Have you ever known a total fraud?

Yes, it was online. After I challenged him on a point and he responded with an incandescent email, I discovered everything he told me was a lie. I couldn't find anybody with his name at his supposed employer, the pics of him were of somebody else, and I couldn't find any info. about his mother's career, wh. should have appeared. Also, towards the end (it went on for a couple of years), his story began contradicting itself.

Yes I did know someone who was engaged to a friend, even living with her, while married and living with someone else. He had all these crazy excuses and wild tales of woe to explain why he was rarely home. He got caught out right before the wedding.

I wouldn’t class her as a fraud exactly, but when I was growing up, a French woman with 2 children moved into a house on my street. She fit in well with the neighbours, and I became friends with her son, who was a few years younger than me. She never really spoke about her previous life, and looking back, I think she was very lonely.

A couple of times when I was playing with her son, she had some visitors who I think were police officers. After about 18 months in that house, the family moved out, literally overnight. One day, I was in their garden playing with their son, and the next morning they were gone, the house completely emptied. It’s weird, because as a kid I accepted this as normal, but as an adult I have often wondered what the story was. Was she escaping an abusive relationship, or was it a witness protection thing? It’s so weird, because they seemed like a fairly normal family, and were extremely nice people.

Guy I knew when we were teenagers, part of my friend group. He portrayed himself on FB as a combat veteran and popped up every so often with a sob story. There was a time he posted from the hospital that he had gotten beaten up while performing some heroic act and showed photos of his X-rays and his GoFundMe so he could get his dog out of the pound. Turns out he was dishonorably discharged from the army and had never been in combat or any of the overseas missions he’d claimed. One of those Stolen Valor sites exposed him with receipts! And then someone else did a reverse image searches and discovered he’d stolen the X-rays he showed everyone and someone else said he was just in a bar brawl.

This mutual acquaintance fell for his sob story and wired him money, too.

Anyway, he spiraled into deeper trouble and is dead now. As much as I despise the bad shit he did, I hope he’s at peace now. There were good things about him, too.

I'm embarrassed to say that I lived with one for four years, pre internet. He was well educated and a talented artist from a communist country so there was no way to verify stories. When you love someone you take what they say at face value. You would never imagine that someone would invent a sister.

For four years he went to visit his sister who suffered from depression and didn't like visitors, she had been a ballet dancer and her husband had died and left her money. He'd always come home with new clothes and presents. Sometimes he would have to go meet a cousin because his sister wasn't well...etc.etc.etc. . If I questioned him, he would blow up and blame Castro.

Back in the dark ages, before the internet (1991?), I was a 21 year old twink meeting other guys via those personals ads in the back of the local weekly rag. They were phone ones where you could leave voice messages.

Got a message from this HOT sounding guy, sexy deep voice. Normal sounding. We would talk on the phone (landlines!) for hours, but whenever we made a time to meet in person, something would come up and we couldn't.

This went on for a couple months. And during this time, he sent me photos of his MODELING HEADSHOTS. I hit the goldmine.

He also moved to Chicago during this time (from Dallas). But we still spoke every day, having phone sex, I think even telling each other "I love you."

Finally, I bought a plane ticket to Chicago (which was a lot for a 21 year old student) to see him. I got a cheap room in some seedy hotel downtown (I didn't know any better), and arranged to FINALLY MEET.

When I opened the door to my room, I couldn't believe my eyes. Standing there before me was a FAT BLACK MAN. Not the trim, muscular white guy model I believed him to be.

And he acted like it was nothing, meanwhile I'm freaking out, wondering if he's a psychopath who's going to kill me and eat my body in this seedy hotel where the toilet keeps backing up into the tub.

I told him I was very tired from the trip and that it didn't matter to me that he totally lied to me about who he was, and that we'd spend the next day together.

Then I called the airline and changed my ticket to the next flight out of there.

Yes.

My uncle Donald

It will be interesting to see if this thread takes off or whether people will be too embarrassed to admit that they were scammed.

No, no not me, I would never be so foolish.

Myself I suppose.

I have a friend who is either a total Boy Scout or a complete sociopath. After twenty years you’d think I would know, but I don’t.

