Uncover - S25 E4: Helen of Troy | "Love, Janessa"

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

Where is Janessa Brazil? She seems to have vanished. Then, she turns up somewhere unexpected. Is that really Janessa on a radio show, with the wife of a scam victim? Meanwhile, Hannah discovers that justice is hard to come by. Can victims of romance fraud even get their money back? Please note, this series contains adult themes and strong language.To hear all episodes of Love, Janessa now, visit here.Transcripts for this series are here.

This is a CBC Podcast. A BBC World Service and CBC Podcast production. Before we start, please note this series contains adult themes and strong language. So yeah, my name is Hannah and I'm a journalist and I guess I wanted to ask an obvious question in regards to what I'm working on Do you know Janessa Brazil? The answer from the woman on the other end of the line is no Right, okay I mean the reason why we ask is that

I'm actually working on a podcast about catfishing. That's me calling a neighbour of Janessa Brazil's in a city in Florida. My producer found Janessa's address on an old voter registration roll. I've made a lot of calls like this. Cold calls that went nowhere. There's loads and loads of images around her everywhere. So you've never met a Janessa before? We traced old addresses, phone numbers. We did not receive the complete number.

This is the number you need to call. Area code 3. Please hang up and try your call again. I subscribed to Pornhub to find her. I messaged a guy on Facebook multiple times who seemed to be Janessa's ex-husband. I called a store in Rio de Janeiro where I was told her father might have worked. Hi, do you speak English? No?

Okay. I think she's finding out if someone speaks English. I can speak to you. I wanted someone to tell me why Janessa seemed to go dark around 2016. Before that, she had left a vibrant digital footprint. had left a vibrant digital footprint. In 2011, she was photographed flanked by several tank top wearing adult entertainment stars at the launch of a new tequila brand. In 2013, she promoted swimwear for a label specialising in Brazilian cheeky bikinis. But fresh Janessa posts seemed to drop off a few years later. Her feeds, her video stream channels,

all had become dusty, untended places. Her social media felt like an abandoned amusement park. But then, my producer sent me a link. Janessa, say hi to Nicole. Hi, Nicole. Hi, Janessa. And suddenly, she seemed very much alive. From CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service,

my name is Hannah Ajala, and this is Love, Janessa. 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 4 Helen of Troy.

Hello? Is this Nicole? Yes, it is. This is a clip from an episode of a radio show from 2019. Hi, this is Baba. We're live. Oh, wow. You emailed me and told me to call you. The host is of the shock jock variety.

He calls himself Bubba the Love Sponge. Bubba used to host a show produced by Howard Stern, the popular American radio and TV personality. Bubba's style feels very Stern-esque, loud, cheerfully abrasive, filled with sex talk. He films all of his broadcasts. At one point in today's episode, the camera zooms in on a baby goat that's walking around, getting laughs for rubbing on people's legs. So it's not your average recording studio. Bubba is a big guy with a big microphone, wearing a fraternity t-shirt and headphones.

And some days, he has a sidekick. And I have the person, you know, Janessa is part of my show. She's a co-host. Janessa, say hi to Nicole. Hi, Nicole. Hi, Janessa. Now, Nicole, that's the real Janessa. And I think, I mean, like... I know she is. And...

It does look like Janessa Brazil. She sits in front of a microphone wearing a white jean jacket elegantly made up. Her brows are thin and arched high. A questioning look. Yeah, Nicole, now... where do you live, Nicole? I'm in Montreal.

You're in Montreal, okay. And you know we're a radio show that's based out of Tampa, Florida. Of course, I know you. Nicole got in touch because after 25 years, her marriage is on the rocks. Her husband has become obsessed with a woman he met online. And he fell for it, of course, because of all the, you know, the beautiful, sexy photos of Janessa. You sound like a pretty hot commodity. Why would your husband be going over some Internet bitch for you? That he's never met.

