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you know he told me he was a widower that he had lost his wife and his daughter in a car accident which had happened 10
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years ago and then i shared that i was a widow as well and that i had lost kevin
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almost three years ago this is karen miller she's 68 years old retired and living in simi valley
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california and i had a deep amount of empathy for him thinking that he lost a wife and a
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child i i couldn't even imagine that and so i was very very sympathetic empathetic
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because that's how i am that's how i am with everybody as karen mentioned she lost her husband
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kevin a few years ago and she's still grieving the last few years have been hard for
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her and she says she certainly wasn't in the market for a new boyfriend when a stranger named gil harper sent her a
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friend request on facebook what what did he look like in his profile picture nice looking man
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he had said he was 63 and so he looked like a 63 year old man you know so we started just
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chatting talking with one another he said he'd stumbled across her profile while searching for an old friend he
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thought she had a nice smile and that's why he sent the friend request at first they talked about simple things
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they both like country music they both like to travel and then the conversations became more
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personal each of them describing how hard it was to lose a spouse and be alone they were chatting on facebook every
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single day karen began to look forward to it i was flirtatious with him because it was fun
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to think that there was this person over there in another country who found me attractive and
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it was kind of intriguing to me that wow i wonder if i could find love again and wouldn't that be nice
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because they were in different time zones gil would write karen long romantic messages before he went to bed
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at night and she would read them when she woke up in the morning after about three weeks of this daily
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chatting gill asked if he could come visit karen in california to see whether they got along as well in real life as
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they did online you know he said how about i come to where you are and i said for a visit
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you know that would be fine if you want to come here for a visit before gill showed up in la karen
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figured she better tell her three sons what was going on she sent the same text message to all of
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them it said i met someone i wrote back wow wow mom this is karen's son chris onderdonk he's
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42. he remembers he was at work when he got his mother's text he's a clinical social worker she had replied back i'll
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tell you all about it this weekend and that was on tuesday and i was thinking to myself i'm not
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going to be able to wait till the weekend to hear about this i want to hear about it right away
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secretly i was hoping that boy i've met him through a friend of a friend and he's a wonderful guy and that's kind of
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what i really wanted to hear and so when she said i met him on facebook i was immediately feeling some concern
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did you tell her that not immediately i'm being sensitive to how how serious it seemed because i figured
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if she's telling me about it it's something she's invested in so i just more just asked her more questions about
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how did how did she meet him what's he like what does he do what's his story here's what he learned
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gil harper was self-employed as a contractor he negotiated deals buying and selling copper and he attended the
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university of london chris went to facebook to see what gill looked like so what it looks like is an
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older gentleman on vacation he's standing in front of the roman coliseum and he looks really happy
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and normal right very normal uh clean cut so i was like yeah that's a good looking
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guy but there was only that one photo no others and very little other information
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on the profile something didn't feel right to chris and he was on a deadline gill told karen that he would be in
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india for a three-day business trip and from there he'd be flying to los angeles
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to meet her so chris only had a couple of days trying to figure out whether someone is
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who they say they are matching a name to a face to a voice to a backstory turned
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out to be a lot harder than chris could have imagined he ended up on a wild goose chase and we
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wound up on one of our own i'm phoebe judge this is criminal [Music] i would say it was sparse
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compared to other facebook profiles that i'm used to seeing because normally even if you don't know somebody if
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you're not friends with them you can usually maybe look at their friends and i did see that he had one friend
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and it was my mom karen are you laughing yes it's true he had one friend me i was thinking well his profile is
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sparse because he just started it he found me and he's zeroing in on me chris told his mother to ask gil for
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more photos so karen asked gill and gil did send more photos which only made karen more confident but chris was still
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feeling funny it didn't make you resentful or angry that he was being skeptical he does have a tendency to scold
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so to school yeah because i felt like a bad little girl who was being scolded by her son
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then my oldest son scott you know gets involved and so now i'm being slammed by these two young men
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chris and his brothers didn't let up they wanted to know why gil would fly all the way to california to meet a
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woman he'd never even spoken to on the phone karen did you ever think it was did you
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ever ask to have a phone call with gil or say yes actually i was always asking to talk to
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him on the phone and then he would just come back with all kinds of flowery type things you
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know oh he would uh always refer to me as honey and i would get caught up in that and then i wouldn't
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push it any further now with her sons breathing down her neck karen insisted on a phone call with
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gill so finally gill provided a phone number where he could be reached on his business trip to india
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the number had an indian country code so it did seem that gil was where he said he was