My mom had a boyfriend who was one of those men who pretend to be an international man of mystery. We could see through him, but my mom wouldn't hear anything bad about him. Our lawyer cousin said there was nothing we could do as long as she was freely letting him live off of her. My big, muscular brother finally went over, actually got into a physical altercation with him and kicked him out, telling him not to come back (he didn't).

I had a gay friend who met a guy online and the guy ended up moving across the country into my friend's house. Months later I heard again from the friend and the guy had depleted his entire savings and driven off in the car my friend had bought him. I don't think he's ever recovered from it.

Yes.

I had a new coworker that was such a bitch that I Googled her to find out what she was about. She gave a testimonial on a law of attraction website. On the website, she provided all this info that seemed to contradict what she presented at our workplace. (Time lines didn't match up, etc.)

She posted really personal stuff about how her life was so bad but now, due to the law of attraction, all these good things had come into her life. I never did bring it to anyone's attention, but it made me aware of how much people misrepresent.

I fear my recently-widowed aunt has hooked up with a romance scammer. He seems too good to be true. I hope I'm wrong.

I watched a little of this series, but they were dragging it out too long and it made me sad/furious that this guy got away with it for quite a while.

Oh boy. I know some people like this. One is a compulsive liar when they drink so I've learned to not take anything they say seriously. This person once told me how far in debt they were and then literally a month later blurted out, "I have $400,000 in the bank!" um, no you don't sweetie.

Yes, his name is Chris and he lies about literally everything. Delusions of grandeur with pathological lying.

I cut off contact.

yeah, the delusions of grandeur thing. Like the recent Betty Broderick docu, i do she was wasn't far behind (so bad for the kids) ALTHOUGH i do think the husband was a complete psychopath. However, she was not far behind it all. a complete destroy.

"Have you ever known a total fraud?"

It's as if the internet never existed.

Omg

Was the guy’s name , r6?

Why is it that with finding a job you have to submit a résumé. With references! Why don’t we do the same with friendships and relationships? Maybe then we won’t be duped so easily!

Or also run a background check on the person

[quote]I had a new coworker that was such a bitch that I Googled her to find out what she was about. She gave a testimonial on a law of attraction website.

Was her name Marci?

Florida is full of people like this.

I shared an apartment with a friend I made at work once, in the 90s. I used to give her money for half the bills, then I noticed we would get lots of letters from gas and electric companies until one day I opened one and realised we were very behind on payments. I confronted her and we had a bit of a falling out, her parents paid the bills and we moved on. At this stage I was just waiting for the lease to end so I could move out.

Then she developed cancer, she stopped showing up at work which made the money situation even harder. She kept having frequent radiotherapy and chemotherapy appointments, some times in the same week! I got suspicious, googled a few things and was sure she was lying. Of course its hard to broach the "are you faking cancer" topic. In the end the end, I called her mother, asked her subtly about the daughter and treatments etc and the mother never knew anything about the cancer. So Im sure she was faking it, or she kept cancer from her Mother who she was very close to. Or maybe I'm the cunt for telling her Mother....I don't know. But her web of lies about other things made me suspicious.

I always google new friends/acquaintances. If I could run background checks in them before having them in my home or going to theirs, I would.

The Great Gatsby. That's not snark, I mean Fitzgerald knew that Americans are self-reinventors and that can turn into full-on fraud.

I dated a guy about 20 years ago that lied about everything. He said that both of his parents were dead, and left him millions, but he blew through the money in a year (we were both in our early 20’s). I later found out that his father was alive, poor, and living in a trailer park. He made up bizarre stories about traveling the world and getting manicures and massages as a child. He lied about partying with celebrities. He was always broke, but insisted that he had money coming to him. He even lied about dating women, as well as men. Basically he dated anyone who would help him out financially. One time he invited me over for dinner, and insisted that he was making an old family secret recipe. I saw the hamburger helper box in the trash. He would get really angry whenever I would catch him in a lie, but would never admit to lying. It has to be some sort of a personality disorder.

I dated the Montauk Grifter

R31 He was a classic psychopath

It's called bipolar, OP.

Years ago, I met a guy on line who seemed nice. Eventually, after several weeks of emails, we agreed to meet. Everything he had told me from his age, his employment and his proud connection to one of the older families in the area proved to be completely bogus. After our meeting, I emailed him a thank you for the lovely evening but told him I preferred to date someone closer to my age. I didn't mention that his 'cousins' were friends of mine and had never heard of him.

