Love Online Leads to $60,000 Theft

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[00:00:01] Bob: This week on The Perfect Scam.

[00:00:05] Debbie Fox: I said, "Look, it would be complicated. I would need to sell stock and there's a tax consequence. It’s, I just don't have money just available." And he said to me, "Are you telling me that you have the potential to help me but you're, you're not willing to?" But I told him, I said, "No, I, I really just can't." So that was enough to stir guilt inside of me and I had enormous inner struggle with that, and ultimately asked myself the question, if I knew I could help someone I cared about, cared for and didn't, could I live with myself? And the answer was no.

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[00:00:54] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan. We often feel helpless when we hear about terrible crimes happening, but we don't have to feel that way. Today we're going to talk about something all of us can do, me, you, everyone, to help fight crime. As always, we begin with a story. Today you're going to meet an amazing woman from Colorado, Debbie Fox, a world traveler, a salsa dancer, who volunteers at a rescue mission for the homeless, just the kind of person you want to be your friend. But you're also going to hear some things that should make you pretty angry, how Debbie was, well kicked while she was down by strangers. Some of what was said to her will be hard to hear, but I think it's really important for all of us to hear how mean-spirited people can be because, well, it's wrong to behave like that. And it also really helps the criminals. Let me show you how.

[00:02:00] Bob: I understand that you spent 18 months traveling solo before all this happened, is that right?

[00:02:04] Debbie Fox: I did.

[00:02:05] Bob: Tell me where you went.

[00:02:07] Debbie Fox: I went, first of all I went to Idaho for a backcountry whitewater rafting trip along the Salmon River, and I explored several national parks. I went to Cuba with a Latin dancing group, salsa, and...

[00:02:24] Bob: Whoa, that's cool.

[00:02:24] Debbie Fox: Bachata out, very, very cool, so with a, with a group out of Bouler. Went to Cuba and spent nearly two weeks there for dancing. I did a small group, I, I went as a solo and joined a small group sailing through the Cyclades Islands off of Greece...

[00:02:43] Bob: Oh my God.

[00:02:43] Debbie Fox: ...for a week. Yes, I know.

[00:02:45] Bob: It sounds like a novel.

[00:02:46] Debbie Fox: It really, yes, pinch me, it was pretty extraordinary. And then to Barcelona and the island of Menorca, and to Tuscany.

[00:02:55] Bob: So, in other words, you're a typical couch potato who just wants to sit home and not do very much all the time.

[00:03:01] Debbie Fox: You can tell, right. And, and when I'm home, I'm golfing and cycling and playing, learning, attempting to learn how to play pickleball, and my Latin dancing, and I belong to a philosophy book club. And I started an online business, so yes, I'm a couch potato.

[00:03:19] Bob: Debbie is not one to sit around. She got into Latin dancing later in life.

[00:03:25] Debbie Fox: So I've been widowed for 11½ years. And along the way I met another um, widow who's become a best friend. And she actually introduced me to Latin dancing and I fell with love with it, and so took private lessons and so salsa and bachata and cumbia. I just, in my corporate career, I worked for a global brand, and so my profession, I'm a certified meeting professional, certified event design which meant that I organized these large global conferences for this, this particular brand. And it would include representatives from 40 to 60 countries, and the Latin Americans always were having the most fun, the most expressive and joyful, and so I just dove into the culture aside from loving the dance.

[00:04:14] Bob: Debbie's 18-month solo adventure, which did indeed include salsa dancing in Cuba for two months, came after, well a tough few years in her life.

[00:04:25] Debbie Fox: So I had come off this dreamy 18 months of travel, which was post-COVID really, you know, when we were all ready to just bust out of our jail cells, and before that I had three years in and out of the hospital from a kidney infection that re--, resulted in having that kidney removed. So I'd, if you can imag--, envision three years of medical issues, now we're locked in COVID, I was building my business and my brand, loving it, finally broke free, free from that and traveled, and so I really was at the most contented placed I've ever been in my entire life, and just filled with joy and knowing that I could do whatever I wanted to. I didn't need someone. But I was open to, to exploring and sharing with someone.

[00:05:10] Bob: Never more content, but willing to share with someone. And so, Debbie joins an online dating site, but not just any site.

[00:05:20] Debbie Fox: So I went, tried a different dating app than the ones I had been on in the past on and off. And, and off when I had really busy parts of my life that I was enjoying. And with all my global travel and my extreme interest, my interest in a wide variety of topics, quite honestly, I wasn't finding someone online locally who was checking a lot of boxes. So I came across this app that was more glo--, it is a global online dating app and that was my appeal. They promote themselves as a luxury, high-end, you know, affluent people, but that was not my draw. My draw was to find someone who had more of a global perspective.

[00:06:02] Bob: Maybe someone to share another 18-month adventure with, or to go dancing with in a faraway place. And sure enough, someone fits the bill. His name is Russell.

[00:06:15] Debbie Fox: And so this one man's profile really attracted me because it was just very kind and he had a gentle expression on his face, and he just looked like a nice person. So I reached, I made the connection. And he responded, we had the typical first phone, you know exchange of, of written communication which went well, and we gravitated to a phone conversation, which went, which went well. And then he said he'd like to continue to keep in touch. And I said, I would as well, knowing that you office, live in California and I'm at Colorado, it might be some time before we can meet in person. So let's video chat, which I wanted that assurance that I was actually looking into the face of the person I was talking to. No opposition there at all. We had a video chat that went well, and so we set off on a rhythm of connecting daily at a specific time and it was video chat. And so our conversations hit a broad range of topics, it would last as long as an hour, one time even two hours. So it was in-depth.

