This video is sponsored by Wondrium.
Brew: With the ubiquity of social media, it’s becoming
increasingly simple for the ne'er do-wells of the
internet to use our personal information against us.
They can steal our profile pictures for catfishing, fill our
email with spam, and even use our own interests against us.
So when the recently divorced Jodi decided to return
to the dating scene, she never thought that it would
result in a 45,000 dollar debt, and an embarrassment
that millions of people across the world feel every day.
The “dating game” is anxiety inducing enough without the
added pressure of putting “divorcee” on your dating profile.
When Jodi finally got out of her marriage of 23
years, she was initially hesitant to use online
dating, but with the encouragement of a friend,
she finally relented and downloaded Tinder.
She constructed her profile perfectly, mentioned
her love of camping and kayaking, and even
included her favourite song “Meant to Be”.
It wasn’t long before she met Andy, a bit of
a scruffy dude, who wore a baseball cap, and,
much to Jodi’s delight, his teeth were pristine.
They met for a date in a Starbucks in Kelowna, BC Canada,
where she found out that they shared the same favourite song!
She talked about her dog, her career as a Health Analyst.
He told her about his work on offshore oil rigs,
how he lived in Vietnam, and how he was ready to
slow down and enjoy his life with someone special.
A first date quickly turned into a
second, and a second into a third.
Jodi discovered that Andy, whose real name was Andre,
had also just gotten out of a rocky marriage, and
grew up with parents struggling with addiction.
They both hated the same foods, and when Andre
told her that he was falling for her, she knew.
“Everything he said was exactly what
I wanted to hear,” she remarked later.
Jodi was in love!
It totally made sense to start planning their life together.
Andre, who Jodi lovingly nicknamed Dre, had to go back
to his home in Vietnam to retrieve some of his money.
It was mostly in gold bars, he explained, and they could
go on a trip together to get them, like a honeymoon!
The only problem was that he first needed to get
recertified to take a job delivering water to
oil rigs out in Edmonton to finance the trip.
He asked if he could borrow 500 dollars for the course.
Jodi was wary at first, but he ensured her that it was
just because he couldn’t access his own money, and once
they were in Vietnam, he would pay her back in spades.
A single bar of gold was worth three times as much!
“I’m doing this for our future,” he told her.
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After a month of dating, Dre departed for the job in
Edmonton, telling Jodi that he’d miss her every day.
Only a few days later, he called her to let
her know he’d been having some chest pains.
A doctor recommended he return to Kelowna.
Jodi’s father had died of a heart attack years ago, so
she was obviously worried, and agreed wholeheartedly.
Dre returned, and planted himself down on her couch.
Dre subcontracted the first part of the job to
one of his employees, and he’d still make a cut.
He went back to Edmonton a week later,
and was in contact with her at all times.
He sent her time sheets, invoices, and excel
sheets full of data on all kinds of subjects.
Grill: Ah yes, The classic lover’s gift, spreadsheets.
Chill: Don’t you dare.
Brew: Unfortunately, right before Jodi expected him back,
he called saying he was in trouble for unpaid taxes.
He had a check coming in for around 49,000
dollars, but if he put it into his own bank
account, then the government would snatch it up.
Even worse, if he had to pay back the Canada Revenue Agency,
then he wouldn’t have the money to pay his subcontractors,
and they wouldn’t be able to take their trip to Vietnam.
He had an idea though.
Something so crazy it just might work.
He’d have his employer write the
check out to her instead of him.
She was concerned about the legality, but he said their
names would soon be on the same checks anyway, right?
What could go wrong?
Dre Facetimed Jodi when he e-transferred the 49 grand check
into Jodi’s account, and had her send him back $19,500.
Enough to pay his contractors, but not
so much as to get flagged by the CRA.
A few days later, Jodi was in Vegas for a wedding, and
spent most of the weekend with old friends and family.
She danced, drank, and obviously, told everyone about her new
boyfriend who was taking her to Vietnam in just two weeks!
She was “glowing” according to her friends.
It all came crashing down when she returned to Kelowna.
She went to the grocery store to get dinner supplies
for her and Dre, who was returning from Edmonton.
Strangely though, her debit card declined at the checkout.
She tried a second card, but it likewise declined.
Embarrassed, she called a friend to send her some money,
and while she waited, the dots began to connect in her mind.
Back home, she logged on to her online banking.
It revealed her worst fears.
Dre’s check hadn’t gone through, and now she was stuck
with nearly 20 thousand dollars worth of overdraft fees.
Including the money she had lent him for
work, she was out over 45 thousand dollars.
What had begun as an unassuming sortie into the world of
online dating, had concluded with shame and embarrassment.
But romance scams aren’t new, in fact, they’ve been a regular
side effect of matrimony since we first started marrying!
Back in 1884, a magazine entitled The Matrimonial Herald
and Fashionable Marriage Gazette would let men and women
looking to court to either place personal ads in the
magazine, or work directly with staff to procure a match.
