Front Burner - Front Burner Introduces: Love, Janessa

Episode Date: February 4, 2023

Behind every catfish, there’s the bait. Who is Janessa Brazil? Stolen images of an adult entertainment star are being used to con victims out of thousands of dollars, breaking hearts in the process. Journalist Hannah Ajala embarks on a quest to find Janessa, in this 8-part true crime series. And who is responsible for catfishing scams? Produced for the BBC World Service and CBC Podcasts by Antica Productions and Telltale Industries. More episodes are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/La1M2VKj

This is a CBC Podcast. Hey everybody, we have a special bonus episode for FrontBurner's podcast subscribers from the brand new podcast series from the BBC World Service and CBC Podcasts called Love Janessa. Who is Janessa? Host Hannah Ajala embarks on a wild search for an adult entertainment star whose images are being used in global catfishing schemes. The investigation takes listeners from the UK to Italy, West Africa and the US, uncovering a criminal network of scammers using Janessa's image to lure victims into financial and emotional duress. We have the first episode for you now. Love Janessa. Have a listen.

A BBC World Service and CBC Podcast production. Before we start, please note this series contains adult themes and strong language. So this was her initial message in this conversation. Okay. Me, you got me so worried as I keep thinking so much about you. I miss you so badly. I'd like to send you something for Valentine's Day. Maybe you could buy that car we talked about so we could take a drive along the coast. Her. I would love that.

Me. Make sure it's a good one. Why am I sending money to Ghana anyway? That's in Africa, isn't it? You told me you're in Spain. I'm not really happy about sending $50,000 to Africa to buy a car. Her. Honey, trust me as your wife as I won't disappoint you because I love you so much. So you probably think you know what's going on here.

A fraudster is trying to con this guy by text message. Me. OK, I trust you, but make sure it's got warranty. Are you OK? I've been so worried about you since the operation. The person who's performing this dramatic reading of his texts is Simon de Brussel. Her. Okay, my love, I'm so happy. Me. Good. I can't wait to see you with your double D boobs. That's gonna be so much fun.

You can tell he's been primed for a scam. The flattery, the money, the boob job. Her. I can't wait to kiss and make deep love to you all day. You're now decades into living our lives online, and anyone with an inbox has probably been pinged by a dodgy solicitation. But even if online romance scams are totally recognisable, with lines like, you are my king and goddess, a shocking number of people

keep getting pulled into them. Her, honey, I wish you could assist me with some meds and foodstuffs, OK? Me. But I gave you $5,000 only last week for your operation, remember? Then she sent me a picture of Janessa, topless in the bath. Obviously topless because she's in the bath. A picture of a woman known online as Janessa Brazil. And it's a picture that he's seen before.

Because this isn't the romance scam you think it is. Simon isn't communicating with just one account, one potential con artist. He's chatting with dozens. And all of them are using the same photos. All of them claiming to be the same woman. This is Janessa, isn't it? Her. This is Janessa, your wife. That's good, Simon. Thank you. There's more. There's loads more. From CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service, my name is Hannah Ajala, and this is Love, Janessa. The story of my wild quest to find the woman whose face and body is the bait used in catfishing schemes around the world. Episode 1, From My World to Yours. From My World to Yours.

When we talk, Simon is looking out the window of his country home. What he describes sounds like storybook England. I live in Wiltshire, which is very rural, on a sheep farm in fact, surrounded by lots of sheep. And at the moment, the lambs are just appearing. So there's lambs bouncing around in the fields. Simon is a lot of impressive things. He's a journalist, a father to grown children. He collects antiques and does photography. He's had a long, notable career covering all kinds of stories, like the fall of the Berlin Wall and the discovery of Otzi the Iceman, a guy who was frozen inside an Italian glacier for 5,000 years.

Where are you, actually, as a matter of interest? Yeah, I'm in Lagos, Nigeria. This is where I spend a lot of my time actually working. We've got a BBC office. So have you got an apartment there or have you got somewhere to stay? But this story is different for Simon. More personal. A little delicate. It was New Year's Eve, 2018.

Simon was getting ready to go out. Well, I got a notification that I'd been sent a message and I think it was on Twitter. And it was from someone that I didn't know, but then I occasionally do get messages from people that I don't know in this one. The message was a compliment. The writer admired some photos he'd posted.