[00:07:25] Bob: So the connect every day, sometimes twice a day for six weeks. You can get to know someone pretty well in six weeks.

[00:07:33] Bob: Did you discuss going out to California or he coming to Colorado?

[00:07:37] Debbie Fox: We did both of those things actually. I invited him to Colorado at Thanksgiving when I believed that my kids would be here also. He was between California and Alaska, but there were, there were some crisis, his crisis unfolded with the solar project in Saudi Arabia that, that required his team to expedite finalization of that project, and so he was in Alaska using extended lab services and more scientists up there. So I just said, “This might be a long shot, but if you'd like to join my family for Thanksgiving it might be a good opportunity for us to meet,” and he was open to that. And then as things got complicated on his side, then he actually proposed fly--, flying me to California and his daughter who lived in the south of France to California. So there was conversation around those, those potential meetings.

[00:08:35] Bob: Talking about hey, why don’t you come meet me and my daughter, I mean that’s a nex--, sort of a next stage request, right?

[00:08:40] Debbie Fox: Yeah, very much so. And there was actually even one morning when he and I, Russell and I were video chatting and my son swung by to drop off their dog for me to watch for the day, and Russell and I were on the video chat, and after my son left, he, Russell even said to me, "Oh, I thought, you know, it would have been an opportunity to meet your son."

[00:09:00] Bob: So this seems like a relationship with a real future, but just as things become more intense, there’s a monkey wrench thrown in their plans to meet.

[00:09:10] Debbie Fox: There was sabotage within his own contractor base that he told me that a couple of contract engineers removed some electrical or messed with some electrical component that ended up in an explosion causing two deaths and three injuries. And that's when he said he and his attorneys had to fly to Saudi to be on the ground to, to deal with that situation.

[00:09:38] Bob: And when Russell gets to Saudi Arabia, things get far more complicated.

[00:09:43] Debbie Fox: So then he’s taken to court. He's required as the, the business owner, the project lead to make restitution for these families. He's self-insured on the project because he explains that he has complexity in getting insurance because of the area. But he was affluent enough so he was self-insured. And so that's when he had me, he was telling me that he was having challenges tapping into his business accounts, his banking accounts from Saudi and hesitantly said, "I hate to ask you this, but can you help me? I'm just having, I'm trying to tap into different VPNs and IP addresses to, you know, show that I'm at a different location, but it's not working." And so he needed help doing transfers from his business account to wires. And that had me mildly on edge because we didn't know each other very long and when you ask somebody to tap into your business accounts, you know that's, that’s, that's a pretty big ask.

[00:10:51] Bob: So Russell is having trouble accessing his financial accounts from overseas and says he just wants Debbie to do the web browsing for him, essentially. It’s a big ask, but...

[00:11:02] Debbie Fox: But the interesting thing is, when I was in Cuba in a third world country with the embargo, I realized how complicated it can be when you're outside of your own country. In Cuba, I was not able to access or use any of my banking, my credit cards, my US sim card, we traveled with cash, and so that is what I used in the foreground of my thinking that okay, I understand when you're out of country things aren't as they, they seem. And so a couple of days go by, he was hesitant again as I said and then I said, "Look, you know it's, I, I can help you." So he coached me, he sent me log in information for his bank account. He withheld the password, he actually told that to me over the phone. I got on, online. It was a bank in Nevada. He had me do a transaction for 1.2 million to Taiwan to pay for a replacement part that was the damaged part of this explosion.

[00:12:07] Bob: By now, Debbie has done some background research on Russell, and while logging into his account feels awkward, it does give her the chance to verify some of the details he had shared with her. And she sees that he indeed has a sizeable bank account.

[00:12:23] Debbie Fox: There were millions of dollars in the balance, so I was internally a little self-assured, okay, that business name is there, and I see the balance in the account. The transaction went through. Then he had me do another domestic transaction, which I didn't ask him about, to a business entity in Florida that also went through without issue. Then he needed to...

[00:12:49] Bob: Well, could I just clarify for a second.

[00:12:51] Debbie Fox: Yes.

[00:12:51] Bob: You’re moving his money around for him.

[00:12:52] Debbie Fox: I’m moving his money around for him.

[00:12:56] Bob: But then, something else goes wrong.

[00:12:59] Debbie Fox: So then he’s, you know has to pay restitution for these, these families who were injured. So he has me get on his Swiss bank account, which is his personal account, and there's a problem. I log in for him, I get a warning, an IRS warning that the account has been frozen. I log in again, same result. So I tell him, he seems to be unfazed, and he said, "Well I'm going to have to check into that." He gets back to me and the next day and he said he talked to his wealth manager and said that his account has been caught up in a larger number of American accounts by the IRS for investigating tax evasion, not his in particular, but just in general, and he was caught up in that. So his account is frozen. So now he cannot access the $10 million he needed to pay restitution for these families.

[00:14:07] Bob: Russell says he’s able to use short-term loans to get most of the funds he needs to make those payments, but there’s a small shortfall now that there’s an IRS hold. And so Russell asks Debbie for a different kind of help this time. He asks for money. But Debbie, well she is already prepared for that.

