Uncover - S25 E6: Love, Vanessa | "Love, Janessa"

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Her real name is Vanessa. Her model name is Janessa Brazil. Where does Janessa end and Vanessa begin? Vanessa tells her story and reveals the human cost of being the bait in catfishing schemes around the world.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. Good morning! Hi! Wow! Hi! You brought Hannah with us. Hi.

And this around. There we go. Hi, nice to see you. How are you? Let me set the scene. I'm in Nigeria, and that second voice is my producer, Laura, in Vanessa's apartment in the US. I'm being carried around on a laptop,

getting the full 360 tour via video chat. I'm really good, thanks. It's so good to see you. We're trying to figure out what we're going to do, like the sound, but I think my bedroom. She looks relaxed, black summer dress, a cascade of thick black hair. It's kind of fitting that even though we're finally together, we're talking to each other digitally, and yet it still feels like a reunion, which is ridiculous, right? I mean, I don't know Vanessa at all. All I know are the images of her alter ego, Janessa Brazil. I want to find out exactly where Janessa ends and Vanessa begins. He's coming up. I buzzed him in. Yeah, so he should be coming up in a minute. Donuts and coffee are being delivered.

Great, so then... Yay, coffee! Vanessa's apartment is a one-bedroom condo. Small kitchen, big couch in the living room, but not a ton of furniture. It's nice, but modest really. And it's very hot. I'm sweating. Don't mind me.

It's supposed to get hotter though. I need to get this air conditioning fixed before it gets worse. All righty. Let's check this. Her little dog is running around. Jasper, he's a little French bulldog. Oh my gosh. He's so cute. Yeah, he's a little French bulldog. Oh, oh my gosh. He's so cute. Yeah, he's a sweetie.

He's my baby. Then we go into our bedroom. There's a scented candle flickering. A giant bed. Piles of makeup and clothes. It's like a spa collided with a slumber party. What do the words say? Oh, it says dream.

And the little neon sign. I've seen it before, actually. That neon sign of the word dream that sits on the wall above Vanessa's headboard. It's prominent in videos from her camming days. This room also contains a lot of tech equipment and Vanessa knows how to use it. There's a problem with a laptop camera and she solves it faster than my producers do.

And when we're all set up, she hops up on the bed and looks directly into the camera. We are in my bedroom right now where the magic happens. And I mean where I make my money on webcam. Made my money. But yeah, in the comfort of my own bed. Throughout this podcast, so many people have spoken for Janessa Brazil. The scammers, of course, who stole her images and put words in her mouth. And those who were scammed. Who claim that Janessa Brazil needs their help.

Their love. I can't imagine what it's been like for her, if she sees herself as a victim, or if she feels at all responsible for the damage that's been done in her name. But what right do I have to even think she should be remorseful? Is the worm on the hook guilty? These are the questions running through my head as we settle into talk at last. Now finally, the real Janessa Brazil gets to speak for herself. 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 6. Love, Vanessa. Should I say my real name or my model name? Vanessa is my real name. My model name. Vanessa is my real name. My model name is Janessa Brazil. And where were you born? Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1982. Vanessa grew up in a mountain village about three hours north of Rio.

Very small town feel. It was a street that went downhill and a bunch of houses, you know, up and down the cobblestone streets. All the kids played together. It was just kind of a little community village type of thing. You know, and then we had the park up there and we hung out in the park. I used to love just walking around the streets and then that night I used to love going out dancing at the discotheques so I sneaked in it's pretty disturbing because I didn't realize it until I went back there after so many years and seeing these little girls act like that. Like, I started drinking at nine years old. Vanessa's childhood, as she tells it,

contained a lot of sadness. Her father wasn't in the picture much. Her parents divorced when she was young. Soon after, Vanessa's mom moved to the U.S. with a new boyfriend. My mom actually left me and my brother behind on my sixth birthday. And my brother was two. And I'll never forget that day.

