Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
[Music] do [Music] so [Music] good morning good afternoon good evening wherever you are in the world is dr janice hooker fortman with relationship matters today i want you to call your friends call your husband into the room call your wife into the room get on the phone call your girlfriends your boyfriends because this is a very very important show that i think all of you want to hear want to see i and you know usually i have this long monologue which i’m not going to have today but today we’re going to talk about scamming online dating scamming all kinds of scamming and to let you know i have been scammed i was scammed a few years ago it was a financial scam but we’re going to talk about all kinds of scamming and what i want to do with out any further ado is to bring on my guest and let me tell you about her you will and i’m giving you a chance to to call other people into the room and to call your friends my guest today is debbie montgomery johnson debbie is the founder of the woman behind the smile incorporated she’s a best-selling author an international speaker an entrepreneur and a podcast host she is a woman on a mission and she’s going to share her personal experience with a love that turned into betrayal and financial disaster she’s going to show us how to remove that mask of shame and you know what many of us have something we’re hiding something we’re ashamed of or or something that through no fault of our own through our own just things that happen to us and we keep these secrets we hide them from other people we hide them from our friends sometimes we even hide them from ourselves she is authentic and she’s going to talk to us about scamming especially online dating scamming now just so you think oh well you know what smart people don’t get caught up in this let me tell you she is a for she was a former u.s air force intelligence officer serving at the pentagon the defense intelligence agency in germany so i don’t want you to think oh well you know what um only certain people can get scammed anybody and everybody can be scammed so let me bring on to meet you debbie montgomery jackson johnson hi debbie
Debby Johnson
hi dr jess thank you so much for having me tonight
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
oh you know i had to i i had to because this is so important and we were talking before the show and i was my mouth was open i i was amazed at how scamming is proliferating in all the different ways so debbie tell us how you started your woman behind the smile just just start with your story
Debby Johnson
okay well it started in 2010. i’ve been married for almost 26 years and one morning i got a phone call from my oldest son and it was actually a recording i was in a meeting and my son said mom dad just died i’m coming home to take care of everything well my husband hadn’t really been sick he did have diabetes but it was under control and he had left the day the day before to go on a business trip and he was supposed to be home that next night so when i got that phone call you can imagine my life changed forever and i was thrown into running his company which i didn’t know anything about in addition to running my own having my own job and i had four kids but only one of them was still home the other three were either in college or in the military so six months after lou died i was still i was running on empty i had didn’t have time to grieve i was just busy i was filling my life with what i call busyness b-u-s-y-n-e-s-s i was doing everything i could to just keep everything under control and i as we were talking i became that woman behind smile because i didn’t want anybody to know that i had any cracks i was self-sufficient i was taking care of stuff and really inside i was dying i i wasn’t sleeping well i wasn’t taking care of myself i had gotten really thin which for me for the first time in my life i was like yeah i’m really skinny and then one of lou’s friends came into town he goes you look horrible you look so gaunt because i was just i was thin but i wasn’t a healthy thin and so my girlfriends looked at me and and i’ve heard this from many people they’re like well you know you need a life you’ve got to do something other than just work and work and work and i so their their interpretation of get a life was get back out and get into dating well i was 52 at the time i hadn’t dated in 26 years other than my husband and it was really daunting you can imagine all those emotions of i’m not smart enough pretty enough all those enoughs came flooding back as if i was 16 again and i’m thinking i don’t want to do this you guys i don’t smoke i don’t drink i don’t i don’t go out and party that kind of do it online deb it’s safe just do it online you can do it from home and so i talked to my mom about it i figured if she’s go she’s usually the biggest skeptic and she said oh no one of my best friends met her husband online i was like really this is a something year old woman i said okay so i’ll try it and i did it very cautiously i went into faith-based dating sites thinking that those would be the safest and i dip my toe in uh but i didn’t want it to be perfect i wanted my profile perfect i trusted people on it i you know all those things that you heard good things about and never knew the bad stuff about it i didn’t know there was anything bad about online dating i felt it was just an option so that’s how it started back in 2010
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
wow
Debby Johnson
