Criminal - Gil From London

Episode Date: May 15, 2015

Karen Miller met a man named Gil Harper on Facebook. They started flirting. The flirtation grew more serious. Eventually, they planned to meet in real life. Gil would travel from London to meet Karen for her birthday. With his arrival just a few days away, Karen's son scrambled to learn more about Gil's identity. But trying to determine whether someone is who they say they are turned out to be a whole lot more confusing and dangerous than Chris imagined. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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which had happened 10 years ago. And then I shared that I was a widow as well, and that I had lost Kevin almost three years ago. This is Karen Miller. She's 68 years old, retired, and living in Simi Valley, California. And I had a deep amount of empathy for him, thinking that he lost a wife and a child. I couldn't even imagine that. And so I was very, very sympathetic, empathetic, because that's how I am. That's how I am with everybody.

As Karen mentioned, she lost her husband, Kevin, a few years ago, and she's still grieving. The last few years have been hard for her, and she says she certainly wasn't in the market for a new boyfriend when a stranger named Gil Harper sent her a friend request on Facebook. What did he look like in his profile picture? Nice looking man. He had said he was 63 and so he looked like a 63 year old man. You know, so we started just chatting, talking with one another. He said he'd stumbled across her profile while searching for an old friend. He thought she had a nice smile, and that's why he sent the friend request. At first they talked about simple things.

They both like country music. They both like to travel. And then the conversations became more personal, each of them describing how hard it was to lose a spouse and be alone. They were chatting on Facebook every single day. Karen began to look forward to it. I was flirtatious with him because it was fun to think that there was this person over there in another country who found me attractive, and it was kind of intriguing to me that, wow, I wonder if I could find love again, and wouldn't that be nice? Because they were in different time zones,

Gil would write Karen long romantic messages before he went to bed at night, and she would read them when she woke up in the morning. After about three weeks of this daily chatting, Gil asked if he could come visit Karen in California to see whether they got along as well in real life as they did online. You know, he said, how about I come to where you are? And I said, for a visit? You know, that would be fine if you want to come here for a visit. Before Gil showed up in LA, Karen figured she better tell her three sons what was going on. She sent the same text message to all of them. It said, I met someone. I wrote back, wow. Wow, mom. This is Karen's son, Chris

Onderdonk. He's 42. He remembers he was at work when he got his mother's text. He's a clinical social worker. She had replied back, I'll tell you all about it this weekend. And that was on Tuesday. And I was thinking to myself, I'm not going to be able to wait until the weekend to hear about this. I want to hear about it right away. Secretly, I was hoping that, boy, I've met him through a friend of a friend,

and he's a wonderful guy, and that's kind of what I really wanted to hear. And so when she said I met him on Facebook, I was immediately feeling some concern. Did you tell her that? Not immediately. I'm being sensitive to how serious it seemed, because I figured if she's telling me about it, it's something she's invested in. So I just asked her more questions about how did she meet him, what's he like, what does he do, what's his story. Here's what he learned. Gil Harper was self-employed as a contractor. He negotiated deals buying and selling copper, and he'd attended the

University of London. Chris went to Facebook to see what Gil looked like. So what it looks like is an older gentleman on vacation. He's standing in front of the Roman Colosseum. And he looks really happy. And normal, right? Very normal. Clean cut. So I was like, yeah, that's a good looking guy. But there was only that one photo, no others, and very little other information

on the profile. Something didn't feel right to Chris, and he was on a deadline. Gil told Karen that he would be in India for a three-day business trip, and from there he'd be flying to Los Angeles to meet her. So Chris only had a couple of days. Trying to figure out whether someone is who they say they are, matching a name to a face to a voice to a backstory, turned out to be a lot harder than Chris could have imagined. He ended up on a wild goose chase, and we wound up on one of our own. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. I would say it was sparse compared to other Facebook profiles that I'm used to seeing. Because normally, even if you don't know somebody, if you're not friends with them,

you can usually maybe look at their friends. And I did see that he had one friend, and it was my mom. Karen, are you laughing? Yes. Why are you laughing? It's true. It's true.

He had one friend, me. I was thinking, well, his profile is sparse because he just started it. He found me, and he's zeroing in on me. Chris told his mother to ask Gil for more photos. So Karen asked Gil, and Gil did send more photos, which only made Karen more confident. But Chris was still feeling funny. It didn't make you resentful or angry that he was being skeptical? He does have a tendency to scold.

To scold you? Yeah, because I felt like a bad little girl who was being scolded by her son. Then my oldest son, Scott, you know, gets involved. And so now I'm being slammed by these two young men. Chris and his brothers didn't let up. They wanted to know why Gil would fly all the way to California to meet a woman he'd never even spoken to on the phone. Karen, did you ever think it was, did you ever ask to have a phone call with Gil or say? Yes, actually, I was always asking to talk to him on the phone.

