Fool me Once, Shame On You…

A story about being catfished and lessons you can learn from my shame.

In 2018, more than 18,000 people filed complaints with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) alleging they were victims of confidence/romance fraud and reporting losses of more than $362 million (an increase of more than 70 percent over the previous year).

This made confidence/romance fraud the seventh most commonly reported scam based on the number of complaints received and the second costliest scam in terms of victim loss.

This is a serious issue with online dating and I personally have been preyed upon. Everyday people are stealing pictures from Google searches trying to pass them off as photos they just took on their weekend at the beach. Otherwise, they are filtering their own pictures beyond the point of recognition. These scammers then create fake profiles on the plethora of dating and hookup sites available and begin hunting.

As I mentioned, I’ve been a fool once myself. My husband and I were looking for a single woman or a couple we could connect with, when a woman (we’ll call her Jane) reached out to me on a dating app. She was part of a couple but she was looking to play without his involvement. She had never been with a woman and wanted her first female/female experience to be one-on-one. When she felt comfortable we would let our men join us. At that time, I hadn’t been with another woman so I thought I could understand where she was coming from - we were both nervous.

We moved from chatting in the app to texting daily. We sent lots of pictures back and forth (including naughty ones). We talked about our kids, her past relationship, our jobs, we talked about our sex life and the sex life we desired which included other woman. We even discussed her weight loss journey and she bravely shared before and after photos with me and images from throughout her journey. She had an iphone and I had an Android device so we never video chatted. We also never talked to each other on the phone (I know you can see the writing on the wall here).

Fast-forward a month or so, we decided to go on a date. She lived about 2 hours away, so we planned to meet in between. She’d chosen to get a hotel room because she didn’t want to drink and drive even though I was adamant with her that I wasn’t going into her hotel room that evening. I was going to pick her up at the hotel, we’d go to dinner and then I’d drop her back off, just like a real, respectable first date (of course I was hoping for a kiss though).

Remember that my husband and I planned to start this journey together. We wanted to have a threesome but I pushed to meet Jane alone. She was pretty, we had so much in common, and maybe I was desperate (and ‘maybe’ is not a strong enough word but I’m embarrassed to admit to a more honest descriptor). He felt so uncomfortable but he reluctantly let me head out the door to my car in a sexy little dress with my hair looking beautiful to meet a stranger.

She had sent me texts all day giving me updates on her whereabouts. She told me when she hit the road, when she arrived at the hotel, she even sent me a picture of a glass of wine in the hotel room telling me she was drinking some liquid courage before I arrived. She teased asking if I’d come up when I arrived to share a glass but I declined - said I wasn’t ready for that yet. She pushed a little more with playful texts but they seemed fairly harmless so I let them go (pattern becoming clear, anyone?).

When I arrived at the hotel I texted her to let her know I was waiting outside in my car for her. This was our plan after all, she’d meet me outside. When she didn’t respond to the text, I went into the lobby which was packed. I found myself in a situation I didn’t want to be in so I did a quick scan and headed back to my car. I waited a little longer and texted her again receiving no response. Suddenly, a woman was walking towards my car. She by no means was the woman in the dozens of pictures she’d shared with me. I honestly thought maybe she was lost looking for her car and started to shake my head unconsciously almost left to right, no, no, no. I may have even been mouthing the words in disbelief. The woman suddenly turned and walked away.

I dialed Jane’s number again and the call was answered but then disconnected. I went on the app that we first met on and her profile was deleted. I pathetically texted and called again, multiple times, to no avail.

After all that chatting and connecting, I still don’t know if Jane was the woman in the parking lot that suddenly changed direction, if she was ever even at the hotel, or if she was really a he playing with my emotions.

I’m mostly to blame for this entire situation of course. I was the naive jackass that took the bait but this taught me a few things I’d like to share them with you. Maybe I’ll help someone avoid their own lousy experience (and some gas money).

Never Meet Someone For A Date Unless You’ve Done These 3 Things:

1) Make sure you connect on the phone before you agree to meet up with someone for a first date.

2) If possible, have a video call with the prospective date. There are plenty of apps for that.

3) On a first date, meet each other at the date location instead of picking the other person up.

Have you ever been catfished? I hope you’ve avoided the shame but I’d love to hear from those of you that have been there (mostly so I can have others to commiserate with 😘).