It started as they often do: a random request on Google Hangouts from a profile with no picture and no history. They do this kind of thing countless times a day; send out message requests to random dudes using an account with a woman’s name. The current scam du jour is known as the “Lonely Hearts” scam, and their goal is to develop an online relationship with lonely men, via which they extract money from their mark.
Unfortunately for today’s scammer, he hadn’t reached a random lonely guy; he’d reached me, an obnoxious internet veteran with nothing better to do than string him along, taking up the time he might have been investing in an actual sucker.
It started off well:
Come on, Janet. You literally said “Hello, Chris”, and now you’re asking my name? I feel like you’re not paying attention to me at all. Fortunately, “Janet” was kind enough to make up for it by sending a picture. A quick Google image search revealed the image in question to be from porn star Dani Daniel’s Instagram (NSFW, obviously). Excellent! The game was afoot.
Janet wanted my photo in return, so I went to the same source he did, choosing male model Matthew Nozka for his rugged good looks, an important factor in the story I was about to spin.
I’m in, fellas! And Janet was very interested. I gave a deep South location as my area, and Janet began the shpiel:
I felt that religion should be an important centerpoint in our conversation, but apparently Janet wasn’t familiar with the seminal work of musical auteur Ray Stevens, nor that Pascagoula is in Mississippi. Being from North Carolina, I assume that’s just a failing of the educational system there.
Janet wanted to know more about what I do, so I obliged:
I must be doing well, because Janet wants to get to know me better! He was already missing some important cues, though. Between the sweaty shirtless guys and the pudding eating, Janet might have suspected this wasn’t going well, but he didn’t seem to be to into the details. I thought he might have busted me for a second when he started asking about my public profile pics, but that was easily remedied; Janet’s parents had both died, so hey, mine was about to as well!
BUT, Janet wanted more pics. I pressed him to send me more first while I headed back to Matthew’s Instagram to find some more fodder to work with.
Does that shirt have blue balls? It apparently does. At this point, I had some good photos to send in return:
Apologies to L.A. for calling you Georgia, but Janet didn’t know any better. And it was a shame that Matthew had injured his leg instead of his arms. Given the photo with someone who could be his Mother, there was a Reddit meme shout out waiting to happen that I couldn’t quite get to.
I was ready for the meat of the scam, so I tossed Janet a soft pitch to see if he’d bite:
Nope. Janet still wanted to talk about family. I literally had to remind him I’d asked.
Nothing. In fact, not even serious interest. What kind of weak ass scammer are you, Janet? Well, if you’re not going to bite on the obvious opening, then it’s straight on to the fun and games.
Janet apparently neither owns a dictionary, nor is reading too closely what I’m writing, or he might have questioned at least one of those traits. But, given the apparent approval of that being nice, I figured let’s focus on that while Janet tells me about how God feels about relationships:
Well, shoot. Janet wants a phone number. I found a livestock farm in Valdosta, and gave him that number. However, now that he has “my” number, it’s only fair to trade, right? However, Janet had gone dark, and I was worried he might have actually tried calling the number. Time to turn up the pressure:
Janet’s “US number” went to a catering company in New Jersey (shout out to Joe Leone’s Italian Specialties!). Hilarious. But, I’d spent enough time with Janet, and had more important things to do, so it was time to drop the bomb.
“Yebeshyia bio” means “We will meet again” in Ghanean Twi, according to Google, but I misspelled it on the first time around. Dammit. Nothing ruins a snappy exit like a typo. I was hoping Janet might have one last thing to say, but after 15 minutes, nothing. I sent a follow up message, and found I was blocked.
Blocked, Janet? Really? After all of the quality time we spent, I thought we had something special. He was obviously off to the next mark. Ah well.
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