And she wrote how nice it was to see someone taking proper pictures, proper black and white pictures, with film, because I still white pictures, with film, because I still use film rather than digital, and sent me greetings. She said, from my part of the world to yours. It was nice. Seems quite a strange way of saying something,

but wishing you all the best and your family all the best for the new year. It was a woman who called herself Shirley, except it had been spelt Shrilly, which seemed a little strange. To clarify, her Twitter handle wasn't Shirley, but Shrilly. S-H-R-I-L-E-Y, followed by a bunch of numbers. But anyway, I just replied, returning your greetings and wishing you a happy new year. Where in the world are you? Because she'd said, I'm sending you greetings from my part of the world. After hitting send, Simon went to a party to ring in the new year with friends.

He got home after 2am and noticed a wham of new messages on his computer. Shirley wanted to get to know him better. She told him she was living in Flint. Flint, Wales, he wondered. No, Flint, Michigan in the US. Acute misunderstanding. And then having broken the ice like that, she was a little bit more forthcoming and told me that she'd been a TV presenter in Rio and had some difficult

personal circumstances, had to leave the country and got recruited by a, I think it was a green energy company that she was representing in Michigan. They sent a few messages back and forth. The compliments about Simon's photography kept coming. That ain't small talent and I hope you know that people with this kind of gift are few in the world. So I can imagine that you probably had a look at the profile picture quite quickly. Yeah and I mean and she looked a perfectly respectable, well-dressed, well-presented young woman and she said she had two children, so I imagine that she was probably in her late 20s or early 30s. I've seen pictures of the woman who reached out to Simon.

And while we're talking, I have a few of them open on my laptop. Here's what I see. A racially ambiguous, beautiful woman. Not the type that would need to wear a ton of makeup. Dark hair and eyes. The gym is certainly her friend. Over the next few weeks, Shirley and Simon became digital pen pals. Her backstory was complex and stuffed with drama.

Her father had been killed in a car accident. She'd had an affair with her manager, who was a drunk and a drug addict. To get away from him, she up and left. Now she was living in Flint, Michigan, supporting her kids and mother in a six-bedroom house. So many details. It was kind of dizzying. I just thought that we were having a conversation

because I basically spent most of my life online because it was my job. I get literally sometimes 200 emails and messages a day. And so it was just something that was nice to break it up from what my normal work routine was. And because of the time difference, a lot of it would arrive while I was asleep, so I'd find messages when I woke up in the morning and things. So it was quite nice to be able to have a communication with someone on the other side of the world

who had an interesting story to tell. At the time, Simon was married. He was in his late 50s and didn't have a lot of first-hand experience with online flirting. So when a certain type of message arrived, the kind that's not so novel to those of us who grew up online, he was thrown. It was all perfectly innocuous until she asked me for a picture of my dick,

which I found a little bit surprising. And I did tell her that I would never, ever consider sending anybody, even if I knew them, a picture like that, and asked her why she'd asked me. And, I mean, she didn't really answer that. Pretty quickly, the exchanges spun out into other kinds of requests. I'll be going to make my hair and also do some few shopping next weekend, and I'll love for you to pay for it, if that's okay with you.

It was not okay. Simon said no. And she then asked for, I think, $300. And I told her I wouldn't give it to her. She got quite abusive. $300. And I told her I wouldn't give it to her. She got quite abusive. And I said, look, quite honestly, why would I send you $300? But wouldn't you possibly put it down to maybe like a cultural thing? Because I'm Nigerian, and it's very normal in some cultures and traditions for men to fund the lifestyles of women.

I did think that was a possibility. And she actually said that. She said men always fund their women. And I said, well, you're not my woman. So she has her own job. She's got her own career. I mean, why would I need to send money to someone that I don't know? And I didn't.

But I mean, the fact is, at that point, I realised that she was a scammer. And she was trying to get me to send her money. And she probably wasn't even in Flint, Michigan. She might well be in anywhere in the world. So Simon put on his journalist hat. He ran Shirley's profile pictures through a reverse image search engine. It's a kind of matching software that locates the same image on other websites. If there are other copies on the internet, it will find them and tell you where they're from. And each one I put in came back with this name, Janessa Brazil. Janessa Brazil.

