Spontaneity You never do anything spontaneous. Those were
the words spoken to the then 36-year-old Acacia Oudinot by her friend before she went on a date
with Wilson Jackson, the man who would consume the next few years of her life for all the wrong
reasons. Oudinot's life truly changed when she received a friend request and a follow-up Facebook
message from Jackson. On the surface, Jackson seemed like a genuine guy. He wore nice clothes
in his pictures, and they even shared four mutual friends. His expression on the photos oozed charm,
intelligence, and confidence. Jackson's message, What's up beautiful, confirmed these impressions.
What's up beautiful wasn’t an uncommon first message for Oudinot to find in her DMs.
It’s a message that she’s used to getting. Nevertheless, Jackson stuck out like a
well-dressed, confident thumb. To his What's up beautiful, Oudinot responded with a suspicious
hello. But it was enough to get a response from Jackson. He continued
the Facebook message convo with Oudinot for several weeks before asking her on a date.
During those weeks, Oudinot became close to Jackson. She found out he wasn't a catfish after
they face-timed on a few occasions. They spoke on the phone, talking about their mutual love of
sports, particularly football. Jackson asked her about the nine years she served in the Air Force,
and Oudinot answered, telling him all about her time abroad. Jackson listened to every
word. In fact, Oudinot got the impression that he cared about her—especially when he offered
to fly Oudinot from her home in Scottsdale Arizona out to his house in L.A for Christmas.
Oudinot's original plans were to spend Christmas with her best friend, but the plans were canceled
at the last minute. Now, left with no holiday plans, Oudinot was still on the fence about
accepting Jackson's offer. This was not something she'd normally do. Oudinot's friend eventually
convinced her to let Jackson buy her a ticket to LA, and finally, do something spontaneous.
The Ticket Oudinot packed her
things and left for the airport. Earlier, Jackson sent Oudinot a screenshot of the
boarding pass he'd bought her. Everything seemed to be in order. Not to mention,
Oudinot had finally found someone she liked who could meet her expectations.
However, when she got to the airport, employees said her ticket was invalid.
Oudinot, assuming something must have gone wrong during the purchasing process,
called Jackson to get things sorted out. But when Jackson answered the phone, he didn't offer
a solution. Instead, he insisted the ticket must be valid. Oudinot explained that the flight would
leave soon and she needed a ticket to LA pronto. So, Jackson instructed Oudinot to buy a ticket at
the airport. He promised to pay her back when she got to LA. And, to prove something was going on
with the ticket he initially bought, Jackson sent Oudinot screenshots of him dealing with
the bank. Oudinot says she proceeded to buy a ticket to LA and boarded the plane.
LAX Her plane landed at LAX
in the late hours of the night. Jackson picked her up and took her to the movies. Oudinot recalls how
he was in person: just as charming, fun, and kind as he seemed on FaceTime. Jackson asked her about
Oudinot's future, her career aspirations, and any wild, crazy dreams she harbored. In the morning,
like a true gentleman, he cooked her breakfast, a classic combination of bacon and eggs.
After they ate breakfast, Jackson took Oudinot back to the airport. On Monday,
her second full day back home, Oudinot noticed over $3,000 was missing from her bank account.
The Game Oudinot scanned her
card's transaction history and discovered where the purchases were made. The largest transaction
was a $2,500 transfer to another account. The other two were payments for a plane ticket and
items at a fast-food restaurant. All the money charges were billed from California.
Oudinot knew exactly who had used her card. So, not long after seeing the charges,
Oudinot filed a police report against Jackson. She wanted Jackson apprehended as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, the police didn't share her desire for revenge. When Oudinot called the
Scottsdale police, they deferred her to the Los Angeles police, who boomeranged Oudinot
right back to Scottsdale police, telling her she'd have to file her report with them.
Most people would give up, as $3,000 might not be a big deal. But Oudinot didn't care
about the money. Instead of moving on, Oudinot started her own investigation into Jackson.
Blocked Jackson had already
blocked her number, so asking her suspect questions over the phone wasn't an option.
With no prior background in research, Oudinot began investigating Jackson. She started with
the basics: where did Jackson live? Even though she'd been to his house, Oudinot couldn't remember
Jackson's address. And without his address, finding Jackson would be very difficult.
She couldn't find any home addresses linked to the purchases on her bank statement,
but she did find the address of the fast-food restaurant. After finding the restaurant address,
Oudinot searched every apartment complex in the area, and—with the help of her memory—found
the apartment complex she stayed at with Jackson. She remembered Jackson taking her to a tall
building, so tall that they had to park in an underground parking garage. So, Oudinot
narrowed her search to tall apartment buildings with underground garages. She also remembered
being close to a movie theater on a noisy LA street. Using these very specific criteria,
Oudinot found a potential match. Just to be sure it was the building she stayed at,
the rookie sleuth looked up the floor plans, then, based on her memory of walking through
the rooms and hallways, determined this was the place. Oudinot called the building's phone
number and asked the clerk if a resident named Will Jackson lived there. The clerk said no,
and Oudinot felt a dreadful epiphany wash over her. Will Jackson wasn't his real name.
Elementary Oudinot kept digging.
She used methods she initially learned from MTV's Catfish, such as reverse Google image searches on
Jackson's Facebook page. Eventually, one of those reverse searches yielded a link to a social media
account under a different name. The account had an email written in the bio. Oudinot dug
deeper into the email account and discovered it belonged to someone named Syncere Jackson. Oudinot
kept digging and Googled the name. The results were mostly unrelated, except for one article.