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again gill's willingness to comply with karen's request even if it took a while made her happy
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it was proof that gil had nothing to hide and nothing her son said was gonna shake her resolve
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she sounded like someone that was in love it was like someone that was intoxicated
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with love so i started googling i think something along the lines of you know scamming love scams something like
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that and that's when the term uh i was introduced to the term romance scam and then i started reading about the
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romance scams and then noticing then um all of the sort of you know widowed oftentimes they pose as
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widowed self-employed independently wealthy can go anywhere in the world usually operating on a
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business trip and that's when i realized this this was definitely a scam [Music]
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there's a piece of advice you see across these scam warning websites don't scam the scammer don't contact
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them don't mess with them chris did not take that advice the only way chris could think of to
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figure out who gil was and what he wanted was to call him on the phone and ask he called the number with the india
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country code but he didn't call and introduce himself as karen's son chris chris called gil and pretended to be
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karen a 40 year old man impersonating his mother basically my whole life people mistake me on the phone for a
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woman my entire life that's happened to me as f as long as i can remember and so they say like thank you ma'am
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yes they say karen is true yeah it's true okay this weekend i was looking i was you know i was on the phone this weekend
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uh play you know having a trouble with customer service and the person's like listen ma'am
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and i'm looking around at everyone and i say you see what i mean so actually in my
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i just thought well people think i'm a woman on the phone so here's my golden opportunity to
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really kind of put this to the test so i decided i'm gonna call this guy and pretend to be my mom and i thought
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you know i know this is crazy but i thought well if maybe this is gonna be him i didn't really believe that but i
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thought at least then if you know it sounds like it's for real maybe we can go that direction but what
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i really thought was if this guy answers the phone which i really didn't think he would
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then maybe i'll have some proof to show my mom what's really going on any answers
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he answers and immediately i just jump into character maybe tomorrow come over tomorrow
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oh yeah tomorrow i know it's going to be before your birthday can i meet you at do i meet you at the
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airport yeah you come and pick me on the airport what airline were you thinking of flying
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uh i don't know about that right now it's not forgetting a flight stick i'm going to lay
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yeah i i have to say my my family is very worried and very concerned that maybe you aren't who you say you are
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oh so he's he's actually buying this voice and you what are you thinking when you
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realize he's buying it i'm thinking i've got him that i just said to myself i got him
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when will you let's do skype right i'm kind of now right now i told you i'm going to do my business right now i
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can't call i can't talk on skype right now well you seem to be getting angry don't get angry with me
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this is our first time being able to talk right now this is the first time i was getting to
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talk and you're already getting angry i don't know [Music] karen what was it like when chris came to and
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said i spoke with gil well he he called me and um he asked me what kind of accent was i expecting
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from him and i said well english of course and then he you know he's he just kept saying i am
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so sorry mom i'm so sorry mom and and it was so sincere i mean and so chris he ended up emailing it to me so that i
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was able on my email to actually play it and hear for myself what was that like sitting there alone
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listening to it i was mad i was very angry very angry that this had happened to me
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because i'd like to think i'm smarter than that yeah you kind of feel like a fool huh
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right yeah i felt like a fool so gill or the man calling himself gil wasn't an older british man he lied
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about that he didn't seem to be in love with karen or really know all that much about her
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so maybe a romance scam but he never asked karen for any money or anything like it
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so what did he want we decided to call him and ask hello hello i'm looking for gill
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that way hi hi i'm calling from a from a podcast called kremlin and i'm calling about
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karen and i'm looking for gill is okay what kind of question is that oh is it am i speaking with with gil right now
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i'm not stronger dutch oh nothing's wrong with it i just wanted to ask gil a couple of questions about
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their relationship okay what kind of question is that gil said that if i didn't believe he was
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who he said he was then why didn't i skype with him we could video chat he said to call him back with our skype
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name so lauren who makes the show with me set up a skype account and called gil and
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told him the username and then nothing she sent a few follow-up texts no response
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so we thought this is the part where gil finally disappears hours later gil texted lauren with a
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skype name gillharper2 she downloaded a program that would let her record the video chat
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and dialed hello what she saw on the screen was a static image of an older white man shirtless
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reclined on a couch at first she thought it was a photograph another one of gil's fake outs
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but then the image moved it wasn't a photograph the screen had just been frozen for a minute
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there was a real man there on the other end of the video chat there was no sound but skype has a chat
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function so she typed to him there's no sound gil responded in the chat box he said
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there must be a poor connection tell me what you want me to do she kept typing that she could not hear
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him eventually she got too creeped out and hung up [Music] this really threw us for a loop
00:15:10