Simon did a quick search on IMDb, an online database of millions of movies and TV shows that list cast and crew. There she was, with a single credit. Girls Gone Dead, a low-budget film from 2012, where bikini-clad spring breakers are murdered by a stalker wielding a medieval warhammer. It's billed as a comedy.

somebody at the door. What's up? Look at this. Janessa Brazil's character is listed as topless slide girl. A few more clicks and Simon had uncovered hundreds of videos and stills. A wave of not safe for work content starring Janessa. Janessa. Not hardcore, but explicit. Sex toys, showers, masturbation. Shirley, or Janessa as she's actually known, was popular on sites like Pornhub and Spankbank. The tornado of X-rated content was surprising. But then he found something even wilder. Googling her, I discovered that she was also, according to a website I found, the most impersonated person in the entire world, with over 100,000 fake IDs using her photographs. It's hard to measure if 100,000 fake profiles is actually an accurate number. But if you search the name Janessa Brazil, millions of results come back. And Simon discovered that the internet is filled with angry men who've been taken in by images of Janessa. Their stories are heartbreaking.

heartbreaking. Millions of dollars lost. Marriages destroyed. Simon had stumbled into the grim worlds of catfish victims. A catfisher is someone who uses a fake online profile to lure an unsuspecting person into a relationship, sometimes to steal from them. There was a website called romancescan.com, which was the one that said that Janessa was the most impersonated person in the world. And it also pointed out that she was not herself responsible for any of the frauds that were perpetrated in her name, because these were pictures that had been stolen from her and used by other people. The scammers were sharing images and maybe even sharing details of victims, as far as I could work out later.

And it's a huge industry. I mean, she was just one tiny part of absolutely massive fraud that's going on all around the world. So Simon was now certain that Shirley was a fake, yet another scammer using Janessa Brazil's image. By that point, she was already a lot less interested in his photography than she had been in the beginning. In fact, she had some demands. She said that she needed the money to tide her over during the Christmas New Year season because basically she wasn't back to work until the middle of January and she just needed the money for her kids. So she asked me to send her $300.

The tone was almost threatening. Cash? How much can you get me and when? After doing it for me I'll know that you'll be there for me and will never disappoint me. You still don't trust me? If you ain't do it, that's fine. But don't try pulling my ear first. I don't like it when someone is making it hard for me. She said, if you really loved me, you'd do what I asked you to do. And then you responded.

And I responded. You used a fake identity, a false story and stolen photographs. Why the fuck should I give you anything at all? Simon blocked and reported Shirley. Twitter killed the account. Janessa. He wanted to turn his quest into an article. He began sifting through accounts using the name Janessa.

I just thought, well, this is a great story. I'm going to look into this because these people obviously aren't Janessa Brazil. Some of them didn't even really claim to be, but they were using her pictures and some of them did claim to be and they were using other people's pictures. And there were some who were using the name Janessa Brazil and using her pictures. So I emailed a selection of them just to get a conversation going. It wasn't long before he heard back from one. Good evening, my love. And then another.

I dreamt you were close to me on bed as you kiss and hold me tightly. You make love to me and got me pregnant. I want to fall asleep in your arms always as you kiss and gaze into my eyes. The propositions were goofy, but kind of intoxicating too. Simon was determined to keep it professional. After the initial approach, which I was completely bemused by, I was doing this as a journalist. I was very careful about how I dealt with this woman and what I said to her. So I'm not the average punter who may be taken in by the woman on the end of the line or sort of was keen to reveal too much about myself. But still, as his inbox overflowed,

Simon was coming to understand the power, the intimacy in these exchanges, that total strangers over the internet could form such thrilling connections. And I can see that some people who are lonely or needy might find it quite sort of rewarding because every single conversation started off with, how are you, my darling? Have you cleaned your teeth today? Have you had a shower yet? Are you warm enough? The wife that you've never met, your online wife. Well, exactly. It really felt like that. When Simon responded to one Janessa, another one would pop up in his inbox. The Janessas were starting to multiply. I mean, the obvious ones would start referring to me as my husband.

Oh, gosh. Within five minutes of starting a conversation. Simon's social media accounts became a cascade of Janessa pics. One Janessa was topless. Another was wearing Mickey Mouse ears. There was Janessa in sweatpants, in a bikini, in a bandage dress. So many accounts. So many Janessas. Simon kept asking them, Who are you really? But the Janessa shrugged off the question. They had different approaches.

One Janessa had a sick mother. Another needed money for a car. You got me so worried, as I keep thinking so much about you. I miss you so badly. It's Valentine's tomorrow, and I am on my own again. Honey, I'm not feeling well since yesterday. I wish you could assist me with some vital meds and foodstuffs, okay? The stories were so complex that even the Janesses couldn't keep track of the details, what they had asked for from Simon, and what he'd agreed to.

