Ep44 ~ Hook, Line, & Sinker

This episode is all about Catfishing on online dating sites. 

In this episode, I discuss the Tinder Swindler, a popular Netflix documentary about a man who conned several women out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.  He called himself Simon Liviev and claimed to be the heir to the "king of diamonds".  

After matching with a woman on Tinder, he would portray himself to be wealthy, intelligent, charming, and adoring.  Initially, he would wine and dine his targets. He spent a lot of money on them, as well as attention to earn their trust.  He was considerate, thoughtful, and sweet.  After a short amount of time, he would tell them he loved them and would entice them with a romantic vision of a beautiful future as husband and wife. 

 Once  he felt as though he had earned their trust, he would claim to be in a desperate and dangerous situation that required their financial help.  He would tell them his assets were frozen or he couldn't access his own fortune and he needed them to step in and rescue him. 
While it's unlikely that most of us would ever encounter someone as masterful at manipulation as him online, fake profiles and catfishing are common.  In this episode, I share two examples of how my own image and likeness were shared on dating apps in an effort to manipulate people.

The first example was shared with me by a woman who was using an app called Zoe in Oregon.  The woman using my photos claimed to be a freelance photographer.  The second example was shared with me by a man who was on the app Plenty of Fish in North Carolina.

These are a few of the tips I share to help you avoid falling prey to catfishing:

1. Be cautious of people who appear particularly alluring... Exotic lifestyles, unique and fancy jobs... Stuff that seems too good to be true.
2. Often times Catfish will delete their dating profile soon after matching.
3. The Catfish may be "active" and "online" an unusually high amount of time.
4. They may ask you to talk through Google Voice or a different app- not using a normal phone number
5. They may refuse to  FaceTime or Video Chat
6. If you search their name and cannot find them on social media, LinkedIn, or just by googling their name and location, as for more information.
7. Be cautious if they delay a face to face visit or cancel on you.

Unfortunately, these manipulative people prey on people who are new to social media and online dating.  If your gut is telling you something is off or someone seems to be too good to be true... listen.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to man shopping with Stacy, where I share my relatable, raw dating and life experiences for your amusement and inspiration. I'm your host, Stacy weer, and your listening to episode 44 hook line and sinker. In this episode, I am going to explore the topic of catfishing hiding, who you really are to hook someone into a relationship with the motivation of revenge or loneliness, curiosity, or boredom, going to talk about the timely show on Netflix called the Tinder swindler. And then I'm going to share two examples of how my own identity has been misused online. Along the way. I will be sharing tips and advice on how you can protect yourself from these cat Phish situations. If you are online dating or have social media accounts of any kind, I'm gonna bet a bunch of you have watched the Tinder swindler on Netflix because they're reporting that 50 million people have watched that series where the man who went by Simon Lavi, swindled, a few women into giving him hundreds of thousands of dollars. How does someone do such a thing? Well, as I've thought through it, I believe that the first tactic used is this sense of allure, right? Like he's this mysterious man dressed in designer clothes posed in photos, in private jets, at fancy restaurants at big festivals. He looks important online. He looks wealthy and right away, he lets all of these women know that he's the he right to the king of diamonds. So that's pretty intriguing. I mean, one can get over some character flaws and such if they think that they're dating a may and with billions of dollars. But really, as I listened to the women who were interviewed, he didn't display a lot of character flaws. They found him to be funny and intelligent and charming. And he used all of these gifts to charm them. He earned their trust. He talked to the them in adoring ways. He gave them compliments. He was romantic. He was attentive. He was sweet. He did everything up front to prove himself to prove that he was trustworthy. He spent money on them. He took them places. He showcased his wealth. And then he told them that he loved them and that he wanted a future with them. How many of us are longing to be wind dined and RO and treated adoringly and promised a beautiful future? That's what he did. It's not like I initially thought that these women were just so freaking naive. Like how desperate were they to fall for this guy? No, it started to add up and make a little bit of sense to me. I