YES. And not sure why the need to lie, AT ALL.

I had a roommate years ago that seemed nice. I would come home from work and ask her how her day went and she would tell me about work. She left for NY for spring break and didn't return. An ex-roommate of hers left a note to call her so I did. It turned out she hadn't worked in months. I'm not sure if she even knew she was lying to me. I think she was just really fucked up and had some severe mental problems. Luckily I wasn't on the lease and just moved out.

Jon Lovitz played this fraudulent character on Saturday Night Live. Tommy something. His catch phrase was "Yeah...yeah, that's the ticket," always said right after he'd made some outrageous assertion.

It was a hit with audiences because we've all known somebody like that.

I am completely humiliated to admit that it happened to me as I always have thought of myself as a good judge of character. I should have gone with my initial instinct because the guy was the new boyfriend of a good friend of mine. When I first met him I hated him and thought he was trailer trash. He claimed to be from a family of great wealth and was very close with his mother who lived in another state. He also talked about how devout a christian his mother was, and that he went to private christian schools. I believed the christian school story because his grammar and world knowledge were both horrible. Eventually I started to like the guy (not sexually). When he and my friend broke up I remained friends with both of them but eventually became better friends with the ex-boyfriend. Eventually I loaned the guy about $2,000 when he had a family crisis. Every time he was going to pay me back he had a new excuse of something that came up. Eventually he moved out of state back to where he was from. Florida. (Should have been my first clue.) When I would ask him to repay the money, stopped returning my calls, my emails and I eventually never heard from him again. I decided to look him up in the Florida criminal system and then voila! I found pages and pages of crimes that both he and his mother had committed. Mostly fraud, burglary, forgery, hot checks. He even spent time in prison.

A friend in our early twenties dated a guy back in the UK who claimed to have been in the SAS, the super secret part of the Royal Marines. Like the Navy Seals meet James Bond. They went on holiday with her parents to Spain, and he couldn't even swim. They later found out that he'd made himself a copy of her parent's house keys and was going in the house and stealing when they weren't home.

Yes. And today I Googled him to find out if he was in jail yet and found his OBITUARY under his real name.

He stole from a friend of mine. May he RIH.

Yes, we voted for him

These people always brag about their wealthy families, don’t they? My daughter had a friend who was a legit billionaire’s kid and didn’t even know it for a long time. That kid was really really fucked up in the head, though.

Just this weekend I met an older man who did this weird fraud act. He was overdressed for the occasion and wearing a tie that I complimented. Upon closer inspection, it certainly wasn’t an Hermès, but he made sure to say it was. Then he steered the conversation so that he could queenily name-drop, non-STOP. It was hilarious. Bloomberg (they’re very close, you know) Gloria Vanderbilt, the Kennedys, he was invited to this and that, etc. All this in a five-minute conversation. I can’t help myself in these situations; I always play along and egg them on.

R40, oh that’s another variation: the Stolen Valor. I wrote upthread about my acquaintance who lied about his service.

So we’ve got the Stolen Valors, the cancer fakers, the Faux Rockefellers…

They all have the potential to be dangerous, too.

No, but we had one as President!

Yes.

It is an interesting and disturbing pathology. In my unfortunately considerable experience, the fatal flaw of these people is that they always, always over-sell their back-stories. He didn't just serve in the military, he inevitably served in the SEALs, Green Berets, Airborne etc. and is of course highly decorated. His parents weren't just successful, daddy was a billionaire and had his own jet, he knows film stars and other celebrities, etc ad nauseum.

I did that kind of research r24. I "surveyed" a few of my current boss's industry colleagues and found out the horror stories. He's in the dark triad zone.

I used to work with a crazy hot Cuban broad. She met some guy and fell head over heels. Moved in with him fairly quickly.

About a year into the relationship, finds out he has kids from a prior marriage that he didn't disclose. As well as the prior marriage! He also lied about his name. His mother was the one who ended up ratting him out to her.