Simon wrote back, But I gave you $5,000, only last week, for your operation, remember? And no, he hadn't given her any money. Yes honey, but the doctor prescribes some meds I need to buy, for the health on the operation. It very vital meds babe. It very important to my health. Simon noticed that a lot of these texts circled back to West Africa. This is Janissa, your wife, here in Ghana from Spain due to my terrible situation on my surgery operation. This place is much better and all right for the treatment. I'm gonna get back from recovery

sooner. This is where I come in. I'm British Nigerian and I divide my time between London and Lagos. I've also spent time in Ghana so to me this story is personal not all internet fraud originates in West Africa but it does have a reputation maybe you've heard of the 419 or Nigerian print scams I can't stand these associations it doesn't speak of the Africa I know and I'm wary of telling a story that could

amplify these impressions. But I'm also a millennial who spends a lot of time clicking, liking, swiping, and someone who guards her privacy very carefully. The selfies on my phone would probably not be interesting to a scammer, but they are mine. As Simon is talking, I feel for Janessa. She seems to have lost control of her image on an unimaginable scale. And I want to know, what happened? Simon also wondered what the real Janessa Brazil, the striking woman in the pictures, would make of all this. He wrote to a modelling agency that seemed to represent her,

asking, To Simon's surprise, he got a response. Simon receives an email from Janessa. But get this, she told him her real name was Vanessa. And she basically said, thank you for alerting me to this. I'm well aware of it. This scam has been so enormous that I'm absolutely unable to work at the moment. And it's made my life a misery. I've been subject to court proceedings in Florida. I even had one man who claimed that he'd given me two million dollars that I'd embezzled from him. And I was taken to court. My assets have been frozen. I'm not allowed to post anything in public online. And I'm basically struggling to try and clear my name so I can get back to work again.

The person using the name Vanessa told him that she had been the victim of a hack, her personal photos were stolen and her image had spiralled out across the internet. Now Simon was on the receiving end of yet another drama-packed story and he was a little wary by this point. And so I said, well, how do I know who you are? He wanted corroboration. She gave me her name, and I was able to trace that name to a house in Florida near Tampa. And I found it on an estate agent's website and it had interior shots of the house

and the furniture in the estate agent's shots was exactly the same as the ones in her glamour shots. So the pictures had been taken in the same room in Janessa's house that Vanessa was registered at. So it was pretty convincing. Simon asked for a selfie and she sent one. It was a picture of the woman known online as Janessa Brazil, but a little older than in other pictures, maybe in her 40s, not too made up, the kind of casual picture anyone might have on her phone. The EXIF data, which is the information that comes

attached to a photograph, was current and it appeared to have been taken like the day before rather than the other ones which had been taken previously and months before or even years before. And then she sent me a picture of her Florida driving licence, just to confirm that she was who she said she was. And I believed her. So I then thought I had contacted the real Janessa Brazil. But Simon didn't get to savour his victory for long. The text, which had been cordial, filled with gratitude, suddenly shifted in turn.

Vanessa said she was in trouble. She told Simon that she'd gone to Toronto to get away from the whole Janessa Brazil imposter scandal. Now she was holed up in an expensive hotel room. She gave me the name of the hotel and she told me that while she was there, she received an email from her bank in Florida telling her that her credit cards had been frozen. The only way to unfreeze her credit cards would be to visit her branch in Florida. But she didn't

have money to settle her hotel bill in Toronto, or money for anything else. So she told me that she hadn't eaten for three days. I checked on the weather app, and it was minus 30 in Toronto at the time. She said she hadn't got any proper shoes and no warm clothes. She'd just come for literally for a couple of days and was stuck in this hotel. So I said, go to the manager and explain the situation and write an affidavit or whatever it takes to say that you will pay whatever you owe them when you get your account unfrozen, which will be as soon as you get back to Florida. And then she said, I've done what you've told me,

and he asked to see my passport, and then he took it away and put it in a drawer and said I wouldn't get it back until I'd paid the bill for the room. And obviously you believed her. I didn't know whether to believe her. I quite honestly, I couldn't prove it one way or the other. Every question he threw at her, she deflected. I'd even rung the hotel and they'd had no record of her being in the hotel.

And when I put that to her, she said, well, I'm not under my own name because I've got a high profile and I don't want the paparazzi finding out that I'm here. So there was always an excuse. Question. Could she send a photo of herself in the hotel room? Answer. The court order prevented her from uploading pictures. Question.

Could she confirm her identity by giving her father's first name? Answer. She never shared private information. Of course Simon was suspicious, but he'd been pulled in. Simon believed he had given this woman advice that had led to her passport being confiscated. He felt a bit guilty, especially when she wrote that she hadn't eaten in days.