[00:14:28] Debbie Fox: So he was short $48,000. So he was kind of at his wit’s end, and again, this is ongoing over a two-week span, and he says, "I hate to even ask this of you, but is there any way that you can help me?" And I said, "You know, I really can't. I told you from the beginning, I'm comfortable, but I'm not a woman of affluence, and I just don’t have the funds to do that. My investments are tied up in retirement funds." And he was, you know, really embarrassed and apologetic and he said, "I'm really sorry. I don't want you to think badly." And so that was that.

[00:15:04] Bob: And so that was that. Well, not quite. A few days go by and Russell brings up the $48,000 loan again.

[00:15:14] Debbie Fox: And I said, "Look, it would be complicated. I would need to sell stock and there's a tax consequence, it's, I just don't have money just available." And he said to me, "Are you telling me that you have the potential to help me but you're, you're not willing to?" But I told him, I said, "No, I, I really just can't." So that was enough to stir guilt inside of me and I had enormous inner struggle with that, and ultimately asked myself the question, if I knew I could help someone I cared about, cared for and didn't, could I live with myself? And the answer was no. Now at this point, he's also put in front of me his international bank statements with account numbers and balances again on watermarked letterhead including a copy of his US passport, this letter of guarantee from the bank, and I had this verification that his business is a filed LLC in California that, you know, my own vetting, I've now seen the balance in his, his business bank account, so I can't prove or disprove. But he's been kind and we've had this great interaction all the way through. So I was really conflicted.

[00:16:41] Bob: Debbie is really conflicted, but she’d taken many leaps of faith recently, like that 18-month trip. So she decides to take another one.

[00:16:52] Debbie Fox: But then I just said, “Okay, I will do this, but here it's going to take some days, some moving around.” He had his attorney draw up a loan agreement that his attorney and both himself signed, which I didn't ask for but he gave it to me, and there was another little bit of, you know, comfort. And so I wired funds to a business in Florida, traditional banking, so USD. So I send the wire and I am an absolute puddle. I am a nervous wreck this whole time. I get to the car. I send him a message, we were communicating in WhatsApp, I said, “The transaction's been done. It's complete.” And he immediately called me, 'cause in my mind I'm thinking, okay, if he's scamming me, he's going to disappear. But he calls me and he said, "How are you?" And I said, "I am a mess." He said, "I knew you would be; I want to let you know I'm not going anyplace. I'm here. Thank you for doing that." That put me at ease.

[00:17:58] Bob: So Debbie feels like her risk has paid off. Their relationship was at a crossroads and now it’s taken a step forward. A big step forward. Far enough forward that she decides to tell her family about it.

[00:18:12] Debbie Fox: It happens to be Thanksgiving, so now I'm traveling to my, my daughter in, in another state, and that's where I'm telling her, 'cause I'm, I don’t share my dating life with my kids. First of all, they're, my kids are adults, they're amazing, they're accomplished. They do not want to hear about their mom's dating life. On any level. So, but because I knew the prospect of this man retiring and moving to Europe, which was always part of what I knew about him from the beginning and appealing to me because I had fallen in love with Italy, with, with Europe, and so I thought, well I at least better lay the groundwork to let them know. So I, I, you know, let them know that I was interacting with a man, a dual passport holder, lives in California, moving to Europe at the age of retirement. So now I'm, you know, in my daughter's home, and she and I are able to have more conversation. And I happen to share that I was comforted by doing a wire on his behalf and seeing that he's a man of affluence. And she said, "Mom, you know you can be imprisoned if you're helping someone move money around fraudulently." And I poo-pooed her. I thought, well okay, number one, I didn't know that, but I'm not concerned about that at all. And I gave her my whole Cuba spiel. I said, "If anything, I'm reassured that he is who he’s saying he is, because I've seen the business name and the, the balance." So I leave there and I come home back to Colorado. And she starts digging on her own. Now she's a data scientist, so she's extremely analytic. She starts digging on her own, gets on his company website, another website that he has for a professional profile. She does not like what she's seeing at all. So she brings my other two kids into the fold with her, with her, um, alarm bells ringing loudly, and a couple days go by and she actually calls and she says, "Mom, I just, I hope you find someone. I want you to be in a relationship but I don't like what I'm seeing." So she's now bringing this to my attention. And quite honestly, I had already gone through so much internal anxiety to get to this point that I did not have any bandwidth for anyone else's fear. And it's, we're not in each other's business of my family. They live, they’re independent, I raised them to be independent. I'm independent. So this was a very unusual conversation for me to have, and I felt a little, I was a little miffed. It’s like you're going behind my back and, you know, without me telling her this. But I'm listening, I'm giving her space to express herself. On one hand, I'm grateful she's doing what she should be doing if she's concerned about her mom's welfare. On the other hand, it's like, well how dare you, you know, sneak around behind my back. Like it was a weird moment to be in. And so when Russell and I talked, he, his phone call came through when I was on the phone with my daughter, and I, I let, I didn't pick his up, I let my, finish my, with my daughter, but when I hung up with her, I was pretty rattled.

[00:21:36] Bob: Within a few minutes, Russell calls back, and once again he says just the right thing to put Debbie at ease.