Yes, r47. My partner used to own a mortgage brokerage. He hired a guy in his late 20’s to work in telemarketing. This guy had zero education or job history. He insisted that his family was wealthy, and vacationed with Warren Buffett. He then told my partner (HIS BOSS) that he could get Warren to approve a Facebook friend request. I had to tell my partner that the same fake account was friends with multiple other naive friends on FB. People that run in these circles don’t work minimum wage jobs. Sheesh.

R10 = Tom Ripley, still believing it's better to be a fake somebody, than a real nobody.

I think I will start Googling new friends and acquaintances. I always felt guilty for doing so, but I think it's smart to check.

I did know someone who pretended to have cancer. Workmates of the grifter did fundraisers. One of my friends offered this grifter a place to live while "recovering" from chemo, etc.

Yes, I knew someone who has the same name as a famous movie star, even though she’s a totally different ethnicity & it doesn’t match. She borrows money off everyone (mostly pays it back), but the worst thing about her is her Munchausen. She’s had open heart surgery (for nothing), lupus, thyroid probs, claims her uterus fell out in the shower, Sjogren’s, etc etc. One time she confessed to me on the phone that she’s faking her medical shit, then retracted that. Her dr referred her for “behavioral therapy”’or some such, but she never went—funny because it might’ve actually helped her!

I used to work as an English teacher in a South American country. We had this American (I think? Or Canadian) in his fifties working with us. The place we worked at was a dump, but this guy claimed to have a PhD. He insisted on being called 'Dr Link', going so far as to correct coworkers who called him 'Chris'. I was sceptical, and asked him what his thesis topic was, and he just laughed and said to me 'oh, you know your stuff, right?' He didn't insist on being addressed as Dr with me, perhaps because I am whiter than snow and have a first degree from a very well-known university.

As he spiralled further downward during his time on the dilapidated pirate's ship that was our language school, he began trying to poach clients for himself, and telling them to put in special requests for him because 'I have so much I can teach you'. He called the girls working in our administration office 'low-class chicas' who 'probably gave good blow jobs'. Later on he got sick with something, and ended up at the local free clinic because he had no money to go private.

It was quite sad actually. I did find somewhere an online profile which stated that he 'completed graduate work' at some university in the US, so perhaps he really did start a PhD but there's no way he finished it. That was almost 15 years ago, he'd be retirement age now, I really wonder what happened to him.

Yes. I feel bad for him because he killed himself. He was very nice, good-looking, a generous person. But his entire life turned out to be a lie.

I knew him in college - I was a scholarship type without much money and he was supposedly the heir to a Chicago fortune. There was a croquet club on campus and he hung out with them - think alpha preppy gays and Heather Chandler lipstick lesbians and art history majors with Mayflower connections. They were all bitchily soigné and treated me like shit but he was always a warm presence. I remember him once saying something cutting to me and then writing me a note apologizing the next day and saying that he was ashamed of his behavior.

I'd like to think the nice him was the real person and the rest was perhaps less fraud than relentless self-glamorizing.

I hate to say it, but yes, my own dad. He has a PhD and used to make a ton of money, but he hasn't worked in decades and I live on his small farm with him. He has the MOST inflated ego and loves to tell everyone how much he knows. But he has only stayed afloat for these decades by borrowing money from everyone that he comes into contact with. He's completely unashamed to ask. Heck, he owes me $25K and I'm not sure I'll ever see it again. He's 86 and believes he'll live to be 105, so he goes on and on about all the big plans he has. My brothers and I don't know what to do with him, we're so sick and tired of his BS.

Thanks for letting me vent!

A compulsive liar fuck buddy. He had had a stroke as an adolescent and had to relearn the English language was the explanation for pronouncing a very few words slightly off. He had been in charge of police horses for a major city, buying, training, equipping but seemed to know nothing about police and just some old saw anecdotes about horse behavior. He had been a master cabinetmaker, a specialist in complicated inlay restoration (yet knew none of the history of that sort of furniture and was vague on how he learned this trade that would normally involve years if apprenticeship.) His late boyfriend had been a successful doctor from an old, rich family. Together they had owned one of the finest historic houses in the U.S. He had a very sizable trust fund from the late partner's family, a settlement (I once glimpsed the much boasted about monthly check and it was for $175.) I met him in London once (when a trip I planned seemed to magically coincide with one he had planned) and he insisted he show me the real London: Harrod's, Piccadilly Circus, Fort um & Mason...and other sites "off the tourist path.". He knew London like the back of his hand, having travelled there several times a year for years with the late partner -- only he couldn't recognize major streets or have any idea of where they went. He had seen various members of the royal family many times, "You see them, shopping, at the places with the royal warrants." It was obvious he didn't know the place well at all and I wondered if he had ever been there before