and it was exciting it was exciting it was it was a little scary okay uh i was here’s something funny i was looking for men between 55 and 62 and i was honestly very disappointed in what i saw especially with what i was reading but the pictures if you know what i used to call it the wife beater t-shirts i don’t know with no sleeves the guys were showing up with those and they were showing up with motorcycles and nothing against motorcycles but they usually had a girl on their on their arm and i’m like what kind of guys are doing this they my husband had been very well educated it was brilliant and there was a you know he was a speaker for the pentagon and so when these fellows would be writing and they it looked worse than a fifth grader i’m going to myself oh i don’t want to get involved in this and until until i got a really interesting note from a gentleman he was international businessman he was from london he was a widower so i at that point i realized there was a difference between the guys that were widowed and the guys that were divorced the divorce guys came with some baggage and and they were usually pretty angry about something whereas the widows i found you know they were feeling the same feelings i was because we’ve been through similar situations and so when my well-educated brit came on and he was a widower had a son uh and he was an international businessman it just kind of hit clicked on all those things i was looking for and felt like i could i could do from a distance because here’s the other thing after being married for so long i really wasn’t ready for a relationship in person i was a little bit scared to start something really close and so doing it online was kind of a safety thing for me i could i could develop a relationship over time and when i when i was ready when he was ready then we could get together so again it was it was the safest option for me at the time
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
okay would you say you thought and so you were in this relationship for for how long
Debby Johnson
two years
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
two years
Debby Johnson
two years yep i met him in november of 2010 and in september of 2012 is when it all came crashing down but in that in the process of that i got to know him and he had really become my family uh like i said my kids were out out of the house i again was running an internet business at home i was i was alone for most of the time because i did actually after a year i quit my job at the school district because i realized that i was just doing that for benefits but i was making more at home with our company so i i was home alone and i was online all day long because of my company so when erica his name was dr eric cole when he and i started talking and when i say talking back then it was via the internet he moved me off the dating site relatively soon because he was in houston but he was going to malaysia on a job and he worked with hardwood trees he was a contractor and i happen to have investments in trees which he didn’t know about i nobody was gonna ask you that did he know that
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
did he know that
Debby Johnson
no he did not it was not out there was not on my profile or anything and so when i found out what he did i actually i looked at his company’s website i called them to see if they had a contract or by his name and they said no but again i had no reason to not believe him so in my mind i’m thinking well he’s international he you know is from england so maybe he doesn’t actually work for them if he’s a contractor he may not be on the books which made sense to me uh and so soon after we met he actually won a contract in in i think it was malaysia and he had to be in moving trees from malaysia over to india i had traveled the united states i’d traveled in europe but i’d never traveled over in the middle in the far east so when he would tell me things that were going on i had to believe him you know i i i own a company and here’s one thing i do know with owning a business that sometimes you don’t get paid until the job is done so when when he was having uh not not getting paid until the job was completed i understood that part what i didn’t understand fully is the customs tariffs and the the shipping issues that he was having because i i’ve never done that kind of stuff so i again believed what he was saying when he ran into difficulties he was supposed to we met in november he was supposed to be able to be done by christmas and that’s what our goal was get everything done so you can come to the united states with your son and your sister for the holidays and i even booked hotel reservations in the end of november beginning of december uh said that we had a place for them to come to and that was really exciting until right before christmas when he contacted me and said hey we’ve had a hang up there’s something going on here i’m not going to be able to come over well that was a little bit disappointing i i kind of understood it but i was very disappointed and if anything it was the up and downs of the emotions of i’m coming i’m not i’m coming i’m not that was toying with my with my heart strings but it was part of what was going on and uh i had to trust him
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
and and you said you you had to trust him now he was the only one who you were talking with as far as online dating and as you were you were going back and and forth with him how did he win you over i mean you were listening to all the things he was saying to you but how did he win you over for you to really kind of believe him so to speak
Debby Johnson
well we we got to know each other on so many different levels as far as discussions we talked business we talked kids we talked losing a spouse i mean i have four thousand pages of journal i kept an online journal of all of our conversations for two years thinking that i was going to have family history for the kids saying this is how i met eric and this is our love affair and all this kind of stuff so i i had all that written down and we talked about so many things i mean we talked for a lot of time a lot many hours and typically in the middle of the night because here i’m in south florida he was overseas right so his my night time was his daytime or vice versa and so the middle of the night and that was the other thing uh between 12 and 4 a.m is about the only time i slept and this is after lou died i was just so busy trying to run the company learn how to do that and when i get into bed at night and and many people would understand this if you’ve lost a spouse or divorce or whatever and you’re in bed for the first time by yourself i i my mind would just go i got mad at lou for dying i got sad at lou for dying i was talking to him you know and so i would have limited time and then around 4 4 30 i’d wake up and i’d be at work by six and so i was really busy so when he contacted me it was really lovely to have a companion someone to