[00:21:44] Debbie Fox: And I said, "Well I've been on the phone with my daughter," and I'm just making small talk. And he said, "Debbie, you're not saying anything." And he's right, me, yes, my mouth is moving and words are coming out, but it's nothing of substance because I'm emotionally pretty upset. And so he pulls it out of me, and I tell him. And we talked at length about all of that and about her concerns and, and I said, “You know, Russell, I would expect the same of your daughter. I would expect, if your network, if your circle hasn't already done a background check on me,” me thinking a man of affluence, like they should, or you know, they should. And that, you know, she's asking the right questions, she's not bringing up anything that I hadn't already asked about myself in concerns. So we’re having a really rational, adult conversation. Putting some pretty hard topics out there. At no point in time did he ever become defensive.

[00:22:45] Bob: Debbie hangs up feeling better, but her family is still concerned, and then she gets a dinner invitation almost immediately from her kids which she tells Russell about.

[00:22:57] Debbie Fox: And I thought, okay. This is a setup, I just felt it. And I told him. I said, "I," you know, "I'm going over to my son's for dinner and I have a feeling this subject's going to come up." And sure enough, it did. And it was hard, and it was uncomfortable. And again, I'm hearing everyone's fears and I don't have the emotional bandwidth to absorb anyone else's fears. And so it becomes a little overwhelming to be honest, because here I have gone through my internal vetting and flushing out, and I got this really kind, caring human whose face I'm seeing on my phone now we're daily and for weeks on end. So I'm connected to him.

[00:23:44] Bob: She’s even more conflicted, but Russell, once again, knows just what to say.

[00:23:51] Debbie Fox: So this is a Friday evening and on, on Saturday he calls and we have a 2-hour deep dive into all of this again, which was just really reassuring to me. And I thought, okay, he said, you know, "Debbie, there are people who are going to think that we should live our lives in a certain way, but we deserve to live the life of our own, and they don't always need to know everything that's going on." He wasn't, it wasn't said in the sense of don't talk to anyone about this so much of what I hear from other scam situations. It wasn't any of that, but it was more of what sounded reasonable of, yeah, we are entitled to some privacy as well.

[00:24:35] Bob: But before they hang up, Russell has a new problem.

[00:24:39] Debbie Fox: So then, then what happened next was, he had another situation where his international bank was going to open up a new account under his Dutch passport giving him a credit card and extensive line of credit. He needed $100,000 to fund that new account. He came up with 50,000 of the 100,000 needed, and then his Dutch attorney convinced the bank to lower the amount to 60,000. So he was just $10,000 short.

[00:25:17] Bob: He’s $10,000 short. They talk about it and, and Debbie decides again that she can lend Russell the money. It’s actually a much easier request for her to fulfill than last time, but it’s not that easy.

[00:25:31] Debbie Fox: And I said, “I can give you the 10. I have that in a savings account, but it’s coming from my December, money that I would use to pay my December bills.” I said, “I would need it back quickly.” And he said, "Well yes, I probably, within 48 hours I will have all of the stuff in hand. It’s okay.” So I’m, and I said, “This is just a straight wire, so I don’t even have to sell anything. I’ve got it.” So I, I did that second 10,000.

[00:25:58] Bob: She sends the money and nearly immediately Debbie hears from, not Russell this time, but Russell’s attorney.

[00:26:06] Debbie Fox: And he said, “Our boy, Russell’s in trouble. He went to get some medical help using this new credit card number, it was declined, and so they’re arresting, they’ve arrested him for you know using something that wasn’t valid. And it turns out that there’s an internal glitch within the bank and that they really do need the $100,000, so if you could send him 20,000 more or you know, make up the difference...”

[00:26:39] Bob: And hearing that request from this new person, well it flips a switch inside Debbie.

[00:26:46] Debbie Fox: At this point, I was removed from the fog that I was living in because now I’m dealing with another individual, who I’ve never met, who I have no relationship, who I have no emotional attachment. So my logical brain was fully in place, fully in gear in thinking I don’t know who you are. I’m asked... sending him a message. I need authentication of who you are, credentials, and this doesn’t make sense. People can have bad luck, but this is the third pretty significant mishap; something doesn’t feel right. And so now I’m messaging Russell, and he’s not responding, so I’m sending him a WhatsApp message. I’m calling him on WhatsApp. He’s not responding. I’m sending him a text message, I’m calling him on his US number on his, on his phone. It goes to voicemail. He finally responds in text on his phone and he says, and I mean I was saying to him, “If you’re not scamming me, you need to let me know, because I don’t like how any of this is unfolding.” And he responds, “How dare you threaten me or accuse me of scamming.”

[00:28:01] Bob: This is a new Russell. And well, now at this point Debbie realizes his name probably isn’t Russell at all, and the whole story, the explosion, the loan, the Swiss bank account, the relationship they’d shared, it all falls apart like a house of cards.

[00:28:20] Debbie Fox: So I, I knew I’d been scammed at that moment.

[00:28:23] Bob: That just, can you even try to describe that moment to people?

[00:28:26] Debbie Fox: Crushing. The, the most horrific devastation you can even imagine. I’m alone in my home, I’m isolated, I’ve given this man my trust. I care about this person. I have now sent $58,000 plus grossing up for taxes, mind you, because it took, came out of a taxable account. I am absolutely crushed. I’m sobbing, the deep guttural sob where you can barely breathe. I feel sick to my stomach. I drop to the floor. All the drama that Hollywood could put paint around this, I was, the depth of emotion was a severe as any that I felt.

[00:29:15] Bob: And, and you’ve been through a lot in your life.

[00:29:17] Debbie Fox: I’ve been through a lot, yes, yes, I’ve been through a lot.