Everything that seemed ordinary about him was simple an attempt to okay down his status and exotic background. He had travelled everywhere, meaning anywhere people were not likely to have been: drank cow blood with the Maasai, dug wells, worked in a clinic. Mention a place and he name Roman Castanet, "Been there!"

For a while I thought it was amusing. He was a bit odd, but fucked like a rabbit. Hard, fast, put everything into it, then again a half hour later, and again. He started to get a little attached and possessive suddenly, and mistook fucking for a 1950s style going steady. When he became jealous of my friends and controlling, no more fuck buddy, but what a strange one with layers of lies to prop up I don't know what.

My sister Jan.

f i n d m e

A "Dr." who rose through the ranks to become a Chief at my old department was fired for falsifying his credentials decades earlier.

OMG, r54, was just about to post about my sister in law who has Munchausen's. She's mid 40s but looks like she's pushing 60. I don't know why my brother can't see through her bullshit. She's ALWAYS sick...supposedly has epilepsy, was hit on the head with a baseball bat, lupus, anorexia, cancer of the uterus, etc. When my brother first met her, she claimed she was working in a hospital. My mother tried to call her once at the hospital where she worked and they said she never worked there. Her epilepsy makes her unable to drive, unable to do housework and unable to walk most times. She goes from doctor to doctor, always with different ailments. One doctor finally gave her a device to wear that was to measure her seizures since she claimed she was having them all the time and falling and knocking out her teeth, etc. She wore the device for a few days and the device showed nothing...not a single seizure. They even observed her in the hospital for a few days and saw nothing...not a hint of epilepsy. At holidays, she always sleeps while the rest of us do dishes and clean up and once my step dad told her to get up off her ass and help and she threw a tantrum, screaming, "IF I HAVE A SEIZURE AND BREAK YOUR DISHES, IT'S NOT MY FAULT." My step dad just laughed and then she literally stood behind my brother who was doing the dishes and folded her arms in a huff. But the absolute best was the wedding where she claimed she had a heart attack the day before (she didn't) and made her bridesmaids push her ass down the aisle in a wheelchair. We all KNEW she wanted that wheelchair so badly that it was a fucking joke. And the time my brother wanted to go to a casino and she really didn't want to go but did anyway and the minute they got there, she fell down on the ground in front of a bunch of people who then ran to get my brother. She claimed she was having another one of her seizures but it was basically her not wanting to be at the casino. The last time I talked to my mom, she informed me that she's in a wheelchair now because "she doesn't want to walk anymore." The bitch is fucking crazy but my brother treats her like shit so whatever, they deserve each other. Munchausen

My sister went on a trip to France and met/fell in love with some guy who claimed to be a member of France's special forces. They kept in touch and he was supposed to fly to the States to meet the family at Christmas. He ghosted her. A French colleague of mine's friend, who was an actual French air force pilot, told me there weren't any French "special forces".

This isn’t really in the “fraud” category, more the “shockingly unqualified” category.

My daughter goes to what is supposed to be an “excellent” public school. The kind where you overpay for a shit box house just to get into the district. This is in a suburb of LA.

It just so happens we used to live in Bethesda, MD— a place that actually has very good public schools. So, we know how these are supposed to work.

I had some minor concerns and tried to discuss with the principal (after getting inaccurate information from several other school employees.)

School principal acted really shady— and the shadiness was all out of proportion to the question I was asking her. The kind of situation where you say, “hmmm, I was only a little concerned, but now I’m actually alarmed.”

Because I hadn’t gotten an answer to my original question, I followed up with the district. Much to my surprise, principal was gone a few months later. I don’t know if the two things are related, but even had she not been “transferred,” I would still be shocked that a person who can’t answer a simple question can get a position of authority anywhere.

R62 your brother didn’t notice she was crazy before he married her?