chat with because again i was i was by myself and uh so he became my life very quickly actually and and it was fun it was those endorphins the the kick of of love just popped back in and even though i i tell that you know when i was 16 i i really didn’t enjoy dating my old boyfriend contacted me and he goes she didn’t like it i said well it was the breaking up part i didn’t like it i liked the i like the dating part but it was that fun of you know somebody is enjoying my company and he would send me songs we’d be listening to this to songs together and he would send poems and it was just very kind and and i i understood the story here’s the thing i got to know his sister and his son and on yahoo chat there are instant messages i mean it’s basically i guess texting but via the computer we didn’t have texting back then i didn’t have my iphone back then so i would be doing these instant messages to him for hours and then his sister and son would come on and they’d be in england and i’d be going back and forth between a message between him and it and then his attorney and then his sister i mean it was an extraordinary i had three messages open one night and i was talking to all these people i typed really quickly so i would ask his sister about him to get an idea of what he was like and i would ask him about his sister to kind of find out what had happened to her she she was a widow and then i was talking to his son and you know what are the things that your dad likes and and what’s your favorite food so i really got to know i thought i got to know the family because they were going to be my family and that meant a lot to me
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
now when you said you you would you talk to his sister you talk to his son did you ever see them you know like a picture or anything like that or it was just just from like well chatting or texting
Debby Johnson
i had pictures eric can send me pictures of their home at christmas of their kitchen of mary the mary the sister kenny the son their dog i mean i had a whole cold picture and i had multiple pictures of him i didn’t talk to him much on the phone because he was in a spot where he told me it was very limited access uh when i did talk to him a couple of times he had a british accent which just fed right into he was from london uh so there were there were times where it was frustrating i’m like why can’t we skype why can’t we do this and he’s like mary couldn’t because the computer that she had it wasn’t wasn’t good enough and it was something that eric had given to her at least that was her story and then he said because of where he was in malaysia again i had never been to malaysia i didn’t realize that technology was pretty good over there but uh there were times when he and i would be actually chatting and then we’d lose connection so that made sense too that the internet went out he can’t contact me i’ll have to wait for a few more hours so it was it was very complicated but it was fun for much of the time much of the time
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
so debbie you lost to him over a million dollars now what did he say to you to get you to start sending him money
Debby Johnson
initially it was very small and it was it was within a few weeks where we were talking about one of his friends who was an engineer out of the country and he was having trouble getting onto the dating site and so eric said hey would you send a check for whatever it was to the dating site and get my friend on and i’m like well sure because again we talked about there weren’t a whole lot of 50 to 65 year old guys there that were worth beans for me anyway and so i figured well the more the merrier so i did i sent a check into the dating site uh soon after that it turned into we were it was mostly business proposition business items you know we had to have a power of attorney because we were setting up a bank account the bank account was going to be in my name and his name and our attorney needed to have powers of attorney because they were international transactions international banks and that kind of stuff and so i’m one of those what i would call a damn yankee i don’t give much i don’t give money away freely okay except to family members and at that point he was quickly becoming part of my family so the first little discussion we had again i don’t like contention but he had asked me to help him set up a power of attorney and it was going to cost i think five thousand dollars and i had i had legal bet training when i was out of college and i’m thinking why does it cost so much for the power of attorney but it was an international thing and his attorney was getting involved and i’m like okay i’ll help out but i need this paid back and every time i send him some money it’s like i’ll pay you back i’ll give you interest as soon as the job’s done then we’ll get this done and we’ll get it done quickly then i’ll pay you back so i had that assurance from him that he was going to pay me back now when you said that million dollars it was actually 1 million 80 762 i hear that stuck in the air i didn’t have one million eighty thousand six hundred sixty two dollars seven hundred sixty two dollars i did not have that in the bank but i found it i got very creative because he was becoming my family and i i sold retirement accounts you know i cashed them in believing that he was going to get back to me so they wouldn’t have any penalties i sold jewelry that i had that was back in the day when all of us were selling our extra gold and silver jewelry you know if i wasn’t wearing it i was going to sell it i had some coins i sold some of my trees my investments down south again he was going to become my family he had what i thought was going to be a secure position he was bringing some finances with him and i would i just thought you know it’s gonna be okay everybody again everybody that i knew that had met someone online it was positive i had never heard of online scammers back then so the real man hook yes he was good he was good
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
so were you telling your friends about him or your family members about him
Debby Johnson