So yeah, it was tough. Vanessa's father had 13 siblings. And for years, she and her brother bounced around between relatives' homes, finally landing with an aunt and uncle. In 1994, when she was 12, Vanessa joined her mother in the States. So she used to be a dentist in Brazil, but when she got here, she couldn't practice.

She would have to go back to school. So she became a dancer, a stripper. Vanessa describes herself as a shy immigrant kid with an unhappy home life. To fit in, she learned English fast and swallowed her accent. She went to a private all-girls school. I put myself through high school because my mom was like, I can't afford to pay. So my mom went from being a stripper to making costumes for strippers. That was her business. And so she taught me how to sew and I helped her make costumes. I made my own prom dresses, my own bikinis.

And she paid me. $600 a month goes to school. And that's how I put myself through. She'd always been a good actress, dressing up and pretending to be someone she wasn't for fun. You know, it was just my thing. I loved that. I was living such a horrible life.

What I was doing was pretending that I was an actress in a movie. These things were not true. They were a script. So I detached myself and just became this other person. This was my role, and I was going to play it, and I was going to play it well. Little did I know that everything that I played well at was going to lead me here today. Be careful what you wish for.

I know that many of us are walking around wondering about paths not taken. What if, fill in the blank, then who would I have been? But Vanessa's story seems unusually riddled with these junctures. Points where things just happened to her. Things beyond her control. Events that changed everything. Here's one. Vanessa was a really good student.

She says she has a photographic memory. She could study for a test on the bus to school and ace it. By the end of high school, she had her eye on studying international business at university in Hawaii. But I didn't realize that I didn't have a social security number and I was illegal, so I was not able to apply for college. Vanessa says her mother hadn't told her that she was undocumented.

She has her papers now, but at the time, a door slammed shut. She didn't go to college. Instead, she got serious with her boyfriend, an older guy, a bouncer she met at a nightclub. And we grew up together. I was a kid. So how long were you together for? Let's see. We were together six years before we got engaged and then nine years of marriage. The day before they were married, Vanessa got in a car accident. Not too serious, but she got a settlement.

I've always wanted a boob job. So, you know, I made money with my car crash so I figured you know what I'm gonna buy myself new boobs and a new car so that's what I did. Vanessa modeled a bit then worked as a massage therapist she took an admin job in an office. What was the amount of money I used to make I would say probably like 500 bucks a week. You know, I was married, I had a nice little job, I helped out with bills or whatever. A low-key life.

Vanessa describes herself as someone who wore a lot of turtlenecks. But then on a holiday, another one of those junctures. Me and my ex-husband were on vacation in Florida. And we're just sitting there minding our own business. Beach was packed. And we just get that like feeling, you know, when that feeling of people like staring at you. I look back and I see this couple. They keep moving over

until they finally get to us and we start talking, nice couple, and she was very beautiful, you know, very porn star, like you know, big boobs and big lips and just that distinctive look about her. So we got to talking and she finally tells me that she's a porn star and her husband is her manager. At that time, I was very, very innocent. Next thing you know, she starts telling me about webcam and how much money I could make and I'd be really great at this because I'm so beautiful, blah, blah, blah, the whole story. We go back home and I was like, I don't think, I don't think we blah, the whole story. We go back home and I was like, I don't think we're going to do that. But I kept it in the back of my head. I was already

having problems at work with sexual harassment. So I gave it a second thought. And I like to give things a chance, try everything once, then you can say if you like it or you don't. you know, try everything once, then you can say if you like it or you don't. So I talked to my husband and he said he'd be totally cool with me working on webcam and, you know, nudes, whatever I was comfortable with, he was okay with me doing. So that was like the biggest thing for me. As long as he's fine, I'll take it at my own pace. Because you don't have to be nude. You can start off with clothes, then progress from there. They were living in Tampa, Florida at the time. So I'd get home around 5.30 in the afternoon from my regular job,

hop on cam for a couple of hours, and kind of get warmed up. See if something was going to be of my liking, or if I was going to be comfortable. Right away, she made a connection with the fans. I'll never forget the noises from the site, like the noises that it made. Every time a guy would, I don't know what it is from their end, but if they liked you, there would be a whistle noise. Foo, foo, foo, foo. That noise would just be

constantly going to the point where it didn't stop. A woman taking her clothes off in front of a camera. What is that experience like? Right, well, my husband was my first. I was a virgin when I met him. So I don't have a lot of experience. And I was my first. I was a virgin when I met him. So I don't have a lot of experience.