Chill: Oh I feel like it’s a lot like how
sites like Plenty of Fish work today, right?
Grill: Is that the aquarium store
where you bought your goldfish?
Chill: RIP Jeff Goldblub.
Brew: Yeah, actually we need to talk about that.
But anyway, yes, exactly!
The majority of the magazine’s clients were men,
but the magazine was very vocal about the many
wealthy women who mailed in looking for husbands.
Chill: That’s super weird.
Brew: It super is, all of this is.
But it was a major selling point!
In the 19th century marriage was seen as one of the
primary ways for individuals to advance socially.
Not just for men, but for women even more
so, since many were barred from holding jobs.
Men would respond to the ads in the Herald via
mail, and receive an invitation to join “The World’s
Great Marriage Association” for a fee of 2.5% of
the brides’ wealth when the pair were married.
In this case, they meant a percentage of her dowry, but
men could also opt to pay a small sum of £12 instead.
Accounting for inflation, that’s about
£1,500 today, which is about $2,000 US!
That’s expensive.
Tinder gold is only $82.99 a year, and Plenty of Fish is $81.40!
Not that I know offhand, I had to look it up.
The fee was a small price to pay if you were going to be
set up for life with the “wealthy” woman of your dreams.
The only problem was, The World’s Great Marriage Association
never intended to follow through on its lofty promises.
Their matches were significantly less
wealthy than they so generously advertised.
Instead of pairing up the working class men and
women who sent in to the magazine with wealthy
spouses, they were matched with other working
class folks who had also paid the entry fee.
Grill: Did anyone actually get hitched with rich people?
Brew: Absolutely not!
After operating the scam for 12 years, the
Association was finally raided by the police,
and in the trial that followed the members of the
fraud did almost nothing to argue their innocence.
Historian Angus McLaren writes that they intended to
appeal “to the social superiority of the judge and
the all-male jury by attacking the complainants as
socially marginal characters who, stupidly believing the
impossible, did not deserve the protection of the law”.
Chill: So… victim blaming.
That’s not cool.
Brew: The association knew that wealthy individuals
from moneyed families would far prefer to arrange a
marriage through a months-long marriage season for all
the pretty ladies and handsome fellas to go courting.
At the time it was also shameful to marry below one’s status.
They also knew that members of the lower classes
had far fewer options than those from the
upper echelons, and were ripe for exploitation.
In the end, the jury convicted three of the Association’s
major players, who were sentenced to prison.
Unfortunately, before the trial was done, multiple
bouts of laughter had erupted from the viewing
gallery at the expense of those who were scammed.
Both of our cases are examples of romance
scams, but there are other kinds as well
that we haven’t talked about, like catfishing
Grill: Catfishing, like when you pretend to be beloved
Canadian actor and entrepreneur Ryan Rodney Reynolds.
Brew: It’s a specific kind of romance scam, where
a person pretends to be someone they’re not.
The term catfishing actually comes from
a 2010 documentary of the same name.
In it, a 28 year old photographer, Nev Schulman,
discovers that the beautiful young woman he had been
seeing on Facebook, was actually a middle-aged woman.
The term itself was coined using a metaphor
for shipping cod from Alaska to China.
The cod would be transported live in tanks on
ships, but by the time the fish reached their
destination, their flesh was mushy and tasteless.
So, the shipping companies decided to add some
catfish to the tanks to keep the cod moving around.
Where real catfish keep cod on their proverbial
toes, and fake catfish keep us on ours.
For the would-be catfish, social media has
opened many doors for would-be scammers to
take advantage of your likes and interests.
Your online persona is basically a giant
study sheet of what you care about.
When Jodi listed her favourite song on her
Tinder profile, Dre knew exactly what to
say to make her think they were meant to be.
Wait wait wait, we love the exact same song?
The one listed on your public profile?
What a coincidence!
According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, romance
scams have cost Canadians at least 26 million dollars
in 2018, but the damage goes much further than that.
Spokesperson for the CAFC, Lisanne Beauchamp, says that
the attitude around fraud is not that you were specifically
targeted, but that you were gullible enough to be conned.
Anyone can fall for scams like these, but
the most common victims are women from
age 40 to 60 with post secondary degrees.
However, the real number of male victims may be much higher
since men are even less likely to report being scammed.
Stigma keeps those who have been scammed from coming
forward, and it also makes others more vulnerable to scams.
And on top of that, scammers seek out
individuals who are already isolated.
An FTC survey found that those who had recently
experienced trauma were two and a half times more
likely to have experienced fraud than those who hadn’t.
It’s a wide and dangerous world out
there, becoming murkier by the day.
Information we share on social media may seem innocuous,
harmless even, but in the wrong hands, it can spell disaster.
At the end of the day, the best thing we can do to fight
against scammers, is to practice empathy and compassion.
The best thing we can do to protect
ourselves, is to protect one another.
Chill: If you enjoyed this episode, go ahead and click
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And with that said I guess I’ll see you next time!