And then he would just come back with all kinds of flowery type things, you know, always referred to me as honey, and I would get caught up in that, and then I wouldn't push it any further. Now with her sons breathing down her neck, Karen insisted on a phone call with Gil. So finally, Gil provided a phone number where he could be reached on his business trip to India. The number had an Indian country code, so it did seem that Gil was where he said he was. Again, Gil's willingness to comply with Karen's request, even if it took a while, made her happy. It was proof that Gil had nothing to hide and nothing her son said was going to shake her resolve. She sounded like someone that was in love. It was like someone that was intoxicated with love. So I started googling, I think, something along the lines of, you know,

scamming, love scams, something like that. And that's when the term, I was introduced to the term romance scam. And then I started reading about the romance scams and then noticing then all of the sort of, you know, widowed, oftentimes they pose as widowed, self-employed, independently wealthy, can go anywhere in the world, usually operating on a business trip. And that's when I realized this was definitely a scam. There's a piece of advice you see across these scam warning websites. Don't scam the scammer. Don't contact them. Don't mess with them. Chris did not take that advice. The only way Chris could think of to figure out who Gil was and what he wanted was to call him on the phone and ask. He called the number with the India

country code, but he didn't call and introduce himself as Karen's son, Chris. Chris called Gil and pretended to be Karen, a 40-year-old man impersonating his mother. Basically, my whole life, people mistake me on the phone for a woman. My entire life, that's happened to me, as long as I can remember. Do they say, like, thank you, ma'am? Yes. Karen, is this true yeah it's true okay this weekend i was looking i was you know i was on the phone this weekend uh play you know having a trouble with customer service and the person's like listen ma'am

and i'm looking around at everyone and I say, you see what I mean? So actually in my, I just thought, well, people think I'm a woman on the phone. So here's my golden opportunity to really kind of put this to the test. So I decided I'm going to call this guy and pretend to be my mom. And I thought, you know, I know this is crazy, but I thought, well, if maybe this is going to be him, I didn't really believe that. But I thought at least then if, you know, it sounds like it's for real, maybe we can go that direction. But what I really thought was if this guy answers the phone, which I really didn't think he would, then maybe I'll have some proof to show my mom what's really going on.

Any answers? He answers, and immediately I just jump into character. Maybe tomorrow I'm going to come over. Tomorrow? Oh, yeah, tomorrow. I know it's going to be before your birthday. Can I meet you at, do I meet you at the airport? Yeah, come and pick me at the airport.

What airline were you thinking of flying? I don't know you say you are. So he's actually buying this voice and you, what are you thinking when you realize he's buying it? I'm thinking I've got him. That I just said to myself I've got him. I just said to myself, I got him. When will you... Let's do Skype right now.

I'm kind of busy right now. I'm busy with my business right now. I can't talk on Skype right now. Well, you seem to be getting angry. Don't get angry with me. This is our first time being able to talk. This is the first time us getting to talk and you're already getting angry. I don't know.

Karen, what was it like when Chris came to you and said, I spoke with Gil? Well, he called me and he asked me what kind of accent was I expecting from him. And I said, well, English, of course. And then he, you know, he just kept saying, I am so sorry mom I'm so sorry mom and and it was so sincere I mean and so Chris he ended up emailing it to me so that I was able on my email to actually play it and hear for myself what was that like sitting there alone listening to it? I was mad. I was very angry, very angry that this had happened to me because I'd like to think I'm smarter than that.

Yeah, you kind of feel like a fool, huh? Right, yeah, I felt like a fool. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home.

His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. Hey, it's Scott Galloway, and on our podcast, Pivot, we are bringing you a special series about the basics of artificial intelligence. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for?

What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So, tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. So Gil, or the man calling himself Gil, wasn't an older British man. He lied about that. He didn't seem to be in love with Karen or really know all that much about her.

So, maybe a romance scam. But he never asked Karen for any money or anything like it. So what did he want? We decided to call him and ask. Hello. Hello, I'm looking for Gil. What is this? Hi, I'm calling from a podcast called Kremlin and I I'm calling about Karen, and I'm looking for Gil. Okay, what kind of question is that? Oh, am I speaking with Gil right now?

What's wrong with that? Oh, nothing's wrong with it. I just wanted to ask Gil a couple of questions about their relationship. Okay, what kind of question is that? Gil said that if I didn't believe he was who he said he was, then why didn't I Skype with him? We could video chat. He said to call him back with our Skype name. So Lauren, who makes the show with me,

set up a Skype account and called Gil and told him the username. And then nothing. She sent a few follow-up texts, no response. So we thought, this is the part where Gil finally disappears. Hours later, Gil texted Lauren with a Skype name, Gil Harper 2. She downloaded a program that would let her record the video chat, and dialed. Hello? What she saw on the screen was a static image of an older white man, shirtless, reclined on a couch.

At first she thought it was a photograph, another one of Gil's fake-outs. But then the image moved. It wasn't a photograph. The screen had just been frozen for a minute. There was a real man there on the other end of the video chat. There was no sound, but Skype has a chat function, so she typed to him, there's no sound. Gil responded in the chat box. He said, there must be a poor connection. Tell me what you want me to do.

She kept typing that she could not hear him. Eventually, she got too creeped out and hung up. This really threw us for a loop. We emailed the video to Chris. Hi Chris, how are you? I'm in shock. I'm really disoriented right now. Very disoriented.