So he stumbled upon some chick that's portraying herself as Janessa using Janessa's photos. Or it's probably a dude, too. I think it's a guy. Now, is he asking for money? For over a year, Nicole's husband has been sending this woman money. How much? I think he sent her close to $5,000. Oh, my gosh. And it's probably a lot more than that. Yeah. That's probably what you know. Yeah, because she was claiming to be sick and helping her grandmother in Africa. So I sat down. I said, listen, I go, I'm going to do everything I can to track down,

because I knew your name was Janessa, to track her down to prove to you that the person you're speaking with is not even probably, like you said, a woman. No, it's probably a man. It's probably some guy from Ghana or something like that. Some guy from Ghana or something like that. Part of their co-hosting shtick is that Janessa and Baba are platonic roommates. They post their roomie shenanigans online.

You can see videos of Janessa working out. Sometimes she mows the lawn in front of their house in a bikini. Baba makes raunchy but affectionate jokes. They laugh a lot. They genuinely seem like friends. And on this episode, Bubba jokes that Janessa should get in league with the scammers and spread the wealth. I'm going to start doing this for real. I'm going to make Janessa make phone calls from six until seven at the house every day to pay for half the rent and be like, hey, listen, honey, you know, you got to work the phones. Can you imagine if I got all the money that these people send out to these faithful Janessas? I'd be a millionaire. This moment kind of blew my mind.

It meant that Janessa was aware that her image was being used by scammers all around the world. That she knows they're getting rich off of this entity, this floating digital being called Janessa Brazil. But the flesh and blood Janessa? According to her, she's not getting rich at all. And there doesn't seem to be anything she can do to stop it. So at this point, you probably have the same question I do. Why doesn't anyone do anything about this? Calling a radio show to vent about your husband being scammed doesn't feel like the pursuit of justice. It's a common thread in many of these stories. Very few people who have been scammed try to get their money back.

The ones who do are rarely successful. So I want to know, what legal recourse is there for someone who believes they've been targeted and defrauded? Uncover from CBC Podcasts brings you award-winning investigations year-round. But if you want to listen ahead, all episodes of Love, Janessa from CBC and the BBC World Service are available right now. Binge listen to the entire series

by searching Love, Janessa. Uncover the best in true crime. The attacker had very good knowledge of banking systems. 2.1 billion dollars in stolen funds. Money laundering operations. A cyber criminal group. These are smart guys. Seasons one and two of The Lazarus Heist from the BBC World Service are available in full right now. Following the twists and turns in the incredible story of the Lazarus Group hackers. The Lazarus Heist from the BBC World Service. Catch up with the whole series now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. I have these two feral cats that live in my backyard that I feed.

Garfield and Potato. And they wait for me in the morning by the back door to feed them. They were eating so much, I had to go to get the monster-sized bag. I have a lounge chair out there. This is John Armit. I can hear him talking to my producer while I'm getting my tech set up. Hi, John. So sorry. Technology. How are you? I'm wonderful. And you're in Lagos. I've always wanted to go there.

John's based in Ottawa, a feral cat lover and world traveler. He has a soft, nice guy energy, but his job is intense. John is an investigator for the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. We are the central repository for data, for intelligence and resource materials that relate to fraud. We at the Anti-Fraud Centre, we do not conduct investigations, but rather we provide valuable assistance to our law enforcement partners. And we work really closely with Europol and Interpol as well.

So by sharing our information worldwide, we can actually make some traction on this. Around the world, the fraud business is booming. COVID helped. A lot of people were stuck at home in front of their computers, looking for a little companionship. According to UK Finance, a financial services trade association, bank transfer fraud linked to romance scams was up 20% in 2020 from the year before in the UK. And in the United States, reports of romance scams hit a record high in 2021, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Victims lost almost twice the amount of money than the year before. $547 million. And the other aspect of it is romance fraud are the lowest reported frauds versus the highest amount of losses per victim, which is staggering.

