Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - Inside a Romance Scam: “I went from the happiest I'd ever been to hitting rock bottom.”

Episode Date: June 17, 2023

Originally aired 6/20/22 The incidence of catfishing, also known as romance scamming, has dramatically increased over the course of the pandemic. The FBI stated that there were over one billion dollars lost in romance scams last year, and reports of romance fraud reported to the Federal Trade Commission rose a whopping 80%. With scams on the rise, it’s more important than ever to protect yourself— and to know how to recover financially if you do fall victim to a scam. In Money Rehab episodes 329 and 330, Nicole talks to Rebecca, who lost over $100,000 in a romance scam. Rebecca shares the mechanics of her scam, and the financial and emotional toll.  If you are involved in a romance scam, you can find help here: https://www.facebook.com/SHUisteamwork/  If you or someone you know is experiencing thoughts of suicide, you can find resources here: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ 

One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that

I got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime. Feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details.

Hey guys, are you ready for some money rehab? Wall Street has been completely upended by an unlikely player game stop and should i have a 401k because you don't do it no i know do you think the whole world revolves around you and your money well it doesn't charge for wasting our time i will take a check you recognize her from anchoring on CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg. The only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. Nicole Lappin.

The incidence of catfishing, also known as romance scams, has dramatically increased over the last three years. The FBI released a statement that people lost $1 billion, yes, billion with a B, in romance fraud last year. And romance scams reported to the Federal Trade Commission rose a whopping 80%. Plus, romance scams have caught national attention through exposés like the show Catfish and the Netflix doc The Tinder Swindler. These types of stories make my heart hurt. The fact that there is a whole crime network that targets folks who are just looking for love, there are no words for it. With these kinds of scams on the rise, it's more important than ever to protect yourself and to know how to recover financially if you do fall victim to a scam.

So today, we have the lovely Rebecca joining us on the show. Rebecca is a survivor of a romance scam, and she is here to share her experience. It's such an important conversation that we decided to dedicate two episodes to Rebecca's story. In today's episode, we're going to be hearing about the mechanics of Rebecca's scam and what tactics the scammer used to pull off the lies. Tomorrow, Rebecca shares how she got her life back and proves that no one can ever take everything from you. And I do want to say before we start that both episodes involve stories of suicide. So please take care while listening. Rebecca, welcome to Money Rehab.

Thank you for having me. I want to start with your story. So let's go back to the beginning of your communication with the person who went by Matthew, right? How did you guys first meet? So I was in the happiest point of my life when I decided I was going to try online dating. My job and everything was going very well. And I had the thought, well, why couldn't this area of my life go just as well? I had never tried online dating before. that are still married to this day with children, you know, several couples that had used OKCupid

to find their significant other. So I, you know, it felt to me like there was an element of safety there. Social validation. Exactly. Everything was going really well. And I thought, well, you know what, I'll try this. Actually, my friend, a friend of mine, you know, sort of got there first. She's like, I'm going to try online dating. And I was like, OK, I'm going to I'll, I'll try this. And actually my friend, a friend of mine, you know, sort of got there first. She's like, I'm going to try online dating. And I was like, okay, I'm going to be, I'll be your wing girl. And, uh, I had been married once before, uh, and it was not a particularly good marriage. So, and, and I did that whole, I'm swearing off men thing where I'm, I'm just done. I'm done with, I'm done with dating. I'm done with men. I'm just done.

Oh, I get it. I've done it every few years. Fast forward two years and here we are. Okay, I'll try online dating. So it was very important to me to sort of approach it with open heart, open mind. I really did not want to hold a potential new relationship responsible for the sins of past relationships. And of course, you're going to go on a dating site with an open heart and open mind. Otherwise, what's the point, right? You know, I thought when I was building my profile that I was being smart, you know, basically saying, because I didn't want to be a notch in someone's bedpost. I didn't want something casual. I wanted, you know, if I'm going to put my time,

effort, and energy in this thing, I want it to be a meaningful, hopefully long-term relationship. So it was all about, you know, this is the package I come in. These are the things I will put up with. These are the things I won't put up with, no drama, anything casual need not apply. One detail that I did put in my profile, which I realize now in hindsight was a bit of a mistake, was that I like children, but I cannot biologically have children for medical reasons. And the reason why I had put that detail in there was because I didn't want that to be an expectation, you know, that, you know, I build a rapport and relationship with this person. Suddenly they want to, you know, I wanted anyone who was, you know, going to come into my life to understand it wasn't going to be

something that was naturally going to occur, you know, traditionally. What I didn't realize in putting in that detail was that I was actually creating a bit of a roadmap for scammers around what would have been red flags for me, that maybe something a little more sinister might have been happening in the background. So, of course, when Matthew came into the picture, we immediately connected, and that's because scammers know what to say, you know, to make you feel valued, to make you feel heard, to make you feel understood. And they know also, because this is their bread and butter, that how to disarm you. And so, you know, the requests for money did not come immediately. You know, the aim at first is to build that trust, to build that connection.