i was for a while and my my boys well i actually went to my my mom and dad flew up with me to virginia to see my brothers and i was telling my brothers and i remember it’s like the the firing squad i had my three brothers on one side my three sister-in-law’s on the other the sister-in-laws were on my side the guys were like well we need to do a background check we need to do this we do that i’m like guys it’s just dating knock it off so i stopped talking to them then i met with my kids my daughter was a little bit intrigued my youngest son was a little bit nervous but he knew he was going off to college and he didn’t want me alone so he was kind of okay my older boys were like mom don’t don’t don’t and when i heard that i’m like you guys i’m the adult here leave me alone and i shut them out i stopped talking to the kids especially the older boys and i didn’t tell them what was going on my girlfriends i used to tell them a little bit especially the girls at work uh but my next-door neighbor who was a really good friend she started listening she’s like ah he’s really cute and i’m really happy for you but and then she started saying but and she said don’t don’t don’t i’m like deep stop i said this makes me happy and so she had to decide does she keep telling me what’s going on or what she thinks is going on or does she preserve our friendship and she decided to preserve our friendship and she backed away and the more that they backed away the more eric said hey don’t listen to the naysayers because i would bring things up and he goes this is between us you know i love you i want you know we’re going to be together and so they he really started to isolate me i didn’t realize this but he was isolating me from the folks that would be the naysayers because that they were the killjoy you know my friends that said ass stop don’t don’t i’m like you guys this makes me happy my heart sings when i hear that ding ding ding in the middle of the night with yahoo chat i jump out of bed i run to my computer and i’m i’m in my happy spot for however long i have chatting with him because he we talked about this you know he filled my heart up he filled that spot that needed to be listened to and it was really it was it was lovely for the most part and i keep saying for the most part i didn’t know that there was going to be a bad part of it i just figured every relationship has its up and downs and anybody who’s been married for more than a year or a day knows that it’s not all happy in roses and uh so i just figured you know this was part of the getting to know him spot and i was willing to do it but god
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
when did it crash when did it just all went
Debby Johnson
okay there were what i call pink flags okay times when if i wasn’t so enamored and so you know taken with the emotions i probably would have said okay pull back a little bit stop you know stranger danger or sleep on it um i didn’t do that because again i i trusted him i had no reason not to trust him when it fell apart it was two years almost two years later it was september 10 2012. and he came online that morning and said how do you feel about forgiveness and we talked very spiritual experiences over the years so i put on my spiritual hat and i started telling them about what i how i felt about forgiveness and that’s when you put your money where your mouth is and so we talked for a couple of hours and then we lost contact which was again not unusual but he came back and he goes deb do you remember what we talked about earlier i said yeah let’s revisit it and so we did for a little bit and i’m like eric did i do something wrong why are we talking about forgiveness and he said deb i have something to tell you it’s gonna hurt you but i need to know that you can forgive me before i tell you and i’m thinking well if it’s gonna hurt me why do you have to tell me and he goes i have a confession to make and at that point i just got this gut punch because i’d heard that once in my marriage about 12 years in and it wasn’t a happy confession but because we were married and had four kids i was i dealt with it i stuck with it changed my life but i dealt with it so when eric said i have a confession to make i’m thinking oh i’m not sure i want to hear this he goes i have to confess this has all been a scam and when i heard that my mind is just racing and i’m thinking you’re sick there’s something wrong you know something’s happening to you or you’re lying and he says i’m not lying and he goes this has been a scam and i just had to confess it i’m like then you have to prove to me that it was a lie
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
so you didn’t believe him
Debby Johnson
i didn’t i didn’t how could i for two years he was my life and i told him that i said you know you you’ve been my life for two years what about kenny but about mary what about my million dollars and uh he goes i’m gonna come on live on yahoo chat well heck i’ve been asking that for two years and i said how do you do that so he walked me through and again i’m looking at two screens at my computer on my desk of my handsome brit and that pops this little screen in the corner of my of my main screen and and that’s camera comes on and i’m looking at this dark-haired dark-eyed dark-skinned young guy with a big smile on his face and i’m thinking oh my gosh what happened here and in an instant my story my heart separated from my head i picked up my cell phone and i took a picture of that corner of screen and it’s the picture of the real fella who’s a young guy from nigeria and his name was not dr eric cole it was joseph from lagos nigeria and joseph had this huge smile on his face and he goes it’s so nice to see you can we keep this going and i’m like god are you out of your freaking mind and he honestly looks and he goes is it because i’m young and black and i’m thinking no not really it’s because you lied to me for two years you took my heart my life my my money for two years and uh at that point though i’m thinking okay so how do i keep him engaged because i can go to the fbi i watch tv i know how these things happen i’m an intel officer so i’m like keep them engaged deb don’t let him go away it was just unbelievable at that point and i actually did try to keep him so that he would think i was going to come back on even though i was thinking oh my gosh