mean, that is like an till it didn't right, because when the tide turned and he felt as though he had them hook line and sinker reeled in that's when he became a desperate man, that's when he used the trust that he had developed up front and the love that these women felt for him. And he made it appear as though he was in trouble. He needed to be rescued. I mean, he's pretty smart to pick some women who were financially in a place where they had the means to help him and they cared and they wanted to rescue him. Um, he had done a lot of nice grandiose, big gestures, you know, spent money on them. They thought he was good for it. So they went to great links, like taking out loans and dipping into their own savings to help him, um, when they thought it was just a temporary, you know, loan. Right. Well, I gotta say, I don't think that I'm capable of falling for such a thing. And there is no way I would risk financially bailing someone out. There's just no way his swindling was just like at an obscene level obscene, but he was big time. I mean, he is a big time con man, this is how he has survived. Like his thirties. I'm pretty sure he would use one woman after another. He would use, you know, woman number one's money on woman number two and just repeat, reuse, recycle, and keep going. He had photo documented evidence of his bodyguard being beat up, you know, pictures of this man, videos of blood seeping from this man's forehead to corroborate his stories. He, it was well done. It was just very, very well done on just a very big level. Now, most of us let's hope to God would never encounter someone like him Mr. Big time. Right? Um, not that it couldn't happen, but I think he is, uh, you know, just a very rare gem. I think he is few and far between to have this whole, you know, Netflix documentary, uh, created off of, off of his schemes online, you know, as I researched and read and talked to people as I was preparing for this podcast up as, so I realized that the psychology and the tactics used by dishonest people who are trying to manipulate others. Yeah. They're, they're all pretty textbook pretty much the same. So I'm gonna keep going. And I'm gonna share a couple more stories that hit a little closer to home. They hit close to home because my photos were used on two separate occasions. I have been contacted online by people who were catfished by someone else using my photos and my information manipulate them. The first time this was brought to my attention. I received a message from a woman on Facebook and she says, hi, Stacy, I need to tell you something important. And after reading a little about what you do, I should most definitely tell you someone used your beautiful pictures to catfish me. And I, I just did a reverse image search. And it's definitely your pictures. So sad because I'm also going through a divorce and a life change and was misled by someone who is using your pictures. Just thought you would want to know not sure what you can do. So I did my due diligence. I felt so bad for this woman. And I said to, I'm so sorry that this happened to you, especially at a time when you are healing and vulnerable. Thank you for letting me know. Can you please let me know what app this was on? Did you report the account? If not, do you have the screenshots of the profile? And then I told her, because this is not the first time I had heard of this happening, that I had had a male, a friend report, a fake account with my pictures, um, on hinge previously. And she said to me, hi Stacy. So here's what I know I was on the app. Zoe she, or he, or whoever. It was found me when I was in Oregon, about a month ago, they said that they lived in Pineville and she called herself Donna. She said she is a freelance photographer within the month. I chatted with her and she had a contract for a photo shoot in New York. And then in Istanbul and everything seemed legit. But as soon as we matched, she removed her profile. Okay. So I'm gonna pause for a minute and I'm going to tell you, this is tip number two, tip number one is the alluring part, right? Like, um, that I talked about, like with the tender swindler or perhaps, um, this woman was, you know, uh, with my photos and being told that I had some fancy job in New York city and Istanbul, and I'm a photographer. That's pretty alluring. That's a little outta the, outta the ordinary. Right. Um, but the point that I wanna make right now is that this I've heard this many, many times over is that UN or they right after matching on a dating site, they remove their profile. They, they go away. So that's something to watch for, especially if your gut is telling you that something is off. Um, okay. So I'm gonna keep going. So this woman goes on to say I was 24 when I met my husband and have with him for 25 years. So I was married the entire time dating apps have been around. I have no idea what I'm doing. So I don't know any warning signs, I guess that might have been one meaning that this woman disappeared off the app. She says, I feel so dumb