They're basically building a wall around you where, you know, if the questions come, there are answers that they have within the context of the narrative that they're building for you that, you know, their answers disarm you. For my particular situation, you know, he and I talked for, you know, a long time before the request for money started coming. And what they do is they start small. What is that thing? They're looking for that hook. What's that hook that's going to make you send that money?

And they start with a small amount of money to see if you send it because then they know they've got you. And then it's just a matter of keeping the narrative going and having the situation in that narrative continually escalate. And they will keep it going as long as they can get money out of you. keep it going as long as they can get money out of you. So let's unpack the nefarious nature of using some of the personal items in your profile, like not being able to have biological children. Did this guy use that as a point of connection? I'm assuming it's a sensitive topic. It's probably very emotionally charged. You were, you know, in the right by sharing it. You, you know, your heart was in the right place. Did he exploit that aspect? He exploited it, but not in the way you're thinking. Tell me more. His narrative was that he had, he was a single father, widowed, his wife had died two years before from cancer,

and he had a five-year-old son. So that was likely a tailor-made narrative for the prototype he assumed based on those little details in your profile, that you wanted a child, you couldn't have one, and then you don't have the X in the picture, which seems sort of. I didn't want any baby mama drama. Right. So you didn't want drama. You couldn't have a child. So he, what you think now created this persona to tailor fit your needs or your desires. It didn't. It didn't. Because to some some degree they have like a playbook for every scenario.

In the pictures that I received, there was a child in these pictures. You know, there were times where his son and I were playing games over our phones, you know, obviously there wasn't this child, but that was the narrative that was built for me. I had no way of knowing what was being built for me wasn't real. This was a group of people that basically presented themselves as a father and son. And as someone like me, you know, they look for marks with certain hallmarks, you know, caring, open, giving, nurturing people. With the narrative that was presented to me when the money, you know, started was it boiled down to, was I going to leave a child into a bad, you know, in this bad situation?

Of course, I wasn't going to do that. I didn't want to feel like a monster doing that. So, you know, there's so much manipulation that is in play because you have now invested yourself into this relationship that has been built up. And now this person's in trouble and their child, there's a child in trouble. You know, it just hits you on a number of levels, uh, and, and starts to build up. And the thing is, yes, I never met him. I get that. How could you give money to someone you've never met? It was part, part of it was the narrative that was built for me because they, you know, it was a situation where, you know, he was homeschooling his child. He had to go on a business trip. We had plans to meet, the three of us had plans to meet when they came back. The trip was supposed to be two weeks.

They create something plausible because the thing is, they know that when they're not communicating with you, you're thinking about them and you're building up things in your own mind about the relationship. They know that absence, you know, is going to create urgency. They all, you know, there's all these tips and tricks and things that they know that you don't know as the person that is being sort of filtered through this narrative. And so they create real world situations for you. Like COVID was a completely, you know, a boon for these scammers because you had a real world situation that everybody was stuck in where your love could not see you, but a thousand and one reasons why your love might need money. So for me, you know, you also apply your own life experience

to the circumstances that are presented before you. The ask, you know, was he was traveling with his son. The credit card that he was using for his expenses on this trip had stopped working. So he was kind of stuck and he was traveling internationally. I have been in that situation before. So when that situation was presented to me, I had applied my own life experience with a similar situation to the narrative. And then, of course, there's a child involved, know and I did I asked all the the reasonable questions one would ask I was like Matthew you know this is still a relatively new relationship we have not met in person yet I'm feeling really uneasy about this please is there someone else

that you can you know appeal to that can help you out? Because I'm not feeling entirely comfortable. And again, they're used to these questions. So there was always an answer at the ready. And there was always a, you know, some kind of a, you know, endearment to it. Like, oh, sweetheart, No, I understand where you're coming from. I can see how this would be very uneasy. You have to understand that, you know, from where I'm coming from, you know, this has never happened before. And I have my son with me, like I'm really stuck. I mean, can you just help me out with a couple hundred dollars just till I can sort this out? And, you know, you're doing this for me would really prove that we really do

belong together because you're, you're standing by me through this difficult situation. And they also know how to build the silence in the narrative. You know, he was all about, you know, everybody, it was a very public thing that I was in this relationship and everybody was very happy for me. What people didn't know was the hidden financial dynamic. And how that came into play was, oh, and honey, please don't, you know, let your friends and family know that, you know, I'm borrowing this money. I don't want to be embarrassed when meeting them that you had to do that for me, which I can understand that. I didn't want to be judged for lending him money. So I, you know, was like, you know, our business is our own.