[00:29:20] Bob: I mean you, you’ve been, your, your husband died of cancer, right?

[00:29:27] Debbie Fox: He, 16 months he suffered from cancer. I was at his bedside when he died. My husband, my first husband, the father of my three children, leaves me, I’m completely oblivious that he’s leaving me to raise three kids on my own. Life has not always been easy. And I’m faced with, with a medical condition that ended up in my kidney being removed, my daughters were in a Jeep rollover accident when they were younger, having to be airvac’d, like I’ve seen, I’ve seen some stuff.

[00:30:01] Bob: And yet, this moment feels like the worst of all.

[00:30:05] Debbie Fox: Second worst of all. First of all was my first husband leaving me and my three children, but definitely, if I were to rank them because I’ve been asked that, this is the second, because now I’m realizing this human intentionally got to know me to use my vulnerability against me. Who does that? I can’t even...

[00:30:29] Bob: So Debbie fills out a police report, tells a local police detective every last detail of her story. She calls her financial advisor, and then she calls a close friend.

[00:30:39] Debbie Fox: She, I know her through widowhood. She is one of the wisest people I know and she does not place judgment. She is, provides the most space that anyone could ever want to just be able to share what you need to share. And I said, “You know what, I just, this is what it is and to sit in this any longer is just a waste of time. I have to face the consequences...this is the moment. I’m owning this.”

[00:31:11] Bob: And one of the ways Debbie decides to own this, is to share her story with a local news station, to warn others who might end up in the same situation. She doesn’t take that decision lightly.

[00:31:23] Debbie Fox: To be honest, it took a lot for me to even go public, and I had in-depth conversations with my therapist; this is what I’m thinking, is it wise for my mental health to do this? He said, “Knowing you as I know you, do you have any other choice?” I said, “No.” I said, “Should I be anonymous or go, you know with my face and my name? I think that my name will have more credibility.” He agreed.

[00:31:46] Bob: So she goes on Denver’s 9News and tells her story.

[00:31:51] (newsclip) Last year more than 60,000 people fell for romance scams in the US sending love interests more than a billion dollars. Debbie Fox’s case is included in that number ... She started to question Russell’s identity and realized this relationship may not have been as real as she thought.

            I am just literally sick to my stomach, like literally. I am in disbelief. It is raw emotion.

[00:32:17] Bob: The station even interviews the police detective who took an interest in her case, but ultimately was unable to recover any of her stolen money. The piece airs a few days later and it’s posted on YouTube by the TV channel and... well frankly, nothing could have prepared Debbie for what happens next.

[00:32:36] Debbie Fox: Let’s see. Let’s get to the lovely comments. I’ll just start reading from the top because they’re all pretty similarly. One comment is, “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand how people still fall for this. Hasn’t it been like 15 years since this, these became popular? Don’t send money to someone you don’t know, especially tens of thousands of dollars. Protect yourselves.” Let’s see, I love the one where they say you need to get a life. Oh here we go. (giggles) This is great. “This woman needs to focus on her inner self. She is, she was so desperate to be in a relationship she literally paid for it.” That is hysterical, obviously, they don’t know me. Okay, this, this comment here, “58K within two months and she doesn’t even get anywhere close to a happy ending which is probably what she was aiming for.” Aren’t they abhorrent?

[00:33:29] Bob: It’s, it’s really skin crawling. Um, they’re, they’re cruel. They’re just really cruel, right?

[00:33:34] Debbie Fox: This woman says, “I’m 82-years-old, and I can say 100% that I would not send money to someone I’d never met. How can anyone be so lonely and so in need of love to foolishly send huge sums of money to a stranger?”

[00:33:48] Bob: And as Debbie reads the comments to me, new ones are still appearing. They get darker and darker.

[00:33:56] Debbie Fox: Yeah, “She wasn’t a victim, she was a willing participant. All that money to someone she never met. I’m glad I’m not hungry for love.” “Is this a mental disorder? A normal person would never send money to someone they never met in person. If you get the urge to send money to a stranger, stop. Turn off your internet and never look back.” “Total powerlessness. She gave the money away. She just, she lost nothing. Now she whines to the news to rescue her. She’s an embarrassment as an adult.” (laugh) Touche! Oh my gosh. I’m sorry, I’m, I’m glad I’ve reached the point where I can laugh at this, how appalling it is, but at first it was pretty crushing.

[00:34:40] Bob: So crushing that Debbie goes online looking for someone to talk to about the public shaming that she’s enduring. And she finds Erin West, a tech crime prosecutor in California who is also a very public victim advocate. Erin responds right away and has a look at the video and the comments.

[00:35:00] Bob: Just give me your gut reaction to what you saw.

[00:35:02] Erin West: It just broke my heart, it's just awful. I mean we live in a place where there are internet trolls, and we get that that's happening, but to see it in this context really broke my heart.

[00:35:16] Bob: We’re not talking about a negative comment or two or three, we’re talking about an avalanche. So many that it’s important for people to see and experience what an attack like this really feels like. There are so many of these negative comments that I wasn’t sure that it was just internet trolls. It seemed to me that this, these are the reactions we often hear from people, right?

[00:35:40] Erin West: Oh, you’re absolutely right. What really bothered me is like you took the time to watch her thing in completion, and then like it mattered so much to you to be mean and nasty that you then posted this rude comment. And I, I think that's what's interesting to me, like there are plenty of things that we see all the time that we don't like and we just scroll through, but like you took the time to write something mean.

