries are made up of smart people.
Folks don't give enough credit.
So when she was being sentenced for the other charges, not yours, but the other stuff, she said, and I can't believe she would do this, she said she was not sorry.
How did that make you feel?
You know, actually, I thought it was one of the most honest things I'd ever heard her say.
I thought it was very self-reflective.
But I do think she's fundamentally unable to feel empathy or remorse or understand how her actions affect people around her.
Let's go through the situation, because a lot of us are in denial of relationships we don't want to admit are bad for.
Benita Alexander, you know this all too well.
As you hear this story, why is it so common for us to get stalled in this denial phase of dealing with conflict?
Well, I mean, look at Rachel.
She's a lovely, intelligent young woman.
And so the first feeling is utter shock.
Like, how did this happen to me?
How did I get duped?
Did I miss something?
Did I miss the warning signs?
And so, and you're kind of enamored with the person.
And so it's such a shock to realize, okay, wait a minute.
I thought this person was this person.
And they're not this person at all.
They're total fraud, total fake.
I mean, it really messes with your head.
It's really hard to wrap your head around.
So what do you think your friend Anna is doing right now behind bars?
Do you think she's still trying to dupe people?
I don't think Anna will ever stop manipulating people around her to her own advantage, so I'd say yes, probably.
Well, she's listening to you right now, and I've actually learned, Grace, this sounds crazy.
Prisoners watch the show a lot.
Because it's on network television, so it's free.
And it happens to be something they're actually curious about.
So there's a pretty good chance Anna is listening right now.
What do you want her to hear from you?
Do you know, I think at this point, my silence is probably stronger than my words.
I've said my piece over the course of our friendship and what followed and in the book, and I look forward to moving on with my life.
Fair enough.
I wish her well.
I just look forward to being done with Anna Delvey Slurkin.
You can read more about Rachel's story in her new book, My Friend Anna.
And guess what?
You're all going home with the book.
Enjoy it and learn from it.
Learn from it.
Up next, duped out of $1 million.
How a former intelligence officer, that's right, she was an intelligence officer, got her heart and her bank account ruined by an online romance scam.
Public Meltdowns.
Don't touch me!
Caught on tape.
That's okay!
Why'd you unleash?
I just snapped.
I had enough.
And Mel Robbins on overcoming your personal demons.
That's coming up on Monday.
We're back investigating the most shocking ways people are being duped.
Now it's the most popular scam that breaks hearts and bank accounts.
Imagine losing one million dollars from an online relationship scam.
A former intelligence officer says she lost her life savings from a man who duped her all the way from Nigeria.
Debbie is here with what she says all women should know.
Thank you for being here.
I know you were recently widowed when this all started.
I'm sorry for that.
But when you started online, that wasn't dating, it was just online relationship building.
You weren't interested in romance.
That's correct.
I was looking for someone just to be a friend, a companion, someone I could talk to about Lou dying and about my life, my kids.
And it was a friendship I was looking for, not anything physical.
It was safe because it was at a distance.
And you were contacted by this gentleman.
He called himself Eric.
What did he say about himself?
He was a widow, widower.
He had a son, Kenny, he was seven.
He was from London.
He was kind, he was well-spoken, which was funny because most of the men that were writing online could hardly write.
It's like talking to a fifth grader.
And so he was very articulate and he said he was well-educated.
Something that I could connect with, some man I could connect with.
How would you communicate with him?
Typically by texting.
Well, not texting like we do today, but it was writing.
And it was something like 4,000 messages?
No, I have 4,000 pages of journals.
4,000 pages.
I mean, I've looked through some of them.
You have four of these binders full of these messages, right?
Those are actually the financial transactions, each of the financial transactions.
I had kept an online journal, so I copied and pasted every email that I had.
I put into a journal, and then I printed it thinking I was having family history.
One of the things that kind of stood out to me, one of the early exchanges you had, you actually said to him something along the lines of when he was first asking you for money, either I'm an extreme fool or this is going to be a wonderful relationship.
So obviously something was clicking in your brain that something wasn't right.
Do you think you just ignored that or didn't want to believe it?
I'm sure I ignored it because I classify myself as one of those damn Yankees that doesn't give money away.
And I was very frugal.
So it was so out of character for me just to be giving money to somebody that I didn't know.
Did you ever ask to talk to him on the phone or meet him in person?
I did and when I talked to him he had a British accent which played right into the whole story.
He was from London and we were supposed to meet for Christmas and it was great.
I was sitting up hotel rooms and all this was happening until the 21st of December when there was a snag in one of his transactions and a payment didn't get through and so he wasn't able to come.
So, again, I completely get this.
You're just looking for connection at any level.