if I think of anything else that will help I'll holler. She says, I got kind of dramatic and mad into lead the stupid text stream. Most of the pictures she sent are right on my man shopping with Stacy website. So she says, I, you know, that she wished that she, um, could have kept them. So we went on to chat and make nice. And then it was a little, a little friendship develop, um, online there with her. But, um, just incredibly sad because that's another common theme. I think that this tends to happen as, as it just makes common sense to people who are new to dating apps. Okay. So my messages from, um, a more recent instance are from a man who lives in North Carolina. And he messaged me on both Instagram and on LinkedIn, where he found me. Um, so I'm kind of gonna go back and forth reading these messages to you now. So he says that, you know, my photos are being used by a catfish. He says, I spent the last two, two weeks texting with someone who used your picks. The crazy thing is that this person called herself Stacy with a Y instead of an IE weer, same last name spelled exactly the same in a profile from Raleigh, North Carolina. He says, I even Googled the name early on and found you in the results, but did not even realize that looked the same as in this lady's photos. And then he put some embarrassed emojis on there. He said, I suspected her from early on because our phone call was on Google voice. Okay. There's, there's another tip for you. That's weird people. It's weird to use Google voice. Um, how about just a real phone? These people use burn and they use weird numbers and they'll ask you to use WhatsApp and other stuff. Uh, don't do it. That's my advice. Um, he also says that there were significant delays when he would talk versus when she would actually hear him. And there were many other red flags. She sent me your photos. And I spent all afternoon, one day trying to find if there was a business called the Tulsa in Raleigh, because she had sent him a white, a photo of me in a white dress. And he could see the word Tulsa behind it, uh, backstory. I was in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So, so, um, this woman had told him that she was an event planner. She also had just a really fun, unusual kind, not that that's that unusual, but kind of, um, job. And so, um, that's how she explained so many photos, like where, uh, that my photos, where I was so dressed stop, um, often. So he says, you know, that he chatted with this lady for a couple of weeks and he was supposed to meet her for drinks. And as he suspected, she canceled three hours before they were to meet. Um, so I basically gave this guy my cell phone number, um, and I called him and we tell through this. And the biggest theme that I took away from my conversation with him was that he really, he really wanted this woman to be legit. He admitted to me over the phone that he was still getting over his crush on me or the image of me, the idea of me, I should say. And I think that that is what it led him to just want to believe, even though there were so many obvious signs that this was absolutely, you know, fabricated. So he said that, um, eventually she was sending photos as they were tech and she, she was pretty savvy. She would say things like, oh, I just visited my, one of my girlfriends and she just, you know, had a baby a few months ago. And then she texted a photo of me holding my cousin's child. But I mean, you can see how that would be somewhat believable. Maybe get you, you know, kind of questioning your own intuition because it was so timely and made sense. Um, she was intelligent. She was fun to talk to. She had an accent and she said that she was from South Africa, which made sense to him, um, based on my appearance, the it, that that could add up. Right. And so eventually she sent a photo that he was able to do a reverse look up on Google with, and it popped, and he, he found my website as well. So that's also a good lesson for me because I have such a public profile on Instagram and I'm not discriminatory on my Facebook account either. So I have, you know, like 800, some odd, probably more than that photos for people to, um, use in these ways. But it appears as though only the ones that are on my website actually lead back to me online. So, um, interesting. And I'll tell you that this man also brand new to online dating, he's still separated. He went on the free app, plenty of fish. And that's where this happened. He got off. Oh, he did also tell me that this woman, um, was always online. So apparently on plenty of fish, you can tell when, when other people that you have matched with are active. And so that kind of got him thinking more than once that whenever he would rarely, you know, pull the app up, um, before she disappeared from the app, um, she was active every time. And so that kind of made him question her as well. And then sure enough, like once they made a plan for a date, she, um, deleted her account. And so it was the night after she canceled on him at the last minute