You'll be home in a couple of weeks. You know, he had promised, you know, to the moon and back, he would sort it out then. And I would get my money back and, you know, our relationship and life would go on. Only it didn't, it all went downhill from there. Hold on to your wallets, boys and girls. Money rehab will be right back. One of the most stressful periods of my life was when I was in credit card debt. I got to a point where I just knew

that I had to get it under control for my financial future and also for my mental health. We've all hit a point where we've realized it was time to make some serious money moves. So take control of your finances by using a Chime checking account with features like no maintenance fees, fee-free overdraft up to $200, or getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. Learn more at Chime.com slash MNN. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. When you check out Chime, you'll see that you can overdraft up to $200 with no fees. If you're an OG listener, you know about my infamous $35 overdraft fee that I

got from buying a $7 latte and how I am still very fired up about it. If I had Chime back then, that wouldn't even be a story. Make your fall finances a little greener by working toward your financial goals with Chime. Open your account in just two minutes at Chime.com slash MNN. That's Chime.com slash MNN. Chime feels like progress. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. SpotMe eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Boosts are available to eligible Chime members enrolled in SpotMe and are subject to monthly limits. Terms and conditions apply. Go to Chime.com slash disclosures for details.

Now for some more money rehab. So you gave them a few hundred dollars and you didn't feel like there was anything sketchy going on at that point. When did that start to change? Well, the situation is a slow burn. And this is another thing that people kind of need to understand. It is not like an overnight, you know, blink of an eye awareness that happens. How long was this whole thing? Over the course of a year. So, and the thing is, you know, I get feedback, well, this would never happen to me. I don't have any money.

People need to understand it's not just about the money. If you have ability, if you can take out loans, if to be law enforcement or something, and they promise that they can get you your money back. It doesn't happen. Very, very rarely does it happen. And it certainly does not happen that way. And then the thing is, like I was saying, it's not just money that's involved, that's currency, it's information and it's know-how. So if you don't have money, but you strike up a relationship with somebody, like, what had happened in my situation, you know, I was depleted for everything that I had by the end. And then, you know, comes the phenomenon called money mulling, where, you know, I had nothing left to give, but I had a bank account. Oh, honey, guess what?

One of my clients is ready to pay an invoice. But since my, you know, I'm frozen from my funds, let's, you know, have them pay the invoice to you through your account. And then you can send me that money. And then that'll get me home that much sooner. But basically, that is money laundering. You are, what it actually is, is that you are taking money from another victim who is not yet woken up to what is actually happening. They are sending money to you as the conduit. In my case,

it was wiring services. I was wiring money using Western Union and MoneyGram to send the money to him to keep basically straddling two households. Because, you know, at first it was me trying to support both households. And then I was allowing my household to collapse, trying to support, to continue to support their household. trying to support, to continue to support their household. And what was the reason he was telling you that he continued to need money? Was this all around an international trip? He would, yeah, he was, and this is often used, you know, if it's an oil driller, a doctor, military, nine times out of 10, it is a scam.

Because in the military, the military pays for everything you know for for matthew he was an oil magistrate which basically meant he was a oil contractor middleman where he would go procure the oil bring the the oil back, you know, paying all those expenses to do so, and then sell the oil to the third party. You know, I begged and plead with him constantly, let me just fly you both home. I don't understand what the issue is. Just please come home. And, you know, because he was an independent contractor, you know, his whole thing is, no, I can't come home until the job is done. If I do that, I'm in breach of contract. I can lose my business, et cetera,

et cetera. You know, there was one point where I ended up taking money out of my 401k to pay his people to continue working so that they could complete the contract so that they could come home. There was one point where he promised to, you know, he basically said, you know, cause I was getting really antsy and really frustrated and, and, and just seriously emotionally, you know, going down the rabbit hole, you know, into depression and stuff, because at this point I was, you know, pawning jewelry. I was, you know, not paying rent, not paying my bills, racking up the credit cards. Like it was just this, I was awash in debt and coming from place, you know, where I was the happiest I'd ever been to hitting, you know, eventually hitting rock bottom.

You know, it's quite a journey. And did you talk to him on the phone or FaceTime? No FaceTime. And this is something that is often the case. The camera was broken on the laptop. And after the couple hundred dollars initially, what types of amounts did he request? The bigger amounts would usually be to pay the bill for where he was staying. Smaller amount or... Like a thousand dollars? Yeah, like a,200 or there was a couple points where he ended up having malaria and had to be treated at the hospital.