And I was really shy. So I just went on there and I said, you know what? I'm going to make an alter ego. And I'm going to be someone completely different. You know, it's not really me. So I won't be ashamed of what I was doing. Once that camera turned on, that was it. She decided to give the persona a name, Janessa Brazil.

There's only two reasons why I picked that name. So it's still the same, but different, right? The last name Brazil, obviously, is from where I'm from, but also is one of the most searched words on the internet. First page on Google immediately. You know, that was pretty much it. I hate that name, Janessa Brazil. But it helped me. It helped me get popular quickly. It helped me get popular quickly. How did you learn to get into the act and perform on camera? I just went with it.

Like, whatever came to my mind and whatever the guys were asking me to do. And then eventually I, you know, made my own thing go like my own personality it helped me become very sexually aware of myself as a woman so it was a great learning experience immediately the money started rolling in so she decided to quit her day job this is what everyone wants to do going your boss your bosses off and be like, I'm quitting! And not have a worry in the world because you're making triple of the money somewhere else in half of the time.

It was the late 2000s and sex on the internet was evolving fast. The shift from the web as a gigantic library of porn to a perpetual peep show was underway. But it would still be several years before subscription platforms for live sex shows really took off. The idea of an adult entertainment model having a website, building and controlling her own image and money, it was still relatively new. Porn is an industry

that often marginalizes female creators or flat out exploits them. Vanessa says she was one of the first to upend that system. I started being able to think outside the box.

I was trying to think of ways of doing things that nobody else was doing. I launched my website December 2008 and made my first appearance on Howard Stern shortly after, and that's when everything blew up. At the time, Howard Stern was one of the biggest radio hosts in the US. There's a video of this appearance online. Vanessa walks into the studio in a leopard print bikini and high heels. And Stern asks her if she'd like to remove everything but the heels.

She does. Then she rides a machine that resembles a pommel horse from gymnastics that's probably the part of the segment most people tuned in for but vanessa also hangs around for an interview she holds her own standing naked among a group of clothed middle-aged dudes she's funny, impressive, unflappable, and only 27 years old. And when I did my interview, my whole website crashed. There were so many people joining it. I mean, it was insane. I was on the air for 45 minutes.

It was a great experience. Vanessa was building herself into a brand. 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 documentary brings together the best of factual storytelling from across the BBC World Service. This is a historic opportunity for peace. To end violence for good in Northern Ireland.

Exploring the world around us and bringing the globe to your ears. The invasion meant that the lives of millions of Iraqis changed forever. There are still some memories that I can't talk about. Search for The Documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

The Janessa Brazil image was carefully cultivated. She had the long game in mind. I never crossed over and did Boy Girl because once I did that, there was no coming back from that Like I could go and get a regular job still But if I crossed over i'm not really sure that would be possible

I was offered I think like 500 000 for my first boy girl scene but I was like uh No No, no, no because if I were to do boy girl I would control the content. I would do the video. And everybody that's been waiting for me to do Boy Girl,

I would get 100% of that money. I'm like, I'm not that dumb. I'd probably triple that over time. You have to think about these things, you know. And a lot of girls make that mistake because they offer them a lot of money for the boy-girl scenes. Instant gratification, that's what they're looking for. And they don't think about these things.