i’m going to the fbi tomorrow but i didn’t want him to just go away and honestly i was so grateful now looking back that he confessed in person because i saw him i had a face to what happened and i’ve learned over the years that most victims have no idea who the scammers were and if he had just ghosted me if he had just walked away i would have felt worse than when lou died because when lou left me to go on that business trip i never saw him again my parents took care of him when he died he died on the west coast of florida my parents took care of identifying my parents took care of getting him back over here and i never you know my kids didn’t want an open casket i never saw lou there was no closure when my husband died so if eric had just gone away i would have thought he had died oh yeah and so i in a way not in a way in reality i was very grateful that he confessed in person because it gave me closure now it also made me mad because now i’m like so how do i get my money back and i i kept him engaged because i wanted to make sure that the fbi could catch him and i called my mom and dad because here’s the worst part of the million dollars i mean i always believe that my last suit has no pockets i can’t take the money with me even though i really wish i had it in the bank account but i asked my parents to help me and they helped me to the tune of a hundred thousand dollars and when this scam came about the the only thing i thought about at that point is how am i gonna get the money back from my mom and dad i felt awful i called them up and i told them what happened and they came right over they were living on the west coast of florida they came over the next day and together we took my 4 000 pages of printed journal with all my bank i had incredible documentation we went to the fbi in palm beach they looked at me they’re like we are so sorry this happened to you and as a matter of fact more men get taken for over a million dollars than women but they’ll never tell and they said unless you can get him here to the united states there’s nothing we can do
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
wow nothing and i shut down that talk about the woman behind the smile up comes the smile i shut down and i didn’t tell anybody
Debby Johnson
you didn’t tell anybody
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
well debbie uh i gotta take i hate to break away but i gotta take a quick commercial okay and uh when uh we come back um i’m going to have uh another guest uh dr catherine jackson she is a psychologist and she’s going to talk about how this can happen to any of us to any of us so we will be right back [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] this [Music] [Music] if you would like to advertise on this show with eye-catching videos and increase your visibility you can contact us at 1-877-667-7325 for details or you can email me at jan4now125 at gmail.com i’m going to bring to you now dr katherine jackson and dr j is a licensed clinical psychologist and a board-certified neuro-therapist she’s been featured in forbes oh the oprah magazine huffington post cnn and many other media outlets and i’m going to bring debbie back on and dr catherine back on and we are going to talk about how this can happen to all of us any of this hi doctor katherine how are you
Dr. Catherine Jackson
i’m good thanks for having me
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
so i know you were you were in the green room and you heard debbie’s story
Dr. Catherine Jackson
yes i did yes yes and the comments from some of the audience members was that they’ve heard this they’ve seen this so you know and i’m like so and you know we’re going to talk about not just online dating scams but just all kinds of scams what is it about us people men and women that we can be scammed so debbie first of all debbie uh i want to highlight your resiliency you found some positive and oh what happened what happened did we did she freak oh she froze oh my goodness dr jackson you froze oh okay she’s buffering you bad i’m still flying but i’m back so uh debbie you saw you found some really good positives and what could truly most of us would take as a negative and it will we would let it uh ruin our lives but even the fact that you highlighted the fact that you were able to see his face and get some closure that was a way to be like resilient and to find some of the good in something that was like it was truly heartbreaking for you this guy truly hurt you in the audacity to say oh you came freezing oh my goodness i want to hear what she has to say i don’t know what you heard but i was just saying you found a way to turn something that is truly negative that could have devastated your whole life and you turned it into a positive so i think that is awesome um and so with uh your question dr janice about like how can we uh fall into this or how do we fall into it i feel like janet’s touched on that it’s our it’s our brain we we crave uh connection we uh we love when the endorphins go off and the dopamines go nice and high and so we keep uh looking for the good in people even though like she said there were pink flags and we really should that should really caution us a little bit even before we get to the to the all-out red flags
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
so what what are the red flags
Dr. Catherine Jackson