we emailed the video to chris hi chris how are you i'm in shock i'm i'm really disoriented right now
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very disoriented i i feel this like battle between my rational mind and my emotional mind
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right now like my my emotional mind is like just having this reaction of like oh no
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he's for real and we've messed everything up my mom was in love and i've messed everything up and then my
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rational brain goes there is no way this guy is who he says he is there is no way
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i'm barb slopic i'm the founder and owner of romancegames.org and i live just outside of branson
00:15:57
missouri romance scams basically was started by accident the accident was that barb was a victim
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of a romance scam herself when i was working from home and we used yahoo instant messenger to communicate back
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and forth and one day a gentleman popped on to my messenger i wasn't on a dating site he
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said he had just seen my yahoo profile after three weeks of chatting online the man asked if he could call barb he had
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told barb that he was from the uk when he called i recognized immediately that his accent was not english it was
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nigerian and i got very quiet and i asked him why he lied to me and he said he didn't lie
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that he had gotten this accent from living there for a couple months barb met another woman who had had a
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similar experience and she went online to try and find out more about these types of scams but couldn't find
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anything so she started a small yahoo group with four other women who had dealt with the
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same thing that was in two thousand five as of today seventy thousand people have
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come to that group with their stories asking for help on our website romancescams.org
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you can submit the photograph your scammer sent you so that other women don't fall for it she's got more than 10
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000 pictures there even though gill never asked karen for money you don't think that that means that it
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wasn't a scam right i mean what what are the red flags i've done this for 10 years i've never
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found one that wasn't a scam the only reason he hasn't asked her for money is he hasn't asked her yet let's put it
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that way he would have lost his passport there would have been an accident on the
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way to the airport the details vary but the formula is basically the same the victims are mostly women over 50
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often divorced widowed elderly or disabled who believe they are in a real relationship
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once the victim appears to be in love some crisis happens a terrible accident requiring money for emergency surgery a
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death in the family something horrible that will first elicit empathy and then cash
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how could a few thousand dollars be worth all this effort in scamming oh my god it's not just a few thousand dollars
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there's millions and millions of dollars that are lost to these scams the fbi tallied 82 million dollars in
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the last six months of 2014 alone [Music] as for the skype conversation the man lauren saw in the video
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barb thinks that what she saw was actually a video she says these scammers will record the
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skype calls and then play them back so it looks like a live video but it's a recording
00:19:02
the man we saw was likely a victim himself who got on skype to chat with the person he was supposedly in love
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with which barb says means that lauren's end of the skype call may also have been
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recorded and can be played as proof for some other future romance scam victim she said a scammer can create a whole
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profile using pictures of lauren he finds online and then the skype video as proof so that's scary
00:19:29
lauren's still cooling down from that one but still why we asked barb was he so very
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reachable and willing to talk to us even though he knew we were journalists he's leaving the lines of communication
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open he doesn't want to disappear because he's hoping that somehow he is going to reconnect with her and
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finish the scam scammers don't give up real easy that's one of the reasons we tell people
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don't confront the scammer just disappear karen hasn't disappeared her facebook profile is still up but gill's facebook
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profile is gone right before he shut it down karen got a message from him saying that
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well i just don't think i can be with someone who doesn't trust me and so i did i slammed him i let him
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have it what did you say and well i told him he should go get a gun and blow his his effing brains out
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i did i mean i he got to see the other side of karen miller got to see my dark side good for you i
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would have done the same thing and what about for you chris i mean when your mother
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said okay yes this is were you kind of thinking yourself okay i didn't have to be a jerk and i
00:21:00
didn't have to be scolding for no reason like it was true and i and i helped i was proud of myself
00:21:11
period because i have no idea how in the world that happened it was because i it just
00:21:19
it was almost like an out of body type of experience karen how long was your entire
00:21:25
correspondence with gil um just shy of a month and um and that's scary that's scary
00:21:35
because he really did get a hold of me psychologically even when um my intellect would come out
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and i would say to him you know i really want to talk to you on the phone i would get
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pulled back in by him so the manipulation and the psychological aspect of it is it's scary it's very scary like a spell
00:22:03
like a spell absolutely [Music] criminal is produced by lauren spore and me eric menno helped with sound julianne
00:22:24
alexander does our episode art some of the music in this episode is by elephant micah you can find out more
00:22:30
about it at thisiscriminal.com we're on facebook and twitter at criminal show tickets are moving fast for our live
00:22:38
show in brooklyn on july 15th at the bell house we have some crazy stories lined up for the show if you're in new
00:22:45
york please join us criminal is a proud member of radiotopia from prx check out the other shows at
00:22:51
radiotopia dot one of those shows is fugitive waves produced by the kitchen sisters
00:22:58
their new episode is called the secret and not so secret life of teresa sparks in which a transgender activist tells
00:23:05
her story i'm kind of an engineer you know i trained as an engineer and so i have
00:23:12
this you know very organized way of approaching so what i did was went back to my year of birth
00:23:16
found out what were the most popular names and then i took the top 20 and then i looked at my first name initial
00:23:23
which was t and the teresa's one i landed on go listen radiotopia from prx is made possible
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with support from the knight foundation and mailchimp celebrating creativity chaos and teamwork i'm phoebe judge this
00:23:38
is criminal radio tokyo you