[00:36:06] Bob: I asked Erin to read and react to a few more of the comments.

[00:36:11] Erin West: Okay, from Sherri, “This is her fault. Law enforcement has felonies to deal with. Stupid decisions, no one to blame.”

[00:36:18] Bob: What do you think of that?

[00:36:19] Erin West: Well it’s, it’s agonizing because I think every piece of this is wrong. So, "This is her fault." No, it isn't. Here's the thing. We are dealing with a threat actor that is skilled in manipulating the brains of its victims. These scammers are trained in how to brainwash victims in using really sophisticated psychological techniques. So there is, no matter how smart you are, no matter how adept you are, you are no match for these scammers. So the idea that this is her fault, this is not her fault. She's a regular person who would like companionship like everybody else in the world. So I take issue with that. Second, "Law enforcement has felonies to deal with." Again, like showing, showing the um, and I say it with respect but the ignorance of Sherri1971, I also am a 1971 person, so she's, she's got some um, you know she's got some trips around the sun under her belt, but she doesn't understand that this is the biggest felony we have in the United States right now. This is a war that's been declared upon us by an international threat actor that is causing thefts of billions and billions of dollars. So law enforcement actually has no bigger felony to deal with than what happened to Debbie Fox. And then "Stupid decisions, no one to blame," again, just showing the, actually the naivete of Sherri1971, that she just has, she has no idea what she's talking about.

[00:37:57] Bob: As I warned, the comments get really, really nasty.

[00:38:03] Erin West: Ugh, “Look in the mirror. Remember your age. You will only attract scammers. Learn to engage in volunteer work. Get a hobby. Engage with your family because @YourPrinceCharming turned into a frog." Oh, ugh. As a woman over 50, the whole concept that women of this age are not entitled to love is, is pounding me in the face in this comment. And that she’s over the hill, and this is a, this, to me, was such an attack on her character that like she’s not entitled to have someone love her because she’s old, and “Look in the mirror?” I mean my goodness, what a horrible thing to say to someone. “You will only attract scammers,” as though no one could possibly be interested in a woman over 50. The, but the idea, it's just, it's exhausting and frustrating, and and that the only, the only things that she should be doing as a woman of her age are volunteer work and hobbies and family. She sure certainly shouldn't be out trying to start a movement and, and raise attention to this massive crime wave. She should be at home gardening and taking care of cats. It's exhausting, and it's part of a, a worldwide narrative about the, the usefulness of older women that is, that's disgusting.

[00:39:28] Bob: And finally, here’s another comment we often hear from people who are ignorant of the crime and of the law.

[00:39:36] Erin West: Okay, so Lee Still says, "HE. DIDN'T. TAKE. HER. MONEY! SHE. GAVE. IT. TO. HIM." All capital letters, all periods. Like this guy really needed to sit down and, and let us know his thoughts on this. He needed to dig in and let us know because he obviously is the expert on all of this. He understands how it all works. (sigh) And then the smiling, laughing so hard he's crying emoji at the end. This unfortunately is one of the really awful pieces of victims trying to report this crime, is they hear this exact sentence. It's like, well, I don't see a crime here because you sent him that money. And it shows the naivete and the, just the, the lack of understanding of what this crime is. And while she sent this person money, he didn't go into her bank and took it. What he did was use sophisticated tactics to manipulate her into doing something she wouldn't ordinarily do. And that is theft by false pretenses. He led her to believe things that were not true, and he manipulated her. That's, that's a crime.

[00:40:55] Bob: That’s a crime. We’ll get into the law in a minute and to the connection between this kind of cruelty and the environment that perpetuates crimes like this, but I can’t say enough about the human toll this kind of cruelty takes on people.

[00:41:11] Bob: Didn’t this really hurt? Didn’t they hurt you?

[00:41:16] Debbie Fox: Tremendously, tremendously. If, if I had been told before I went public that I would have these comments, I would not have gone public. That is the honest truth. And I now understand why victims of cybercrime who are entrenched in their own guilt and shame, I understand why they don’t report. I understand why they don’t come public, and I would caution them to go public because you’d better have some pretty thick skin to be ready for the next shoe that’s going to drop in your orbit, and that’s this horrific cruelty. Because to these people who have made these comments and now mind you, some of the comments are positive, and I don’t want to not notice that. And for every like, for every thumbs up, I recognize that that’s, that reflects a positive, a positive comment, positive feedback. But for those naysayers, would you say these things if you were standing in front of me? Would you say them to my face? I’ll bet you would not.

[00:42:15] Bob: If you’ve learned one thing about Debbie listening to the podcast, it’s that she doesn’t quit on things. And so, after the initial shock of all this cruelty, she has set out to raise awareness again, this time about the pain of shaming and blaming that people can inflict on a crime victim, causing an entirely new round of victimization.

[00:42:36] Debbie Fox: And so I have, I’m leaning more heavily into that really disgusting part of our society and wanting to enact change if I can, but I’m also seeing a significant lack of not only understanding of what victims go through, but also resources for victims. I’m now connected to other victims who have lost way more than I. Their lives are destroyed, their families are destroyed, I’m now aware of this, and that’s where my advocacy, it’s like, I cannot unknow what I now know what’s happening in this space and I am wired for strength and resilience, and if my voice can be used as a megaphone to speak on behalf of these vast number of victims who are, whose lives are forever altered, then that’s what I’ll do because there’s nothing more that anyone else can do to hurt me. I just, you know, my shield is back up. I have regained my power, and I’ll do what I can in this space to enact change.