And they don't last. Vanessa had her sights set on a more analog marker of success. She says she called Penthouse the adult magazine. She got a meeting and ended up with an eight-page spread. And then in 2013, Vanessa, as Janessa Brazil, made the cover of Penthouse Portugal. Another one for the books. At the peak of her career, through subscriptions and live shows, and carefully managing her brand,

Vanessa says she was bringing in about a million dollars a year. And it wasn't just money. There were gifts, too. Vanessa would post wish lists online of stuff she wanted, and it would show up on her doorstep. Piles and piles of boxes. Like clothes, shoes, anything I put on my wish list, I would get it. Go buy me gifts for my birthday or just anything.

Outfits for Cam, like costumes, gift cards. We had to get a storage unit. I paved the way to the other girls, and they still watch my videos to this day, to see what was she doing. And what exactly was the thing that Janessa Brazil did so well? So you got to think, like, your mind is powerful, right? You can really get yourself going by just thinking of things. You ask them what they want. What do

they like? It's not about me, me, me, me. They're paying me $20 a minute. It's all about them. It's kindness and caring. You don't judge them for the weird things they're into. Be like, I'm into it too. Let's go. And when they see a hot girl not judging them and making things okay. So that's what sets me apart because most of the time I actually do care and I want to please them and I want to have fun with them. And they get hooked and they get like, oh, shoots. I really like that. I didn't even know I liked that. I do. I know you like something before you actually like it.

Because I read and research. I read endless books on psychology, hypnotism, and how to manipulate their minds. But not in a bad way. That's what they're there for. So let's play. Bring it. manipulate their minds, but not in a bad way. That's what they're there for. So let's play. Bring it. You know, and I shock them every time. You know, they're like, whoa, whoa, what's next?

And they come back for more. Caring and kindness, you win their hearts, you win their wallets. And the rest is history. And the rest is history. But as the Janessa Brazil machine got bigger and bigger, it needed to be fed. And the fuel was Vanessa. It became too much. Camming had started as an after-work side hustle, but several years in, it had become all-consuming. Vanessa says that she was now the breadwinner in her marriage, and the marriage was falling apart. All of it was wearing on her mental

health. She says she got a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, which she contested, and started taking prescription drugs. She was working long hours in front of the camera sometimes 24 48 hours at a time i wasn't getting sleep just like money making machine you know eventually i became soulless i was just like gone like my eyes there was no one in there and my fans saw that. They all knew something was happening. You know, I couldn't get on camera unless I was wasted, drinking two bottles of wine a night, four or five days a week. I'm like, this is not a life.

If I need to do this to get on there, there's no way I can keep this going. And to make matters worse worse there was another layer of stress in her life that layer is the reason for this interview and this whole journey and why I wanted to meet with Vanessa in the first place the scammers if we go back to the first time that you discovered someone was using your name with a scam do you remember it this started a very long time ago this guy comes into my chat and he says that we're married and i was like i'm? And they're like, you're my wife and you told me you were going to quit this.

And I went, is this guy joking with me? Is this like a prank? And I was like, why don't you send me an email and tell me what's going on? And that's when I started to realize what was happening. And it wasn't just the victims. She says the scammers started popping up in the chat during her shows, too. They would come in and ask me to do weird things.

Put your hand on your head or, like, put a red hat on because that was the ways they would prove to these other people they're scamming that's the real me. It got out of control. But what was crazy was my friends were getting messages from these scammers pretending to be me. How did you feel knowing that your image was being used in such a way? I didn't think it was going to get out of control the way it did. I thought it was going to be one of those things

that was just going to pass. And I was like, you know what? This is probably like a fad. It's going to blow over. It's going to be fine. And next thing you know, I'm just like, everybody would come in my chat

and would say, you're my girlfriend. I sent you money to get your visa. What are you still doing? I'm like, what the heck is going on? It was a nightmare. I felt bad for these guys. What am I supposed to do?

They're asking me to prove my identity now. I'm like, that's not my job. I'm here to have fun on webcam. Did you respond to any of them? I did. Now I'm like, that's not my job. I'm here to have fun on webcam. Did you respond to any of them? I did. I did respond to pretty much all of it at first. It took me about five hours a day to respond to these scam emails. I literally would respond to every single one of them.