there’s a i call i put it in and there’s more but these are um these are the five or or the six that i feel like are the are the biggest uh and i call it like die picked so d-i-p-i-t right it’s this deception so he set out to deceive you and that might have been pretty pretty hard it’s a lot of online people and sometimes face-to-face people that we meet and they really don’t mean any good when they meet us that’s that they mean to to hurt us they need to deceive us and it goes beyond that basic stuff of you know like lying about your job you know a little bit acting like you make more money than you do but it goes deeper than that that they want to deceive you so that they can do something harmful to you later and in debbie’s case that was financial harm thank goodness it wasn’t physical harm um intent so they intend no good right so that is what they want they’re not just trying to deceive you they intend to do something wrong uh they prey on your on you so they they play on your insecurities or your vulnerabilities so if you’re fresh out of a relationship they’re going to tell you everything that you want to hear and it will be all the things that the other person did wrong or all the things that you’re lacking in the moment they they’ll listen for that and they will be that perfect person insecurity so uh no the other eye is actually isolation debbie uh highlighted that so then he started to isolate her she she started to doubt her family her friends you know people she had been listening to for forever and so they’re going to play on that and try to isolate you away from them and say don’t listen to what everybody else is kind of saying and then that final uh thing in the in the die pit is the t they are going to gain your trust so they’re going to tell you all kind of stories uh you’re going to believe them you’re going to pull on your heart strings to gain your trust so that they that you let them in your life in some way whether it is physically and then they harm you uh physically or rather it’s financially so that they can start to like debbie said ask for small amounts then start asking for for bigger amounts and she had no way to check out that story and so she she trusted him like she said he became a part of the family he was a part of her circle so they’re going to build that trust with you
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
wow wow um i had a friend and she was going with the sky and uh you know they uh oh he was telling her everything just wonderful you know they were going to get married he moved in with her and they lived together for a year and she would just tell me just glowing things you know they would go out together they had so much fun and she said i always wanted someone to really love me and he really loves me well after a year she came home from work and everything was gone he wiped out her bank account everything that was of value that she had jewelry old coins just anything and everything he just he and he disappeared but she found out later that this was something that he did he romanced women he would move in with them stay with them for a year you know and she had a beautiful home you know and then after that year was up he was gone gone he was gone and that’s his career that’s what he does for a living
Dr. Catherine Jackson
that’s what he does for a living
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
but that there and i was telling debbie earlier that i have been scammed but not on not online dating but financial you know um a a business opportunity and i was gonna make this money and they sent me this three thousand dollar check you know to for me to deposit in my account to you know get started and of course the check bounced you know but they took the money they had the money and this has been quite some time ago and i you know and i thought how could i let myself i think i’m smart you know what i mean i’m misintelligent this you can’t pull anything over on me and that happens so it’s you know and so that’s why i’m saying anybody any kind of way can be scammed you know not just online dating but debbie you were talking about other types of scams that uh you had uh witnessed as far as some of your friends are concerning some of your clients
Debby Johnson
well exactly and it’s got nothing to do with dating necessarily it’s relationship fraud and especially now during the pandemic when we’re all home looking for for companionship friendship online it could be on words with friends it could be on linkedin all the social medias facebook uh instagram all of that i was we were talking about a woman that i know i would have worked with over in vietnam she was on a translation app there was a gentleman that was coming to vietnam and he wanted to learn a few words in vietnamese so that he could go to the banks and so little by little they became friends she’s the mom of a three-year-old and so she wasn’t looking for love but he you know anybody that’s been married for a little bit enjoys the companionship or the the niceties that someone that’s maybe not your spouse is telling you and she just kind of got drawn in next thing you know she was helping him out and it’s people with really big hearts that are just helping a friend and particularly with the words with friends i had never heard of that until i met a woman here locally and she’d been scammed playing this scrabble game i’m like how in the world does that happen she said well we become friends and when there’s something happens to them they want a little bit of money to help and most people would say sure i’ll help you out so it just it’s one of those things they groom you to be become their friend to become part of their family and any of us that have nice hearts and are willing it starts off with a little bit of money and as soon as they as soon as you do that then they know they’ve got you yeah and it’s a little bit more and a little bit more but it’s it’s devastating when your heart gets torn out when you’re trust when you lose trust and that’s when most of the women that i’m working with will just shut down and they will not tell anybody because jenna says you and i were talking you know your friends when they heard about your scam was like ah that was really stupid of you but as soon as someone says that to a victim they shut down because they don’t want to be told by somebody else how how ridiculous it seems that it happened to them because we are our own worst critics yeah nobody’s gonna shame me more than i was shaming myself and that victim shame is just devastating and it does lead to suicide and and just awful things that are happening to victims of scam and this year particularly with the pandemic there’s been more business email compromise scams than online relationship scams where business people are being taken and i mean i can’t tell you how many emails i get that look like netflix or bank of america or whatever and you click on that link and they just got you so yeah it’s it’s amazing it’s amazing it’s sad it’s just sad that they’re that these guys are really accomplished salesmen their job is to get money from you they are well trained in universities in nigeria and ghana and around the world and they know how to do their job if they could just do it for good rather than for bad they’d be phenomenal