I feel this battle between my rational mind and my emotional mind right now like my my emotional mind is like just having this reaction of like oh no he's for real and we've messed everything up my mom was in love and I've messed everything up and then my rational brain goes there is no way this guy is who he says he is. There is no way. I'm Barb Slopek. I'm the founder and owner of RomanceGams.org, and I live just outside of Branson, Missouri. Romance Gams basically was started by accident. The accident was that Barb was a victim of a romance scam herself. After three weeks of chatting online, the man asked if he could call Barb. He had told Barb that he was from the UK. When he called, I recognized immediately that his accent was not English. It was Nigerian. And I got very quiet and I asked him why he lied to me. And he said he didn't lie, that he had gotten this accent from living there for a couple months.

Barb met another woman who had had a similar experience, and she went online to try and find out more about these types of scams, but couldn't find anything. So she started a small Yahoo group with four other women who had dealt with the same thing. That was in 2005. As of today, 70,000 people have come to that group with their stories asking for help. On her website, romancescams.org, you can submit the photograph your scammer sent you so that other women don't fall for it. She's got more than 10,000 pictures there. Even though Gil never asked Karen for money,

you don't think that that means that it wasn't a scam, right? I mean, what are the red flags with that? I've done this for 10 years. I've never found one that wasn't a scam. The only reason he hasn't asked her for money is he hasn't asked her yet. Let's put it that way. He would have lost his passport. There would have been an accident on the way to the airport. The details vary, but the formula is basically the same. The victims

are mostly women over 50, often divorced, widowed, elderly, or disabled, who believe they are in a real relationship. Once the victim appears to be in love, some crisis happens. A terrible accident requiring money for emergency surgery, a death in the family, something horrible that will first elicit empathy and then cash. How could a few thousand dollars be worth all of this effort and scamming? Oh my god, it's not just a few thousand dollars be worth all of this effort in scamming? Oh my god, it's not just a few thousand dollars. There's millions and millions of dollars that are lost to these scams. The FBI tallied 82 million dollars in the last six months of 2014 alone. As for the Skype conversation, the man Lauren saw in the video, Barb thinks that what she saw was

actually a video. She says these scammers will record the Skype calls and then play them back, so it looks like a live video, but it's a recording. The man we saw was likely a victim himself, who got on Skype to chat with the person he was supposedly in love with. Which, Barb says, means that Lauren's end of the Skype call may also have been recorded and can be played as proof for some other future romance scam victim. She said a scammer can create a whole profile using pictures of Lauren he finds online, and then the Skype video as proof. So that's scary. Lauren's still cooling

down from that one. But still, why, we asked Barb, was he so very reachable and willing to talk to us, even though he knew we were journalists? He's leaving the lines of communication open. He doesn't want to disappear because he's hoping that somehow he is going to reconnect with her and finish the scam. Scammers don't give up real easy. That's one of the reasons we tell people don't confront the scammer. Just disappear. Karen hasn't disappeared. Her Facebook profile is still up.

But Gil's Facebook profile is gone. Right before he shut it down, Karen got a message from him. Saying that, well, I just don't think I can be with someone who doesn't trust me. And so I did. I slammed him. I let him have it. What did you say? Well, I told him he should go get a gun and blow his effing brains out.

Wow. I did. I mean, he got to see the other side of Karen Miller. He got to see my dark side. Good for you. I would have done the same thing. And what about for you. I would have done the same thing. And what about for you, Chris? I mean, when your mother said, OK, yes, this is where you kind of thinking stuff.

OK, I didn't have to be a jerk and I didn't have to be scolding for no reason. Like it was true. And I and I helped. I was proud of myself, period. Because I have no idea how in the world that happened. It was because it was almost like an out-of-body type of experience. Karen, how long was your entire correspondence with Gil? Just shy of a month.

And that's scary. That's scary because he really did get a hold of me psychologically. Even when my intellect would come out and I would say to him, you know, I really want to talk to you on the phone, I would get pulled back in by him. So the manipulation and the psychological aspect of it is, it's scary. It's very scary. Like a spell. Like a spell. Absolutely. Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohr and me, Eric Menel, helped with sound. Julianne Alexander does our episode art. Some of the music in this episode is by Elephant Micah. You can find out more about it at thisiscriminal.com.

We're on Facebook and Twitter, at Criminal Show. Tickets are moving fast for our live show in Brooklyn on July 15th at the Bell House. We have some crazy stories lined up for the show. If you're in New York, please join us. Criminal is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Check out the other shows at Radiotopia.fm. One of those shows is Fugitive Waves, produced by the Kitchen Sisters. Their new episode is called The Secret and Not-So-Secret Life of Teresa Sparks, in which a transgender activist tells her story. I'm kind of an engineer, you know. I'm trained as an engineer, and so I have this, you know,

very organized way of approaching. So what I did was went back to my year of birth, found out what were the most popular names, and then I took the top 20, and then I looked at my first name initial, which was T, and Teresa's the one I landed on. Go listen. Radiotopia from PRX is made possible with support from the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity, chaos, and teamwork. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

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