It was snowing. She didn't even have a coat. I was feeling really bad that it was possible this person, whether or not it was Janessa, actually hadn't had anything to eat because she was going on about it so much. He seemed to be in conversation with a person who was suffering in real time,

right in front of him. All these details, the granular storytelling, plus at the time he was researching for his article. So he sent her $200. PayPal blocked the payment and asked me to call their fraud department. And when I spoke to them, they told me the reason that they blocked it was because my payment had been made or would have been made to someone called Hillary Wealth in Lagos in Nigeria. Where I am right now. Where you are right now, yeah. Of course, when Simon confronted her, the person calling themselves Vanessa could explain away this hiccup too. She was banned from PayPal due to the scammers, so she had to use her landlord's account and he was from Nigeria.

All Vanessa needed was $5,000 to get to the airport. The journalist in Simon was telling him to keep going. Simon came up with a plan. He had a friend in Toronto, Donald, a playwright and vintage watch collector. He called Donald and asked if he would be prepared to go to a bank machine and withdraw a thousand dollars for someone staying at a very nice downtown hotel. Simon didn't say who. He promised to PayPal Donald the money. Donald said, no problem. He waited for the signal from Simon.

Simon texted Vanessa his plan. Don would come and drop off the cash as long as she showed her face and proved who she was. This didn't go over well. She went ballistic when I told her this. And she claimed that I should not have involved another person in this business because it was going to cause her a huge amount of problems if it turns out that the papers got hold of the story that Janessa Brazil was penniless and having to rely on charity to get home. That's when Simon reminded her that he was a journalist and that he planned to write a story to expose all the fake genesses. She didn't like that either.

You really want to bring me out into public, is that it? If you ever break my secrets, my spirit will never forgive you. Simon had reached the end of the road. He could no longer deny what I'm sure you figured out already. While researching the woman behind the images that had been used to catfish him, he'd been catfished for the second time. Would you give her some props

for how she sort of constructed this scam, you know, from the... Oh, she was absolutely brilliant. She was absolutely brilliant. I mean, it got better and better. you know from the um oh she was absolutely brilliant she was absolutely brilliant i mean it got it got better and better and then the text just stopped the conversation over a period of days fizzled out i mean i'd even gone to the extent of saying to go to the airport, I'll pay your Uber fare, I'm going to pay your airfare to Florida, just take a picture of the departure board with a flight on it and I will pay it

immediately by card. And she never did that, of course, because she couldn't, she wasn't in Toronto. And that was the end of Vanessa. Simon published his article on the Janessa scams in spring 2020. The timing meant that the story was overshadowed by the start of the global pandemic. But with so many potential victims now stuck at home, lonely, and trying to live their lives online, the crime he was documenting only increased. Today, Simon still gets pinged by the occasional Janessa. Clearly his info is being passed around. But by who? Who is on the other end of these messages?

And from what part of the world are they sending their greetings? Because either the person Simon connected with was the real Janessa Brazil, which would mean she's in on it. Or maybe these fake Janessa scams are seriously elaborate affairs. Perhaps some might use front companies. Others could be run by people with the ability to forge documents and alter photos. Regardless, it makes me wonder, what does the real Janessa Brazil think of all this? I'm determined to finish what Simon started, to figure out who Janessa really is,

how her image became the ultimate bait for catfishes, and how it got so out of control. But first, I need to find her. So this is a lady called Janessa. And I just want you to tell me if you've ever seen this woman before. We're sorry, you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please check the number and try your call again. Señora, ¿alguien fala inglés?

And while I'm trying to track down Janessa, I'm finding out that Simon got off easy. Other people who got entangled with Janessa didn't walk away so undamaged. Some fell hard and paid a high price. Every time it was an excuse like, no, now I can't, or now, no, I broke my phone, or now this phone doesn't work and blah, blah, blah. So for almost two months was like that. So for almost two months was like that. Initially was like 50 euros, next 100, next 500. So I was sending like probably 50 to 25k in the first two, three months.

That's next time on Love, Janessa is an Antica and Telltale production for the BBC World Service and CBC Podcasts. I'm Hannah Ajala. Our producers are Katrina Onstead and Laura Regea. Associate producer is Hayley Choi. Sound design by Philip Wilson and Janine White. Executive producers are Stuart Cox and Jago Lee. Emily Cannell is our coordinating producer. Chris Oak is executive producer of CBC Podcasts.

Arif Noorani is the director of CBC Podcasts. And John Manel is the podcast commissioning Editor at the BBC World Service. Thanks for listening. A BBC World Service and CBC Podcast production. All right, that was the first episode of the brand new podcast, Love, Janessa. You can listen to more episodes on the CBC Listen app and everywhere you get your podcasts. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.