that he stayed up all night, you know, um, trying to figure out who she really was. Um, and then he did and he called her out on it. And would you believe they continued to chat? Not even kidding. She told him that she was from Nigeria. She told him her real first name. And then they talked about her swindler strategy. If you will, in conversation with her, she said, essentially, well, I'm gonna read to what, what, uh, she said, she said that the angle that she would use to manipulate would be, would be dependent on the type of person that she gauged the man to be. She said, if you are very ambitious, someone that is open to new or better ways of making money than the approach would be crypto. And that means, and he told me that he did remember in an early conversation with her, she said that she dabbled in crypto. She didn't ask him for anything. It was just subtly inserted into conversation, but it did kind of raise a flag with him. So that's one of the ways that this woman makes money. She, um, earns the trust of someone. And then she says, you know, I invest in crypto, I'm making money, handover, fist, you know, transfer me some money to this account or Venmo or whatever. And I will help, you know, double your money or whatever. So that's one of the ways, because I'm, I, as I was talking to this man, I'm like, I just don't understand what people get out of this. Like, is it boredom? Is it, is it that they're, you know, off at the world and they, they wanna hurt people? I, I just, I couldn't imagine that there's much money in this, but maybe that's me being naive. Maybe, maybe these, they are able to convince people to send them money. So then she goes on to say, if you're a pervert, then the approach would be to keep you excited and ask for things like gifts and all of that. Now we all know that it's common. That's really common. And I have spoken with people I'm not even kidding that will, that have admitted to me that they have sent like photos of their feet to men, right? I mean, this, this is real. And they really do get paid for it. Um, or it's like the fans stuff, right. Sexual favors, whatever. So there's that. Um, and then she said, if you're a lover boy, then the approach would be to give you attention, keep you happy and engaged. And then when I need things, I would ask you for favors. So, you know, I think that also plays into just lonely people, lonely people who might be content with just having an online love affair. Um, I've seen stuff like that on like freaking Dr. Phil, where for years people will have this long distance, you know, relationship, quasi relationship feeling as though it is very, very real, but you know, someone on the other end is, uh, getting a lot more out of it than the other. Right? One of the things also that I've learned is oftentimes as victims are questioning their gut, wondering if this is too good to be true. And we all know if it feels too good to be true, it probably is. Um, this idea that they didn't want to the other person off by asking for more proof or by asking for more information about them. And this is a big, big mistake. So I've talked about this a lot in other episodes and definitely on my safety episode. Um, it's really important when we meet people online to find out their full name. There is no good reason why someone would not give you their full, real name early on in chatting, unless let's see, unless they're married, unless they're a criminal, unless they're lying about who they are. So ask, and then do your due diligence. This is what I talked about. Also on the safety episode, Google, then go to the, you know, ask them where they work, go to their company website. See if you can find them, go to LinkedIn. And yes, I'm fully aware if you don't pay for a LinkedIn account, they will know that you're stalking them on LinkedIn. Hey, guess what? If they like you, they won't care. They won't care at all. They'll be flattered. I've been flattered more than once. When I can tell that a man has searched for me, I'm like, Hey, he's thinking about me. He's looking me up. That's good. That's a good thing. Only people who have things to hide or are being dishonest. Don't want you to a look them up now. Understanding not everyone is big on social media. Not everyone is as freaking transparent as I am it. You know, it, I don't think it's necessarily a red flag. If you can't find someone on Facebook or on Instagram, but you're gonna find'em somewhere. You, I mean, you can find people's home addresses just by Googling in the white pages. You can find their occupation just by looking on LinkedIn and these Google search results on images. They can be hit or miss, but here's a deal. And this guy that I talked about that was catfished by the woman using my photos. He thought about asking her to send him a selfie. Okay. He didn't because he felt like maybe that would be rude or it would her off. And his idea was like, Hey, will you send me a selfie with like, hold up your first finger? You know what I mean? Like what they do