versus the highest amount of losses per victim, which is staggering. I've seen on average $150,000 in losses per victim, which is just devastating. And a lot of people seem to think like these fraudsters are just maybe these overweight people in their grandparents' basement committing these scams, when really it's a massive organized crime group that are making tons of money, whether it be organized crime or countries in corruption receiving the funds to maybe look the other way. Did any of your work look at how Ghana

has become quite a central hub for romance scams? Some of the investigations have in fact led to Ghana. And I don't want to make it seem like Africa is the main hub around the world. Like for instance, Jamaica, they have the prize and lottery scams that they've been involved in. And we have our fair share of fraudsters in Canada. And there's a lot of organized crime groups within Canada that are not only targeting Canadians, but also victims around the world as well.

I asked John to walk me through a typical story, a real world example of what happens when victims turn to the legal system for help. There is one particular case in Canada here where the victim was hit up by these scammers on a large social media platform. They started a dialogue. She was a widow. She was looking for companionship, and this fraudster filled that void. So in this particular case, the person she thought was her new romantic interest was purporting to be a US soldier who is in Afghanistan when the Afghanistan conflict was Scammers love to use images of military personnel as bait. Makes sense. An officer has a built-in excuse to not reveal too much detail about their whereabouts or background. They can vanish for chunks of time and explain it away as a top-secret mission.

And who doesn't love a man in uniform? And so as the relationship evolved, he would make up excuses of why he couldn't come to Canada. And, you know, over the course of their time together, which was only a few months, she provided $150,000 in various methods, whether it be gift cards, wire transfers, sending cash in the mail. So the victim finally had had enough and had friends convince her to go to the police. So our investigation began and we ended up identifying that there was a money mule in Canada that was the intermediary between sending the money to Nigeria.

A money mule is someone who transfers illegal money from one person to another, helping to launder it. These webs are huge, intricate. Many different criminals are involved in a single scam, each taking slices of the same pie. Sometimes the mule is working in tandem with the scammer, but sometimes they're also being scammed. The mule may not even know they're a mule. They think they're just receiving a nice cash present from a new love interest they met online. The woman worked closely with police on a sting. The money mule, the man who allegedly had been the intermediary

between the woman and her beloved fake military boyfriend, agreed to come by her house. And we ended up arresting the individual as he was trying to get an extra $60,000 for the victim. When he showed up, officers quickly intercepted. John says he didn't resist arrest. So as a result, we were able to seize some devices and technology from the individual. We wrote search warrants and we were able to access that data and the data was really surprising even for me to see of how many frauds

this suspect was involved with and it turns out that this individual and his brother had immigrated to canada and they were not only targeting canadians but they were targeting americans as well this person was involved with identity thefts, actually stealing people's wallets at malls, involved in the SIM card swap. So he had individuals that were compromised working for financial institutions and telecommunication companies. So the far reach of this one individual was quite incredible. But even with all that evidence, the matter is still before the courts. It's been three years since charges were laid. The other challenge is the court process. We know a lot of our prosecutors don't have a lot of experience in cyber fraud and fraud investigations.

leaders don't have a lot of experience in cyber fraud and fraud investigations. And as we know with the court systems around the world, that it can take two to three years before these matters get before a jury or a trial. Every once in a while, a case does get legal traction. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation says it has busted a Ghana-based criminal enterprise with the arrest of six of its ringleaders in the US on charges of laundering more than $50 million. This clip is from a Ghanaian TV station called Joy News. According to the FBI, the scams include romance scams targeting the elderly, business email

compromise scams and even fraudulent COVID-19 relief loans. Those six men are part of a group the FBI labelled the Enterprise, criminals whose elaborate schemes zigzagged across the US and Africa in the 2010s. They snagged victims using dating sites and text messaging, laundering money through dozens of American bank accounts. After years of investigation, a woman named Deborah Mensah was extradited to the US from Ghana in 2020 and convicted as one of the enterprise's co-conspirators. She was ordered to pay over $1.5 million in restitution. She was ordered to pay over $1.5 million in restitution.

