Catfish

Here comes another one. Amelia was scrolling through her social media platforms looking for amusement when an instant message pops up on her screen. She clicked the message, saw that a famous actor was messaging her and asking her to friend him.

Amelia was by now well-versed in how this interaction would go. She had had over two hundred contacts by imposters of this particular actor, and it wasn’t that many texts from the same person. The dealings had been with the imposters, all claiming to be the actor. And here she was, at two hundred and one.

This journey she was on for the last year was because of an innocent comment she had made on some reel that had been posted by, no doubt, the actor’s press team. She had clicked the like button with a compliment and the floodgate of impersonators had opened.

Initially, the first one she met via chat had her believing it could be the actor. He was new on the scene, up and coming, and a foreigner as well. Amelia, in the very beginning, thought it might be true.

Michael Morose was a European actor that was now making headway in the states due to a movie he had been cast in with some known actresses. The lead actress was not very talented at her craft and had only one film to her credit that made box office news. The second actress, a talented woman in her own right, had far more success in her film career, though recently she had made some not so stellar movies that had not garnered even mere mentions in entertainment news.

Michael had made a steamy movie and was riding the fame highway from it when cast in the new film with these other actresses.

The man she thought was the actor at the time began the conversation with questions like how long she had been a fan, where she was from, and a few others designed to get to know a new person one chats with. He was attentive, intelligent, and very complimentary and soon had her at ease.

Amelia initially asked how and why he would reach out to strangers in this manner; she knew that celebrities, as a rule, never contacted people, personally, in the public arena. They had staff to write the interactions with fans. That being said, Michael convinced her. And this was the hook before reeling in the scammer’s victim.

Michael wooed her and gave her everything a single middle-aged woman wants: to feel wanted, important, and loved. The love part came quickly, and that too was concerning to her, but by then she was so emotionally invested that she didn’t question it. She put those thoughts out of her head.

The plan with these charlatans is to move in for the catch. This Michael, her first, made his play by giving her some dramatic story happening in his life. The resolution of these happenings was something only she could provide. He didn’t trust anyone else. Her love meant so much to him that he would trust or tell no one else what he needed.

The actor playing the actor had told her that all his accounts had been frozen by his management team pending a court hearing and outcome after he had expressed disillusionment with them and the handling of his career. While he had family, and no doubt friends, he trusted none of them like he trusted her, a woman he had never met in person. For all he knew, she was in a prison cell having some down time amusements.

This is where she had become wiser to what this could be—a scam. She gave him excuses at first and that kept him engaged in conversation for a few days. After a short time, Michael escalated the tragic story and added additional tidbits to sweeten the deal if she would help him.

Fortunately, Amelia was not stupid and was no longer buying any of his excuses, so she rejected his request for help. That’s when it turned ugly.

The conversations went from cordial and pleading to confrontational and hostile. He tried guilting her into giving in, telling her she didn’t care for him or love him. He even had implied that she was trying to extort money from him and take advantage of his kindness and feelings for her.

The straw that broke the camel’s back occurred when he called her selfish and didn’t care about his suffering. She had had enough at that point and confronted him directly, informing him that she knew he was not an actor but an imposter. Naturally, he took offense. He tried to convince her that he was legit, but when she told him she did not believe him, he became irate and belligerent.

Amelia apologized but said again she could not help. She told him she did not have the funds he needed. With this revelation, Michael said he would talk to her later and left the chat.

A few hours after she had not heard from him, she texted to see if there was new information, but she was faced with a shocking truth. Michael could not be found. His profile was gone, and the account was deleted entirely. And then and there, her strong suspicions had been confirmed. Her devastation and disappointment was complete.

In some way, she was sad for the loss of the relationship, but she also felt increasingly angry. Amelia wanted to get to the bottom of how bad the situation was for other women. She was shocked with what she found. Hundreds, and likely thousands of women, had been engrossed the same way she had and given away small fortunes. Some gave the little they had to these inconsiderate thieves.  Amelia then set herself in motion to make a difference.

She allowed herself to engage and goad these men into the ruse with her, delaying their ability to use other women, and managed to thwart many over the year this took place. Much to her dismay, there was little she could do that made any impact. She would cut the head of one snake, only for it to be replaced by eight more. The task was daunting and not winnable. She continued her plight for the entirety of a long year. Similar stories and similar outcomes, but she never made an impact as a whole.

So here she was, perpetrator number two hundred one, and although she was weary, she had a job to protect other women who were weaker than she was emotionally. Again, nothing was working to stop these unscrupulous men. She no longer knew what to do or how to do it.

At some point she would have to give up and accept the fact that this task was insurmountable. A much larger solution would be needed.

She had reached her limit and decided to cut to the chase. She immediately told this version of Michael Morose that she knew what he was up to and that she would not be giving, in any way, any of her money, to him or his causes. Word must have spread quickly through the scamming network because at some point, these men became more infrequent and then stopped all together. She was finally free from unprincipled men. She would strive to keep it that way, in the future too.

Every now and then, men would slither in and try their hands at getting into her wallet, and each time, they would go away disappointed, their time wasted.

Number 201, as she called him, disappeared immediately, and upon searching for his name on the platform discovered that his entire profile had been deleted. This was not the end, as she found out.

The scammers would just delete one account after another as they saw fit and create another account and try again, and again. There would be no end to it.

While doing some research online, she had contacted the individual platforms to inquire why they were not doing something to stop this, and Amelia received the same blanket statement. She was informed that none had broken the community standards of conduct, and so nothing was done. The fact that social media did not hold them accountable for their fraud, and that they too were not held accountable for allowing this activity to continue, was ludicrous and turned her off completely. So, she continued to attempt to make some kind of difference, even if it was one person at a time. At least, that would be one less predator in the shark tank, and that was something.

Aside from the money being stolen from these innocent women, the consequence of entertaining their fantasies was their broken hearts. Women, broken financially and emotionally, were scattered all over the world. And that was tragic.

She began to do the only thing she knew how to make a dent: easing the multitude of these fraudulent operators. She would write about it and get the information out to the public that might read it.  At some point in time, someone might begin to do something constructive to stop this.

Amelia sat at her desk and began to share her experiences with the multitude of frauds she had dealt with. She began to type....