The article was small, only 85 words, but it contained some vital info on Jackson.
Oddly enough, the article's publisher was from Orlando, a local paper called the West Orlando
News. In 2011, the Orlando News published an article on Jackson,
saying that the police department was searching for victims willing to come forward and testify
against Jackson. Alongside the victim's story was a mugshot of Jackson, who Oudinot
easily recognized. The real question was, who were these victims? And what did Jackson do
to them? Was it similar to what he did to her? Detective Oudinot would soon find out.
Shonda Porter In 2007, a Florida woman, who gave reporters
the alias Shonda Porter, dated Jackson. She described him as a snake who could shed his skin
on command and become anyone he needed to be. But that isn't how Jackson saw himself. Porter dated
Jackson long enough to notice a large tattoo on his back, written in bold, daring letters: Outlaw.
Oudinot would later discover—after some more online sleuthing—that Jackson grew up as
anything but an outlaw. According to public records, Jackson was born in Daytona Beach,
Florida. Contrary to his tattoo, Jackson was raised in a conservative Christian household.
Growing up, he did everything he could to escape his family's culture. As a young man, Jackson
attempted to start a rap career under the name Da Trooth. However, Da Trooth wasn't very good.
Jackson spent his early years bouncing around Florida, mainly between Tallahassee and Orlando,
all the while claiming to his many girlfriends he was playing football and writing bars.
In reality, Jackson was learning how to scam people, specifically successful young women,
on social media and dating apps. These girls saw Jackson the same way Oudinot had: a handsome,
well-dressed, tall, fit-looking man with enough charm to impress even the most
skeptical women. He used these attributes to lure dozens of women into trusting him.
After contacting other victims and hearing their stories, Oudinot discovered
Jackson's operation. She also realized how similar her story was to other victims.
On a basic level, all the other victims, including Oudinot, had a few common experiences:
they were contacted by Jackson (usually online), talked with him for a while,
then he asked them for a favor, or some kind of big purchase, with the promise of reimbursement,
after which Jackson would either not pay them back or steal their bank information and disappear,
seemingly without a trace, until he met Oudinot, of course.
She was the only victim who cared enough to track him down. In fact, no one did more than
her in finding so-called Will Jackson, whose birth name was Wilson Edward Jackson. However,
he used the name Syncere often, which was why Oudinot had such a tough time finding
him. But when she did, Oudinot finally saw how extensive Jackson's scamming truly was.
LAPD Before she continued her
research on the other victims, Oudinot contacted a professional: then 55-year-old LAPD detective
Stephanie Krachjir. By 2018, when Oudinot reached out to her, detective Krachjir had been
investigating Jackson for a while, ever since the charming scam artist had moved to LA back in 2014.
Oudinot could not arrest Jackson herself, but Krachjir could. The Scottsdale sleuth
presented Krachjir with all the evidence she'd collected so far
and convinced the LA detective that Jackson needed to be arrested immediately. Krachjir,
however, had a lot on her plate. The city of Angels was filled with scamming demons,
and small-scale scams like Jackson's were not a number one priority. Nevertheless, the overworked
and overwhelmed detective promised Oudinot she would arrest Jackson as soon as possible.
Oudinot hung up the phone feeling confident that Krachjir would take care of the arrest.
In the meantime, however, Oudinot could not let the case go. So far, Krachjir
only had 8 victims who'd reported Jackson to the authorities. Oudinot was determined to find more.
The Scammed Network Oudinot got to work quickly.
She started using the very app Jackson used to contact her to look for
other victims in Florida and California. The posts worked, and Oudinot started talking to
several other victims from the two states. She even put them in touch with one another,
creating a network of Jackson victims who could talk about their experiences. Krachjir found
8 victims during years of investigation. Oudinot found 10 victims in just one month.
These women—mostly African American and in their 30s—told each other how Jackson humiliated them.
Though many of the victims shared their stories with other victims,
most were reluctant to give their names to the media out of embarrassment.
They all wanted to see some form of justice, though. Krachjir promised Oudinot an arrest,
with the deadline being April 2018. But after traveling to
Afghanistan for a few months to work as a civilian air-traffic controller,
Oudinot looked at the calendar and noticed the month was January. The year? 2019.
Ultimatum Oudinot, in her
extensive research, remembered reading how Jackson had gotten away. Most of the escapes
were made possible by lazy investigators and prosecutors. Oudinot couldn't let another
detective leave him under a pile of other cases. So, she gave Krachjir an ultimatum:
arrest Jackson or Oudinot would file a complaint on the veteran detective, who was set to retire
any day now. Krachjir chose the harder option and looked up Jackson on her computer. She found
a warrant in his name for grand theft auto and sent a team of officers to bring him in.
Aftermath Jackson was arrested on May 23rd,
2019, in Los Angeles. He was taken into police custody and hired a lawyer. But, the lawyer left
after Jackson's check bounced. His public defender convinced him to plead not guilty, despite over 60
women coming forward to testify against him on 33 felony charges. In total, Jackson is believed to
have collected over $200,000 thousand dollars from his victims, including Oudinot. Sadly, they'll
never get that money back. But they can enjoy knowing that Jackson's face and reputation were
smeared across news media outlets like Newsweek, the Daily Beast, and several local LA outlets.
Click to watch one of these next videos!
And let us know in the comment section if you think girls that use guys for free dinners
even though they know they don’t like them should be a scam or not!