There were requests for, you know, can I send money for food, for groceries? It just really ran the gamut. You know, $600, hey, I need to, you know, I can't get back and forth to and from the site drilling the oil because the rental car is having an issue and I need to get another rental car. You know, just there was always something, you know. And meanwhile, I'm like, hey, you need to come home. You need to fix all this. My world is falling apart. And you're not here. It actually took me a bit to wake up from my scam. I did not really wake up until a friend of mine had put me in contact with a support group called Scam Haters United.

a friend of mine had put me in contact with a support group called Scam Haters United. And they were the ones that actually able sort of took me through what actually happened and how it was engineered. Because what had happened to me, I was going through anxiety and depression and all these things were happening around me. And so I became suicidal. And I said to Matthew, look, I can't keep doing this. My world is falling apart. I'm being evicted from my apartment. I don't want to be living on the street in winter. I was worried about the small details. You know, I have two cats, two wonderful little kitties that I was worried about what would happen to them. I was worried about, you know, I was upset because I was letting them down.

You know, your mind just goes all sorts of places. And you're not thinking straight anymore at a certain point. And so I said to him, I'm thinking about suicide. I don't, that's not me. I'm a get up and go, a doer, problem solver, you know, love life person. Like I understand about your company, but you need to come home. You need to fix this. And, you know, around the hamster wheel a few more times, because again, you're not getting the answer you want to get. And so he, there came a point when Discover Card was suing me and the eviction process was starting and I'm sitting there trying to figure out, gee,

I wonder if I can maybe sleep at my office and just like get up before anybody comes into the office and, and just feign that I'm working late so that, you know, people don't ask questions. What can I do to keep up this, you know, cause there's shame, you know, I felt very much, there's self-blame and self-shame that happens in a situation that's like this. I didn't want people to know how far I'd fallen. And it got to a point where I had gotten pills and I said to him, I'm going to take these pills. I was not thinking about the aftermath of what it would do to the people that I left behind, the questions they would

never get answers to, or the grief and what, you know, them left wondering what they could have done to prevent it. I wasn't thinking about all that. I was just tired and done and couldn't see over the top of everything that was happening to me. And I said, I think I'm going to take these pills. And he says to me, and I'll never forget the cold and indifference in his voice, well, you have to do what you have to do. And that was a stamp of finality for me. I decided, okay, that says to me, you're not coming. I don't have an alternative. I'm going to do this. I hung up the phone with him and cut ties with him completely. I had chosen a day because I didn't want any more pain and I didn't want it to be painful.

So I was ready to take these pills. I was going to take several boxes of these pills and my plan was I was just going to go to sleep and that was going to be it. But I wanted to see the people that were closest to me one more time. And, you know, a very, very dear, dear friend of mine, Elizabeth, she and I had made plans for dinner and she didn't know, nobody knew that, you know, in my mind that this was the last dinner. And we were sitting in this little hole in the wall, Italian restaurant. And out of nowhere, without any hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant. And out of nowhere, without any context, she starts telling me about a co-worker of hers,

where the daughter of this co-worker was being relentlessly bullied in school and had decided she was going to commit suicide, but at the last moment decided instead to go talk to her parents. I fell apart at the table. I just sobbing and proceeded to word vomit to her everything that had gone on over the course of that year. course of that year. And she kind of sat back wide-eyed. She, I don't fall apart like that. And she's not the silent type, you know, where she's kind of left speechless. And the thing is she, you know, I got out as much as I could and was so deflated. She just kind of sat there for a minute. And I'm, as the victim of this, waiting for the vitriol, waiting for the judgment, waiting for that. How could you be so stupid to land yourself in this situation, et cetera, et cetera. I was very lucky.

She, you know, I'm waiting for it. And it felt like forever before I got any kind of response. But it couldn't have been more than a minute or two. And she goes and she grabs my hands across the table and squeezing my hands very tightly it felt very much that she was hanging on to for dear life and but what she didn't understand was that she was holding on to my life in that moment and I did tell her that night that I have these pills uh and I'm going to take them and this is when I'm going to take them. And this is when I'm going to take them. And I, and I said, but I really don't want to do that. I just don't, I don't know what else I could do at this

point. And she was very smart. The first thing that she did before I even told her that piece was she was holding my hands. She looks at me dead in the eye and says, you know, this isn't your fault, right? And that thought had not even really occurred to me. What it really woke me up to was I had forgotten by this point who I was before the scam happened. Here was someone who loved and cared about me and knew who I was before all this happened, knew who I was enough to understand how this happened. And she was standing by me. And she said, she didn't make it about her, which I think was another really, really smart thing to do. She said, if either of us ever feel that we are in a situation where suicide is on the table as an option, we're not going to do that. We're going to call each other.

And it was she that came up with the idea of bankruptcy. I don't know whether or not the idea of bankruptcy had ever entered my mind prior to that moment. I did have some resistance to it, you know, because bankruptcy has its own stigmas. But at that point, I had nothing left to lose. So that was the route I ended up taking stay tuned for tomorrow's episode where we hear the rest of Rebecca's story and spoiler alert it has a happy ending