We've not been able to confirm whether the money has been collected or distributed to the victims yet. We do know that Mentor was sentenced to nearly six years in a New York prison where she sits today. An outcome like this is extremely rare. That Canadian woman who thought she was in love with a military man? The thousands of dollars she allegedly lost were likely laundered far from Canada as soon as the money left her account. Even if her case goes before a judge one day, she'll likely never see a penny. Like we tell people, the criminal court system is not set up to try and get your money back. Right? Like if there's assets that we can seize and that kind of stuff, that's one thing.

But if they've gotten rid of all the money and these accused have no money, you can't get blood from the stone sort of thing. So, our big, hyper-connected new world works very nicely for scammers. If a scammer is in Quebec or Nigeria, and a scammy is in Sardinia or Texas, and the mules are doing their mewling in between, that's a lot of different justice systems, unsynced, physically far apart. I wondered if crackdowns were more successful on a local level. I've been doing this job in terms of cyber security and cyber crime investigation for the past 10 years now. When I was in Ghana, I sat down with Philemon.

Heads up that we were speaking in a car during a rainstorm, so it's a little noisy. Philemon's part of a private digital forensics agency that works with local law enforcement. His job is different than it was a decade ago. So at the time, you realise that cybercrime wasn't really, really something that people even care about within the country. It wasn't the kind of crime that you'll find, let's say, law enforcement changing people to arrest and prosecute them, because it was quite new.

And it could seem like criminals had a social cachet in Ghanaian society that shielded them from prosecution. When somebody is a cybercriminal and they are enjoying their proceeds from this crime, they tend to donate to society, you know. They are kind of respected, so the laws wasn't really punitive. It wasn't really enforced. So people just do things without being punished. I wondered if part of the reason Sakawa boys had this slightly elevated status in some people's eyes had to do with Ghana's history.

I'd heard there are scammers who justify their illegal actions because of colonialism. When I was in Accra, I met up with another Sakawa boy named Romanus. There's an argument that romance scams are a form of reparations for slavery. People see it as a way of taking back what was stolen from them. 100% true, yeah. Because back in the days, we were not there, but we had the whites came for our gold, more of our properties, took it to their side and then built something for themselves.

So, yeah, I can see it's kind of a payback. A kind of payback. Whatever the scammer's perceived justification is for these crimes, the end result is usually the same. No repercussions for the criminals involved. But why is it that most cases don't lead to a prosecution? I ask Philemon why most cybercrime investigations fail to lead to a prosecution. The only challenges that we have currently is the complainants.

When there is a case, getting the complainant to come to court is difficult. Why don't they want to come forward? The person making the complaint has to also make sure that you are willing to support the investigations. Okay, you are willing to also testify. But if you are not, it's difficult. And most of the time, the victims are outside the country. So getting a plane ticket, coming here,

you know, they don't see it as worth it, so they don't come. So international justice usually plays out pretty badly for victims, and pretty nicely for scammers. But there's a third party in the romance scam chain. The bait. So I wanted to know if Janessa Brazil had ever sued anyone for using her name and image. Simon, the journalist from episode one, believed he'd uncovered Janessa's true identity and that her real name was Vanessa.

When Simon thought he'd tracked down Vanessa, he tried to warn her about how her pictures were being used. And she basically said, thank you for alerting me to this, I'm well aware of it. 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 $2 million 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. Of course, we don't know if Simon had actually been corresponding with the real Janessa Brazil but we were curious about the idea of court proceedings involving her. We couldn't find any

traces of her name in the courts but then we found that video from 2019 of Janessa co-hosting Baba's show. You gotta work the phones. Can you imagine if I got all the money that these people send out to these faith genocides? I'd be a millionaire. There's probably millions of dollars. Bubba's show is recorded in Tampa, and in Florida, my producers know a guy who specializes in finding people.

Bob Norman. Bob's a journalist based in South Florida. He works closely with a private investigator to find people in a place where a lot of people go to not be found. There is a culture of con in Florida. There's no question about it. There's a lot of grifting going on in Florida. Maybe he's been down there too long.