[00:43:44] Bob: So if you could picture, speak for that person or anyone who’s in that place and respond directly to these commentors, what would you say?

[00:43:54] Debbie Fox: To be honest, I don’t, what would I say? That I think it’s, it’s an affliction to sit back and judge another when you don’t know the full scope of a situation. I do think it’s, it’s a frailty within our community, within our society. And the reason I say that is because the eye-opener for me nearly 20 years ago now, was volunteering at a center where children, young children were removed from their homes due to sexual and other horrific abuse, and I remember working with this, reading with this one little 10-year-old boy, and we were never told as volunteers, we were never told of the details of their situation. But he was having a bad day and I could tell it, and he said to me, “You don’t understand. I’m having a really bad day.” And I thought to myself, you are right. I don’t understand. I can’t even fathom what you’re going through. And so I stopped judging. And even when I’m standing serving homeless people who some of my friends will say, “Well you know, they really like being homeless,” which just makes me want to jump out of my skin, when I think, oh, that man in a wheelchair who’s missing a leg, you think he wants to be homeless? Who are we to judge the decisions that they make, good or bad? And so I think that of these negative commentors. It’s like, you don’t know me. You don’t know how full and robust my life is. You don’t know that I golf and play pickleball and workout and Latin dance and ride my bike and camp and hike and travel and camp in a tent for crying out loud. Like I do it all because I love life and living. So for you to sit back and say, “She needs to get a life and needs to do inner work,” you don’t know me, so stop judging someone else unless you’re, empathy means trying to put yourself in that person’s position. We need more empathy to be understanding and accepting of other humans. That’s what I would say.

[00:46:16] Bob: It’s easy to see why cruel reactions might keep people from reporting crimes or even talking about crimes. And we all know and understand that silence helps the criminals. When you do what Erin West does, or what I do, frankly, the kind of treatment Debbie got really gets in the way. But it’s more than that.

[00:46:37] Erin West: But somehow, it is still very acceptable, and in fact, encouraged to make fun of victims of economic crime. And the cold, hard truth that we can see through banking and movement of money is that billions and billions, tens of billions of dollars are being moved. And so we know that it's happening. And the longer we keep pushing people down and not encouraging them to report and tell their story, the longer this gets perpetrated. When you find out that this happened to someone in your neighborhood, you can be a lot more empathetic because that's a real person. And that's a real person that you know and you see it in neighborhood BBQs and you know they're not stupid. And you can understand how, wow, this is happening to people in my circle. It makes it more real and it, and it makes people want to do something to make it stop happening.

[00:47:26] Bob: This sentiment, it’s not just cruel, uh like we’ve been talking about cruelty in trolling, “He didn’t take her money, she gave it to him,” But it’s actually a real, live law enforcement obstacle, right, because many people do go to the police and get some variation of that that gets in the way of them actually reporting the crime, and it gets in the way of us trying to catch the criminal. So I, I think I want to dwell on this just a little bit more why, the idea that he didn’t take her money, she gave it to him, is not just mean, it’s, it’s wrong, and it’s an obstacle towards justice.

[00:47:57] Erin West: You couldn’t be more right. It's a real problem. When I first started looking at this problem with transnational organized crime and romance scams, I started to look at what would it actually take to make things different, to make things, to, to really undermine this horrible crime. And one of the things that was obvious to me was the major stigma that is attached to the reporting process. And we talk about it every time we present on this. We say, oh, and we know these ne--, these, these numbers are low because people don't want to report. But the reason why they don't want to report is because in large part, they are being greeted with calloused law enforcement, and I say that with love because I've been in law enforcement for 26 years, who are not understanding a couple of things. They're not understanding how big the problem is, but they're also not understanding the amount of destruction that is happening to these people. That they're happy to investigate a case where if somebody got beat up in a bar or if somebody got hit by a car or whatever, but the amount of trauma that is happening to these scam victims is off the charts. There’s a level of devastation to having your entire financial stability ripped out from under you combined with finding out that the one person in the world that you trusted had been plotting your demise since day one. That is a beating that some people just are not set up to endure. And so until we realize how damaging this crime is, how pervasive this crime is, and really get our law enforcement onboard with understanding, yes, this is a financial crime that the effects of this are devastating, we're going to continue to have difficult interactions between our law enforcement and our victims that are really stifling our ability to make a difference in undermining transnational organized crime.

[00:50:18] Bob: And just to put a fine point on it, these actually are crimes, right?

[00:50:22] Erin West: One hundred percent, these are crimes. Absolutely they are crimes. What this is is we have provisions in the law that are, that are theft by trick, theft by false pretenses. Essentially when you, well we're talking about a couple of different types of romance scams, but the romance scam that Debbie Fox endured was one that was, you know, false pretenses. He led her to believe a lot of different things that turned out to not be true. All of these are crimes.

[00:50:48] Bob: Erin has heard from victims for years who were terrified to tell their story because they didn’t want to go through the kind of public flogging that Debbie endured.