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
right right and i’m wondering uh debbie why did that uh young man or that scammer wonder why he decided to confess you know
Debby Johnson
you know i he told me it was because he developed feelings for me and i had to believe that because i and i also thought that well maybe a little bit of my goodness rubbed off but that might be part of the scam too because i haven’t heard of other people that the scammers actually when they when they show themselves typically they’re not as kind as mine was at that point they’re like that got you didn’t i and they feel very entitled to be stealing from us and it’s a shame because they’re out to hurt you and they just figure well i got i got one up on you um but i just i don’t know i i i have to believe that part of his story even though most of it was a lie for two years he must have told me some truth because you can’t lie for that long and not get caught up and it’s also not just one guy i have found out too that these aren’t we used to call them the yahoo boys but they are really manipulative organizations and their one guy is the one that develops the friendship the next one is the one that is good at the closing and getting the money the next one might be leading you to something else so they work in cahoots with each other and they’re very well organized so why did he why did he confess i don’t know but i honestly i’m grateful that he did because it did give me some closure and i can tell other victims i’m like if you are having trouble with understanding what happened and you need a you need a face look at that picture in my book that’s the guy that’s the picture of the guy that is scamming you uh and it’s unfortunate
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
well uh dr j have you uh in in your with your clients have you had any clients that this has happened to
Dr. Catherine Jackson
i’ve only known of one person uh that this has happened to but i’ve um i’ve worked with a lot of patients who deal with questionable things online they haven’t gone as far as being scammed but they have dealt with um really questionable behavior and then people ghost on them so they haven’t scammed them out of money but they’ve been in tricky situations and thank goodness they were able to get out of those situations with no physical harm and then other just odd online behaviors um but only one person who was actually going through but not not to the sum of uh the amount that uh debbie went through um mostly because they don’t have as many resources
Debby Johnson
you get creative but it doesn’t matter if someone’s been scammed for ten dollars or two and a half million dollars and i i’ve worked with women that have lost both of those amounts uh and there are millions of people around the world that have been taken it’s just they’re not going to talk and we are really encouraging them to speak up because i know that dr catherine you must realize that you know once someone talks about it it releases the emotional bind that that the power that the scammers have over you and it’s the only way that you’re really going to recover at least that’s in my in my work that’s the only way that people are going to recover is to to talk to someone that they trust and be careful you don’t want to just tell anybody because if you get that victim blame you’re going to shut down for good find a trusted friend and it could be i work with an organization called scars which is the society of citizens against relationship scams we deal we’re a support we are a victim support group and we have victims talking to victims and they become survivors and then thrivers but when you can find somebody that you you can trust and you can hold their hand basically then someone feels a little more comfortable in speaking up and that’s where we that’s that’s our goal is to get people to speak up and take the power back
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
so dr jackson is it is it always about relationships is it is that the way i know with with online dating uh it’s it’s forming that relationship uh and but with other scammers is it all about relationships this is the relationship matters show but but it i guess the question to me my question is how do and i might have asked this before in a different way but how do they know which way to go it you know when they’re speaking with you even if it’s business or if it’s a romantic do you have are there certain things that you say that lead them into a particular direction so with so that anyway they can get into here
Dr. Catherine Jackson
it’s all about their initial intent okay you know how they’re planning to deceive so if they were planning to deceive in a business way then that’s what they’re looking for and they’re going to places where they’re going to find people so that they can do a business scam or if you’re trying to do just a general financial scam or if they’re just uh like people who just like to gaslight just to do something to hurt you or physical it always really goes back to their intent and then that’s the way that they come in to try to deceive you and then they’re going to pull on your heartstrings so when you ask is it all about relationship yes they got to build that relationship to get in close enough to you to do whatever it is that they’re trying to do
Debby Johnson
and it’s all a bunch of numbers you know they’re just casting out the net yeah you know when you’re in business it’s like you make 10 phone calls and you get one yes
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
right right now tell us uh debbie more about the woman behind the smile and scars
Debby Johnson