And then my ex-husband started monitoring my chats. And he's like, you cannot keep doing this because people are leaving your chat you're losing money it's becoming like a drama you know negativity drama it affected everything my mood my money I didn't want to work. It was like, it's too much. Do you have a sense or a figure in mind of how many of these imposters have been using your face or identity? Well, I have a few fans that told me how much they lost. And I have to say, think the one with the most money was $70,000. How do you send that much money to somebody you don't know? Like if I got all the money that these guys sent, all these scammers, I would be a billionaire today. Not sitting here in my

little apartment. It's incredible. It is incredible. And to be honest, it's something I don't think I've ever been able to wrap my head around. Why these men keep going back, emptying their pockets for someone they think is Janessa Brazil. Someone they've never met in the real world. But Vanessa has a very clear view of what she thinks is going on. It's the heart. Men are caretakers by nature. They want to take care of a woman and there's a purpose for them because they're going to take care of this girl and she's possibly going to love him back. See, most of us grow up not knowing what unconditional love is.

Most of us grow up knowing what conditional love is. So even if they don't have the money, they're still willing to give it just to feel loved. The breadcrumbing is the worst part that these scammers do. They keep them on the hook. So they show love and then they take it away. And when they take it away, the guys get desperate and they're willing to do anything to get it back. That's just how the brain works. I know this because I went through it just to get that tiny little bit of love. It's all about wanting someone to love you.

And you're willing to do anything just for a little bit of that high. And the highs and lows is what they're doing. So they breadcrumb them, take it away, give it, take it away. And every time they take it away, these men are willing to do a little bit more than the last time. And that's why they keep on coming back. It hurts me. My heart hurts. Not even because of the money, like, where I could have had it,

but for them. it, but for them. By the mid-2010s, a decade since the invention of Janessa Brazil, the internet was changing. New online platforms for explicit performances were emerging, and Vanessa gave it a try. But re-entering the cam world didn't feel very good to her. So I just decided to give it up. I couldn't look at myself on there anymore. I couldn't look at pictures of myself. I couldn't look at videos of myself. I just was like, nope, can't do this. It just brings me back.

I knew every video that I've recorded, every picture I've taken, I could go through it all and tell you exactly what was happening that day and how I felt. You could see it in my eyes. This was around 2016, the time when Janessa Brazil's online presence faded. The fake Janessa Brazils were proliferating and their targets were tracking down Vanessa. The stories, it was sad.

I started becoming depressed, you know, and then, like, blaming myself. Maybe if my pictures weren't out there, these men wouldn't be getting scammed, or maybe I should stop doing content. I no longer want to give them the power to use anything of mine ever again. You know, when I shut that cam off, I was just

like, I felt not awful, but numb. I knew it wasn't for me anymore. I need to move on. That person is no more. There's just too many bad memories attached to that. I left that behind. The one thing that I was still hanging on to was Janessa that attached me to that past life and I needed to let it go. That's when I started focusing on Vanessa, finding her again, pulling her out and healing everything that came along with her that I had forgotten because Vanessa got lost in there, you know. So now it was time to care about Vanessa, like take care of me for once. She got divorced and she says she left without much money. I packed my car and I left everything behind. And I drove from Florida and started my new life from scratch. I have nothing to show for my previous work.

Vanessa ended up in this small town where she is for our interview. Even though she wasn't posting much, she kept hearing from people who had fallen for the scammer version of Janessa Brazil. So here's a question. There are a lot of pictures of beautiful semi-naked women online, available for the taking. What was it about Vanessa that made scammers choose her? How do they know she would have this mass appeal?