[00:50:57] Erin West: Well, I think of when these, when I first started trying to publicize what a major problem this was, and I would talk to victims, and I would say, "Would you be willing to talk to the media about this?" And the answer is no, always no. And, and the reason why is you're really putting yourself, you're really exposing yourself. Like in a way that it's difficult enough to report to the police and to hand over transcripts of the most intimate conversations you've had with these victims. The idea of putting your face in the community that you live and saying I... I was manipulated, I was the victim of a crime because it, there's a mental component that's different. People can understand if you got robbed at the ATM and they're like, oh my God, I'm so sorry that happened to you. But there just is such a lack of empathy for these types of crimes where people erroneously think that, that there was some complicity or some, that if the, that if the victim had only been smarter this wouldn't have happened to them. It's just a lack of understanding. I think it’s enough to make people suicidal. It's enough to make people really, really question their, their whole lives. It's just, it's, it's a terrible beating. It's a terrible, horrendous beating to put yourself out there to expose some intimate things about yourself and then have people then make fun of you.

[00:52:28] Bob: Now is a good time to remind you that if you or someone you love is in crisis, you can call or text 988 right now and get immediate help.

[00:52:38] Bob: I mean this, this is a, a serious obstacle to getting justice here, right?

[00:52:42] Erin West: It’s a very serious obstacle, and there's the justice part of it and there's the awareness part of it. And until, until humans see other humans that look like themselves saying that this happened to them, they will not believe they could be a victim of this. So it just, the media is a huge part of how we fight this crime. And for me, the opportunity to talk about this on your podcast is a really big deal because I'm hoping that someone will hear what Debbie says, and somebody will hear what I say, and they will feel a little bit more empowered than they did the day before to perhaps share their story. And so we just don't want to stifle any communication about this, because it's, it's an integral part of how we move forward.

[00:53:28] Bob: Because the criminals win when we do that.

[00:53:30] Erin West: One hundred percent! One hundred percent! That’s exactly what happens, and they’re already winning. We’re so far behind, so like let’s at least get up to speed on talking about how we’re being crushed by these people. Let’s let the people talk and let’s be empathetic when we listen to them.

[00:53:46] Bob: Debbie is now on a long journey towards recovering financially and emotionally from what happened to her. But she’s also hard at work advocating for victims, working to change the language around victimhood, something I’m sure you can tell we care a lot about at AARP.

[00:54:02] Debbie Fox: So I was really caught off guard by the comments. And that had me spinning in and of itself, but then at time, I’ve been able to reframe then and say, okay, this tells me where advocacy is needed, because I’m now aware of the vocabulary, the language that’s even used around this crime. You know a victim falls for, or a victim loss. Well did a victim fall? Or was she, you know, do victims really fall for a crime? Do they really lose their money or was it stolen? So even the vocabulary around it in our society is, is off kilter. We’ve created this dialog within our society of our own citizens placing blame on victims which, which takes the conversation completely away from the criminal.

[00:54:59] Bob: One person who did help Debbie by saying the right thing, listening, and offering kind advice was her financial advisor who she called soon after discovering the scam.

[00:55:00] Debbie Fox: I said, “I, full disclosure, I messed up. I sent money.” And he said, “No!” And I said, “Yes.” He said, “Okay, look, I know you’re feeling guilt and shame, there’s nothing that I can do to change that. We’re going to just view this as a bad investment.” People of, of great wealth, they do make some kind of investment that he told me about that I didn’t know of, and he said, “The risks/reward is high and low and we’re just going to chuck it up as that and we’re going to move forward.” I was one of the lucky ones to not lose the shirt off my back. I’m the lucky one who has gone through, experienced enough life to have thick skin and resilience and know that this situation does not define me, nor will it break me, nor is, has it broken me. So I know the fight in me. Now I have to be careful that I’m not jeopardizing my own healing in this process. I know that my, my physical manifestations when I’m in trouble and I need help. And so that’s when I dip deeper into selfcare and thankfully I live in this beautiful state of Colorado that makes being in nature, which is my elixir, so easily, so easy to just drive down the road and there I am in this beautiful, magnificent surrounding. I’m really saddened that this is the culture in which we live. We all experience good and bad to some degree. But when bad hits us, our power is how we respond in that moment. That’s our power. So we can decide to move forward or to let it take us down. My resilience is to move forward, forward is the only direction.

[00:56:41] Bob: Forward is the only direction. And as I promised, let me explain how you can help too. Little things can make a big difference. We need to make a safe landing space for victims of crimes, so they can come forward and tell their stories and not feel shame. You can be that kind friend who offers empathy and nonjudgmental help. You can point out to others they’re being cruel or mean or even just judgmental. Look, it’s human nature to ask, how could this happen? For some strange reason it makes us feel better to blame the victims of crimes, it somehow makes us feel safer like it won’t happen to us. But it’s not productive; it’s wrong, it’s painful, and it really does enable more crime by perpetuating shame and driving victims to silence. So think about Debbie the next time that blamey voice inside starts to rise up inside of you, and then make a different choice. Your words really do matter.

[00:57:46] Bob: You can also get more ideas on how to talk with victims of crimes at aarp.org/saythis. For The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.

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[00:58:08] Bob: If you have been targeted by a scam or fraud, you are not alone. Call the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360. Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next. Our email address at The Perfect Scam is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org, and we want to hear from you. If you've been the victim of a scam or you know someone who has, and you'd like us to tell their story, write to us. That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org. Thank you to our team of scambusters; Associate Producer, Annalea Embree; Researcher, Becky Dodson; Executive Producer, Julie Getz; and our Audio Engineer and Sound Designer, Julio Gonzalez. Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For AARP's The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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