But Bob's take on Chinesessa was immediately sceptical. You know, when you look at her, I think it seems that suspicions arise over and over. And as you say, she's been the face of many scams. My first thought was that she's got to be involved. I mean, that was my first thought. Either that or she's the most unlucky person to be wrapped up in this all the time.

It's natural to have suspicion. Is that fair? Probably not. Is it worth pursuing? Absolutely. I have to admit that I felt sort of protective of Janessa when he said that. Making this podcast, it feels like I've spent a lot of time with her, even though we've never met.

I realised I'd come to think of her as someone who'd been exploited, the Roberto version of Janessa. Was I too getting caught up in a fantasy of rescuing her? fantasy of rescuing her? As Bob talked, I also wondered if I was a bit naive about who was pulling the levers on the Janessa Brazil scheme. After all, she was in a perfect position to make a lot of money off her image. And would that even be such a terrible thing? It was her image, after all. As she said on Bubba's show, millions of dollars have been sent to the fake Janessa's around the world. And she hasn't seen a penny. Who could blame her if she tried to get some of that money herself? Do you see Janessa Brazil as the victim?

That she could very much so be the innocent person whose images have resurfaced the internet thousands of times. I mean, your image is not yours once it's out there. But, I mean, if it... Why would they use her face? What is she, a modern-day Helen of Troy or something? Or she's a siren from Ulysses. She draws them in.

Is that what it is? Has she just got a face that somehow is more effective than other faces? I don't know. Perplexing is the word that comes to mind. It's perplexing. The best way to get to the bottom of this would be to speak to her myself. But first, I'd need to find her. If, let's say, she does fall under the category of someone who doesn't want to be found,

how easy would it be for someone to disappear in the US? It's not easy at all. It's almost impossible. I guess we're kind of in that mindset slash limbo of trying to think of another angle or another approach that we may not have thought of. Does anything come to mind for you? Well, I mean, there's obvious, I think, ideas that come to mind.

One is, and I think you all are following that, trying to find other people that are close to her and trying to find another way into her graces or confidence in some way. We know one person who's close to her. Janessa is part of my show. She's a co-host. Janessa, say hi to Nicole. Hi, Nicole. Bubba, the radio host from Tampa, Florida. His full, now legal, name is Bubba the Love Sponge Clem, by the way.

B-U-B-B-A-T-H-E-L-O-V-E-S-P-O-N-G-E Then you have to put the little registered trademark, the R, the circle R, because it's a federally registered trademark name. And then the last name is Clint. So I set my hunt for Janessa aside to see if I can get Bubba to talk to me. I tried Twitter. I tried Twitch. I tried his agent. I also try reaching him at a racetrack

he owns in Ocala, Florida. Please check BubbaRacewayPark.com for times and pricing. Thanks so much, and we hope to see you here at the racetrack. At the tone, please record your message. Hi, my name is Hannah Ajala. I am a BBC journalist hoping to speak to Todd,

a.k.a. Bubba the Love Sponge. I can be reachable via email. And then one day, Bubba's name pops up in my inbox. Yes, I'm available for your podcast. Tell me what I need to do. Next time on Love, Janessa. I met Janessa in New York at Howard Stern Studios. And I just thought that, oh my God, she's so stunning.

I hope I can add some insight for you guys. and CBC Podcasts. I'm Hannah Ajala. Our producers are Katrina Onstead and Laura Rege. Associate producers are Hayley Choi and Simona Ratta. Sound design and audio mix by Philip Wilson with help from Cameron McIver. Executive producers are Stuart Cox and Jago Lee. At CBC Podcasts,

Emily Cannell is Coordinating Producer. Chris Oak is Executive Producer. And Arif Noorani is the Director. At the BBC World Service, Anne Dixie is Senior Podcast Producer. And John Manel is the Podcast Commissioning Editor. Thanks for listening.