I say my look is very versatile. I can pass off for Italian, maybe Greek, you know. It's true. Vanessa's beauty is racially ambiguous. A global look for a global scam. And the sheer volume of Janessa Brazil images in circulation was exceptional. You know, I had a lot of candid videos, just like I did with my pictures. I took phone videos, you know, just me out there being regular girl and they used that. I put myself out there

completely, you know, my private life and then my work life. So they had a lot to work with. I never really died out. The scammers kept alive. They kept my image alive. No publicity is bad publicity. So even people that were new online, fans, guys online that never knew me before, now they do, not because I'm on there, because they see Vanessa Brazil from scammers. Scammers kept me relevant. So thank you guys, but unfortunately for the fans, I'm sorry. So Vanessa, what are you doing with yourself now? I live pretty much day by day. I have loyal fans that literally send me money weekly just to say, hey, I appreciate you.

Don't expect anything back. I mean, I have this one mysterious guy and he sends me a few hundred dollars a week, which I use for groceries and whatever else. And then I scrape by. And then some of my fans help me with my rent every once in a while. And it's literally like I tore myself down to nothing, to the bare minimum.

And I'm still here living pretty comfortably, other than the air conditioning. But that's not my fault. I fade the electric bill, swear did I hold on I did but yeah what do you think of the term sugar daddy I've had a couple a sugar he is a clear example of... Yeah. He was a sugar daddy, but I never gave him any sugar. He was just a daddy. Sugar daddy, but hold the sugar. He was more of a splendor daddy or an equal daddy.

No sugar. I have this, I don't know what it is, like this ability to just be able to get them to give me money, but I don't give anything back. What it is is it comes down to thinking that eventually I'm gonna give in. They're gonna change my mind. And they know the game.

I don't have sex with fans. Like that's not my thing. And I make it clear. You want a pretty girl to go to lunch with? Great. But that's where it, that's right there. That's where it stops. And here's the twist.

These men who helped Vanessa pay her bills, these Splendidaddies, some of them were scammed by fake Janessa Brazils. These men who helped Vanessa pay her bills, these Splendidaddies, some of them were scammed by fake Janessa Brazils. So maybe this is part of what Vanessa means when she says she should thank the scammers. You could say she's benefited from their work, if indirectly. Of course, there's a massive difference between her and the scammers. Beyond fraudulently claiming to be Janessa,

they lie about being sick or needing money for fake boobs, lie about being stranded without food in Toronto in the winter, lie about being in love. Meanwhile, Vanessa says that she is upfront with the men in her life about who she is and what they get and won't get in return. Transparency all around. The one that has bought me all this furniture in here and a lot of my stuff, my clothes, shoes, everything, he's also another one that was catfished and then found the real me.

So he emailed me and said, hey, can we do a Skype show? And I charged like $100 for 10 minutes, right? So he's like, let me just get 10 minutes. I think he just wanted to see if I was real. So we got on there and we just started talking and just kind of like the time went on and on. I took the time.

I didn't ask him for the extra money for the extra minutes because I care. And I made him comfortable and gained his trust. And that was it. Like, they're very grateful for that. When you think that there are possibly thousands of fake Janessa Brazil accounts out there, maybe even thousands of scammers hiding behind her image, it feels like lottery odds that these men actually tracked down Vanessa, let alone became part of her life.

That made me wonder about one person who was sure he'd contacted the real Janessa Brazil. Roberto. Remember Roberto? The romantic Sardinian farmer who lost $250,000 to scammers. We asked Vanessa to check her inbox for messages from him. She opened up her laptop. I am logging into my Gmail to see if we can find this guy, see if we ever communicated with him.

OK, so let's see. What's his email? Her inbox contains thousands of unread emails. Here we go. So it dates back to... When's the first one? Here we go. 2016.

His first email to me is 10.30 a.m., so this is it. Hi, I have the need to talk with the real Janessa Brazil. And guess what? The real Janessa Brazil wrote him back. Next time, on the final episode of Love, Janessa. Hi Roberto, how are you? I'm very good, thanks and you? Ah, good, look at you, Very handsome. Love, Janessa is produced by Antica Productions

and Telltale Industries for the BBC World Service and CBC Podcasts. I'm Hannah Ajela. Our producers are Katrina Onstead and Laura Re 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 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.