And I appreciate how painful it is to have lost the man you were married to for so long.
And trying to just stay in touch with the world draws you into relationships maybe you normally wouldn't have been involved in.
Nevertheless, you're an intelligence officer.
So that part of your brain is probably saying, check up on him.
And so what did you do?
Well, my brothers told me that too when they first heard about this.
They said, do background checks, do this, do that.
I'm like, you guys, it's just friendship.
I'm just looking for someone to be kind to me.
And when he first wrote to me, it was interesting.
The one thing I remember is at the end of his email, he said, you can call me Eric Cole.
And I thought, that's kind of an odd way to say my name is.
So I called him on it.
I said, what did you mean by that?
And I said, it sounded funny.
He said, oh, it's franco-lingua.
It's the way the Brits speak.
And I kind of rationalized that, that maybe he did say that because that's the way he does speak.
And I would check things out.
He would send me an address of where his son was.
And I Google Earthed it.
And I was an imagery analyst in the Air Force.
So I was looking at all the things around the home that he said was his.
And I visualized in my mind, is this the place that he's living?
Or could his family be there?
And it all fell into place.
When I questioned something though, he always had a plausible answer.
They always do.
As to why.
They always do.
They always do.
They do.
They're so convincing.
There's a playbook.
They know what to say.
Exactly.
They're pros.
And I had no reason to not trust him.
I had never heard of an issue online dating.
My mom's best friend met her husband online.
But all this right now is platonic.
It's pretty simple.
At what point did he start asking you for money?
It started off very small at the beginning.
The first time he ever asked me, he was trying to get one of his friends online.
He said, if you could help him out, that would be great.
And I did that, and I guess that shows that I was willing.
It always starts small.
But it was very small.
It always starts small.
$60, $70, it was very small.
What did he say about paying you back?
He was always going to pay me back.
As soon as his job, and because I have a company and I understand that sometimes you don't get paid until after the job's done, I got that.
And so when all of his expenses were coming up over there and he couldn't pay them because he hadn't been paid yet, I got it.
I was helping him.
He became part of my family.
And I think that we would do anything for our family.
So over the course of about two years, you say you gave him one million dollars.
Over a million.
Over a million.
And I didn't have a million to give.
I want people to know that.
Because I felt he was family, I found it.
I found it through retirement accounts.
I sold jewelry.
I sold trees that I had, investments that I had, because it was coming back to me.
There was always that, when I get there, Deb, I'll pay you back.
We'll have the money in the bank.
It was...
I'm asking this because I respect what you do in your day job.
Obviously, you're very thoughtful about a lot of things.
He claimed to be a successful businessman.
In the back of your mind, did you ever wonder, how can a successful businessman not have $90 to pay for a friend, or more importantly, a million dollars to pay for the bigger things that he's trying to do?
I probably had that thought, but at the beginning it was more fun.
Until the end when I added it all up, I didn't realize how much I'd actually given to him because it was over the course of the two years.
Did you borrow money from your real family to give to him?
At the end I did.
I borrowed from my parents and that's the one thing that I regret the most is that I I brought them into it.
And I feel terrible about that.
I have paid them back.
And my dad said, you know, there was a time when I questioned, but after two years, how can somebody lie to you for two years and get away with it?
That's the extraordinary thing.
So coming up, the moment Debbie finally found out that she had been duped out of a million dollars or more.
Stay with us.
Stay with us.
Alright, so Debbie, two years into this relationship, all online, with this man who you thought was named Eric.
He said to call you Eric.
How did you find out who he really was?
He came online one morning and said, Deb, he was writing to me, he said, Deb, how do you feel about forgiveness?
And so for an hour or two, I put on my spiritual hat, my scriptural hat, and I talked about forgiveness.
And I said, Eric, is something wrong?
Have I done something wrong that you need forgiveness?
And he goes, I have something to tell you that's going to hurt you.
I just needed to know that you could forgive me before I do this.
I said, you sure you want to do it?
He said, I have a confession to make that this has all been a scam.
He told you?
He told me that, and I was looking at it going, are you ill?
Is something wrong here?
And I said, what do you mean it's been a scam?
He goes, this has all been a lie.
And at that point, I'm thinking, no, you're lying to me now.
I said, you're going to have to prove to me that this is a lie.
And he said, I'm going to come online live.
So apparently on Yahoo Chat, there was a little camera, and this little screen on the bottom of my computer comes up, and I'm looking at a brown-haired, brown-eyed, brown-skinned young man with a huge smile on his face.
Why do you think he finally confessed?
What prompted this?
I asked him.
I said, why did you do this?
And he said, he had actually fallen in love with me.