to verify your photos on dating apps, but he didn't do it. Okay. So obviously if the dating app that you are on an option to only view people with verified photos, um, that's wise, how about exclude anyone that isn't verified and never be afraid to ask someone to prove their identity to you? Anyone who's been around the block for a minute knows that this stuff happens. And if they're legit, they won't mind. They won't mind another tip. Um, that came up in conversation between this man. And I, you know, if someone's not willing to video chat to, to FaceTime with you or zoom or whatever, if you don't live in the same city, or even if you want to do that before you meet them within the same city, that's a flag. I'm mean, I know that it's not everybody's thing and it can make people nervous and maybe they hate doing it or whatever, but I don't care if they're interested in you and they are real, they will absolutely FaceTime with you or video chat or whatever. Um, I hope that these tips have helped. This is a really common thing. And this guy, you know, he admitted that he was having fun texting with her. He liked the attention. He liked the idea that it was me on the other end of the phone. And quite frankly, he continued to talk to her. You guys, after he found out she was from Nigeria. So, I mean, this is another clue that, you know, this is a vulnerable person at a, at a vulnerable time in his life. And maybe that's not the best time to be on dating apps. Just gonna, just gonna throw that out there, you know, while I've been trying to grow my Instagram account, um, so that I can spread my message of optimism and happiness and the fun parts about being single. Um, I get fake accounts made with my photos all the time, and it's so frustrating and annoying. And some of them will actually end up with hundreds of followers. You know, my face with the name like Holly is real common for some reason. Um, I've been called Mary, um, Alice, uh, I've seen a lot of profiles with my photos, with the name Alice below it. I I'm almost like who are these board as people who are sitting around, you know, taking the time to copy my photos, make up and what are they getting out of it because, Hey, guess what people I'm over here writing a book I'm over here, putting out a podcast, I'm spending money, my own money to, uh, produce this podcast. And yet there are like little boys in, you know, India making money, fooling people into sending them, you know, cash app for whatever they're offering fake on, on under the guise of being me, what the hell I'm doing it all wrong? Yeah. I mean, I'm totally doing it wrong cuz I'm not making money. It is me. These are my, my gifts and my skills. And I'm not making money over here. No, I'm kidding. But that is the truth. I, I really just don't get it. I, I, I mean, what my point really is is they have to be getting something out of it. It's working on some level or they probably wouldn't be wasting their time copying my images and such don't be a victim, don't be a victim. Okay. So I hope that you, uh, took away a few little tips and tricks of how to not get swindled and taken hook line and sinker on, on dating apps or on your social media. And I guess my very last message and plea with all of you, if you ever have a fake account made of you, or if you recognize someone else's images being used inappropriately on a dating app or on social media for the of God report those people, it only takes a second. And then notify if you know, the person whose images are being used, notify them and a big fat, thank you to all of you who have taken the time to message me. Um, especially on Instagram, whenever you have been approached, because oddly enough, they go after my own followers most of the time. Um, so watch yourselves and thank you. Thank you for looking out for me too. And then just to wrap up, I'm gonna go ahead and do like a pre-announcement here. That man shopping with Stacy is going on spring break. I'm going to take, um, take a little break, a little rest, uh, from the podcast and I will announce, um, when that is going to be for sure on Instagram, maybe on here. And then I will most definitely announce when season two is going to launch. So thank you all so very, very much for listening. Please do continue to spread the word about the podcast and my Instagram as I am really, really trying to grow and do good things and build a community of happy sing people. I just appreciate you all so very, very much. I'm hoping that the spring break gives you all an opportunity to catch up on episodes. I feel like the pace of an episode each week is a lot. It's a lot for me to keep up with. And, um, I can tell by my downloads that older episodes are, are still getting a lot of downloads, which shows me that a lot of people are behind. So, um, please forgive my absence. Um, but I know that you guys understand and, and I'll be back refreshed and better than ever. And please keep your ideas coming. I need your feedback and your show ideas, and I appreciate you all so much.