“It’s official. I got scammed.”
Those five words made my phone cry when my friend – probably too embarrassed to say so out loud at first – informed me via text.
Four more words in a follow up text said it all.
“I’m sick about this.”
You never imagine anyone you know to fall for the “okey doke.” But she was truly the last person on Earth I expected to get got.
Cautious to a fault, she moves like most women wish they had the discipline to do.
“My heart was guarded as usual,” she said. “But for the first time I left my pocketbook unattended.”
They weren’t even dating. He was just kind of hanging around professing what he felt was a “connection.”
“He kept trying to insert himself into my life,” she said. “I didn’t think he was a scam artist, I just thought he was thirsty.”
She shut down any notion of a relationship when she noticed that he would lie about little things and be completely vague about others.
He discovered her weakness for “a hookup” when he got her tickets to sold-out concerts.
But things went sour when he asked her to be a professional reference. Remember that? Yes, that was him. She made the costly mistake of remotely staying in touch.
He happened to call her when she was in the auto shop.
Being the stereotypical woman who doesn’t tend to car problems in a timely fashion, she rode on a spare so long her car started wobbling. She assumed she ruined the tread on her other three tires.
“One of my best friends is a manager,” he said while she waited for an estimate – one she expected to be upwards of $1500.
According to him, she should walk right out and let his boy handle it. All she had to do was send him $500 via PayPal and he would have her tires sent in seven days – and if it cost any more, he would pick up the slack.
“I think he just caught me at a weak moment when my judgment wasn’t apparently what it needed to be,” she said. “You should never make a decision when you are in a bad head space.”
His concert person came through, so why wouldn’t his tire guy?
“When I released that money, I had a bad feeling,” she said. “I should have let him get the tires and then paid him after. But then I was like, ‘He’s being so nice, maybe I’m just not being a trusting person.’”
Seven days became two weeks – which became a month. Then more.
Between week six and month three, he had been in the hospital, was the victim of identity theft with a freeze on his account, and the auto tire manager friend’s wife got sick – just before they went on a vacation that held the tires up even longer.
His phone calls and texts abruptly stopped.
“It got to the point to where I was like, ‘You pay me my money, or I’m calling the tire place to get your friend fired or I’m calling the police – you choose.”
He told her they can meet at a restaurant, and he would give her the cash. He didn’t show.
She decided to get his friend at the tire place involved. She got the name and number of his friend on the front end and called.
“All of his lies were legit at one point,” she said.
It was a tire place, and the person really worked there. The friendship was the fallacy.
“I mean, he came in here about twice a year, but I don’t know dude like that,” the manager said. “Do you have his number? I’ll call him and put you on three-way. You can record it for the police or whatever you need me to do.”
Dude didn’t answer. He never answered again.
She learned that the tread wasn’t ruined on the tires, and her repairs came to a grand total of $300. She ended up paying $800 when you factor in the scam.
“The moral of the story is, follow your intuition,” she said. “This whole thing should have stopped when I figured out he’s not who he said he was.”