And I don't know if that's part of the scam now, but I hope that some of my goodness over the last two years had rubbed off and his conscience finally got to him.
Because he actually said, can we keep this going?
And of course I'm thinking, no, absolutely not.
I didn't have any money to continue it anyway, but he wanted to continue the friendship.
And when I saw his face, it was a gift from God, I think, that in an instant, my story and my heart were disconnected from my Eric.
Because I'm looking at Joseph.
It turns out his name is Joseph.
Joseph from Nigeria, not Eric from London.
Yes.
I said, why did you do this?
Why did you confess?
Most scammers do not confess.
And he said it was because he needed my forgiveness.
I think he had some sort of spiritual awakening.
I'm not sure what that was all about, but it's okay.
And I realized that I needed to forgive me.
I needed to forgive myself so that I could move on.
But it's a very difficult thing to do.
Did you try to get your money back?
You know, it's interesting.
I have the binders and I went to the FBI the next day with all my documentation and they said, Deb, unless you can get him here to the United States, there's nothing we can do for you.
Oh my goodness.
And when I heard that, I just shut down.
I said, I'm not going to tell anybody.
I was ashamed.
I was guilty.
I was vulnerable.
I was so upset.
And, you know, I... It was awful.
All the things you're feeling are being felt by many others.
You just told me you had three women contact you this week.
Online romance scams are so common, just to put some numbers on this, the FTC estimates $143 million was lost last year from people getting duped.
There's probably a lot more because most people don't talk.
Exactly.
And that's the thing.
People do not want to be vulnerable enough to say, I got duped.
And their families, you know, get upset.
Their friends get upset.
What's the first step?
If you've been scammed this way, what do you do?
I think the most important step is to actually tell your family and friends, the people who love you, because you're going to need them.
And as you go through all the next steps of protecting yourself financially, calling the police, blocking the contact with the person so he can't reach you again, you're going to need your friends and family.
That support system, I think, is vital, actually, because the emotions you go through and the range of emotions and the devastation, it can be paralyzing, actually.
It's huge too because most police stations and law enforcement don't know how to deal with a victim in this case.
And they blow you off.
And they blow you off.
They make you feel really bad.
A woman told me that the other day because we encourage people to report.
Just the numbers are there.
And she said, Deb, I walked out of that feeling like I was this big.
And I will never talk to anybody again.
And that's the trouble.
I hear this all the time.
They go in thinking they're going to get help and they come out feeling Let's change that.
This season is all about the power of one, of each and every one of us to make a difference.
So you have to be part of the power to report these crimes or get your friends who've been conned to report them.
You can go to dros.com for a link directly to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Form.
Anybody can fill that form out to report or prevent other victims from taking advantage of.
Our love con expert, Benet Alexander, has the top three ways you can spot a scammer, and it could help someone close to you, maybe even you.
Stay with us.
The public outrage facing rapper T.I. stand on the controversial virginity test.
I think he did it out of protection.
It's up to you.
It's your choice, your body.
We're weighing in.
It's a wake-up call for the entire nation.
That's coming up tomorrow.
We've been investigating shocking ways people are duped with LoveCon expert Benita Alexander this entire show.
Now she's going to tell you how to avoid the new ways that people, even the ones closest to you, are trying to dupe you.
So you want us to be aware of three important signs.
We'll go through them.
Please remember these and share them with your friends.
First off, beware of the drama king or the drama queen.
Yeah, this is a person whose life is a series of catastrophes.
There's always a reason why they're canceling plans with you.
They can't meet you.
They don't show up.
And there are always these elaborate things that happen.
They got bitten by a snake.
Their dog got run over by a car.
Their child got run over.
There's an emergency at the hospital.
You know, and if one or two of these things happen in a relationship, fine.
But when it's, you know, a train of catastrophes, watch out.
Second up, these really weird limits.
Question them when they're out there.
Yeah, if somebody is shut down, you know, they want to know everything about you, but they close themselves off.
You know, you can't meet their family.
You can't talk to their family.
You can't meet their friends.
You can't call them at certain hours of the day.
No, sorry, you can't come visit me at work.
Oh, you can't come to my house.
Again, huge red flag.
I mean, at the beginning of a relationship, that's okay, but a couple months, no.
You should be allowed into a person's life.
And the third way to figure out if someone's scamming you, just pay attention to this, is to watch out for money traps.
Yes, the huge one.
Just say no.
You are not a bank.
You know, if somebody comes to you asking for money, I don't care who it is.
Unless it's a family member, just don't do it.
Send them to the bank.
Peter, thank you very much.
It's all good advice, isn't it, everybody?
All right.
Remember, the power of change lies in the power of you.
One person with one voice speaking the truth and seeking the truth.
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