the woman behind the smile is my non-profit and it’s my website the woman behind the smile i actually do a thursday live show called stand up and speak up and that’s where i bring everybody’s got a story everybody has something that’s happened in their life and so i encourage my guests to come on and actually tell their story sometimes for the first time and that’s really exciting because i learned so much about people and i realize that we all have so much in common it’s just we don’t tell our stories and if we do open up then then we’ve got a buddy and that’s really terrific now scars i’m on the board of directors at scars it’s an international victim support group based in miami we partner with organizations now in new zealand in australia the philippines europe uh we’re working with victims around the around the globe and uh like i said during this pandemic the scammers have not gone to sleep they are out in a really big way and there are a lot of anti-scammers out there a lot of anti-scam groups you’ve got to be very careful when you’ve been scammed when you’re looking to find help because the scammers are setting up scamming you know detective agencies and cash support groups i mean it is unbelievable that they’ll move from one scam to another so that’s the scars works to educate if you go to romancescamsnow.com it’s got the most comprehensive library of information we have a website called against scams.org where you can actually in any scam dot com where you can actually go and report it it gets reported to department of justice and ic3 which is the fbi uh so it’s an international we work with department of justice homeland security we can’t stop the scammers one-on-one you have to go after the money the money sources on an international level and then we actually have victims who find joy in reporting scammers to try to block them on facebook and social media i don’t have time to do that that that’s the beginning of how they can heal a lot of people still like to look at pictures that’s like looking at mug shots and dr j you might know that the feeling that i get when i see a scammer picture it’s not positive yeah so scars tries to do as much positive as we can with educating folks to prevent and then help folks in recovery because the intermediate intermediary stages it’s very difficult to get a victim to understand what’s going on until they’re broken broken
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
right and uh we only have a couple of minutes but i i did right time it remembered but one thing you said i just want to say this before i close out and go to uh dr jackson uh when you told me that millennials are really getting scammed because you know that’s the we know everything generation when we talk their life is online so they feel comfortable and trust people online thinking that you know no one’s going to take take the or put the wool over my eyes uh but they do and you and i talk briefly too about uh you know someone could contact you and say hey you want to make 250 really quick and you’ll go and you’ll you’ll open up a post office box for them well that post office and then you’ll get the 200 or 250 and you send them the combo or the key or whatever and then that box is used to receive checks from other victims it’s used for money laundering well now that quick 250 dollars has you accountable because you’re complicit in getting the box for them scammers in nigeria but you’re in the states if they’re going to arrest anybody they’re going to arrest you so be careful be careful be careful and dr jackson you are a psychologist and i what i’d like to say brain doctor yeah and if if people want to get in contact with you how do they get in contact with you
Dr. Catherine Jackson
i’m all over the web uh you can find me uh in all of my other links at my website doctorkatherinejackson.com which is just my name without the period all together and then i am on uh instagram at dr catherine jackson on uh facebook at doctor.catherine.jackson and twitter at dr c c jackson
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
well i want to thank both of you all for coming on and uh debbie those other organizations that you were talking about send them to me so that um i can put them on my page for people to you know if if they’re concerned about being scammed if they’re victims if they know anyone um so that i can forward that information to them because um it is so important it’s it’s it’s uh and and i just i really want to thank you for sharing your your your story it just lets people know that we can all be scammed and someone had sent something here that i wanted to show you okay come on it’s says debbie really loves deeply with the heart of gold oh i hope you found the happiness you deserve
Debby Johnson
all right she i actually remarried five years ago and i met my husband through a friend who was a matchmaker she did a background check though so it was really quite thorough but yeah if you don’t open up your heart again then you’re going to be alone and i didn’t want to be alone and so i didn’t want the scammer to get the best of me either and my husband is a darling and he is so supportive of speaking up and he knows it heals me and it empowers me from the inside out so i have and thank you for that that lovely that lovely uh talk or suggestion because i am a happy person and that that allows me to speak up the way i am
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
oh wow thank you it’s so great to to leave on a happy note yes all righty so thank you all for for for joining me and you know what i’m going to have you all back because there were so many questions and comments i couldn’t get to them at all but i really again want to thank you debbie and dr jackson thank you for you all have a blessed rest of your evening or day wherever you are i know debbie is it’s where it’s warm so in florida night time too thank you so much i really appreciate singing all right catherine i’d like to get in touch with you so okay thank you all so much bye-bye
Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
this has been an eye opening eye opening eye opening show um so so much information and i want to thank all of you for tuning in the show will be on youtube and on roku so if you have friends that missed this they can go to roku they can go to youtube they can go to my facebook page uh dr janice hooker fortman because this is very important it’s very important and they really really need to see this show so you all have a beautifully blessed rest of your day rest of your morning afternoon or evening wherever you are in the world and we will see you next week all righty remember there are all kinds of relationships relationship matters because relationships do matter [Music] do do [Music]