R64 no one is interested in your boring detailess non-stories. "A thing happened and I said a thing and then another thing happened" gtfooh. That's not a story it's a BI about a bunch of nobodies.

R62 is not a fraud--she has severe mental illness.

The premature aging alone should tell you there is something (real) wrong with her.

R56, but what did he lie about?

Expat communities are filled with frauds who make up alternative histories to reinvent themselves. Often they pimp up their backgrounds to sound either more high end or exotic. It's their chance to be whomever they always wanted without anyone from their past around to verify.

That's interesting, R69. I have wondered about that as it seems a land of opportunity to do it.

[quote] Expat communities are filled with frauds who make up alternative histories to reinvent themselves.

Expats, IMO, are suspect to begin with. I have lived as an expat before. Luckily, my fellow expats were cool, for the most part.

I used to work with sex offenders. There was a guy who everybody referred to as Dr. _____. He was the go-to guy for sex offender treatment. Don't laugh, but I'm a pretty formal person and I think I needed to write him a letter and wanted to address him (salutation) correctly. I did some research and could find no confirmation that he was a doctor. I asked him, point-blank, are you a doctor? He said no. I think he was an RN.

I'm a Romonov.

I didn’t know I was related to you, r73!

r67 oh we know it's a severe mental illness. And her premature aging is her refusal to eat (anorexia which is also what has damaged her heart). She will eat one or two bites of something and then say she's full The doctors have told her that is her main issue and that she needs to exercise but she likes the attention she gets from appearing frail and helpless so she refuses to eat and now refuses to walk. She's a nut job and so is my brother who wanted a wife who wouldn't leave him and so he got someone who is incapable of doing so. But he is constantly berating her in front of others because he has the maturity of a 10 year old. He's the type who will get into a car with you and fart because he thinks it's hilarious.

One of my professors in college, my freshman year and his first year, got hired because he had had a famous scholarship to Oxford. Except it turns out he didn't. He did go to Oxford but no famous scholarship. I don't remember if he was let go mod-year or they let him stay until the end of the academic year.

He was sort of cute and gayish.

I've known several of these types in my life. One common denominator is that if you suggest they're lying, they go bat shit crazy on you.

R62/r75 By chance, is your brother really ugly, fat and/or much older than his wife? Why he'd marry such a thing makes me wonder what's wrong with him.

In the 1990s, I was doing some temp work. I met this seemingly really crazy-but-in-a-fun-kind-of-way woman who was also a temp. She was very pretty and really funny and we laughed practically all day. It made the boring temp job bearable. She told me all kinds of stories. Supposedly her husband's parents were super wealthy, but they were mad he married her. They would drop money on them now and then depending on their moods. She had been on several fabulous vacations with the in-laws if things were going well. But she drove some shitty car. About two weeks in, she was fired for some infraction at work. I voluntarily quit about a week later because I was so bored.

A few years later, there was an article in a local paper about how she had scammed a journalist who worked at the paper. A picture of the scammer was in the article, and it was the woman I had temped with. She had faked a British accent and told a similar story about wealthy in-laws, but was supposedly divorced from the husband now and raising his kids. The journalist she scammed actually wrote the article. Turned out she was this huge fraud who was in and out of jail frequently, had a couple marriages that were annulled after the husbands caught on to her, did drugs, stole--all kinds of stuff.

Lucky for me I only knew her for two weeks. I thought she was crazy-fun. Turns out she was mentally imbalanced and a grifter.

r78, not really, no. He's a bit overweight but not huge. He has always been very immature. When we were kids, my parents were told he had ADHD and should have been on medication for it, but my parents didn't "believe" in medicating for that so they never did. We also all went through some serious trauma as kids so it pretty much mentally stunted my brother. He doesn't have many friends and lives down the block from my mom and hangs out with her and my step dad almost every other day. I feel badly for him and his obviously mental issues but he's an adult now and needs to get therapy like the rest of us have. He's not the brightest bulb...neither of my two brothers graduated high school because my mom kicked them out of the house when they were 11 and 9 and dropped them on the doorstep of my equally mentally ill father and he never made them go to school. They each only reached their freshman year and then stopped going and my dad thought it was a way to get revenge on my mom for leaving him by not making them go to school. I have a really fucked up family.

Well not a total fraud I guess, but weird nonetheless. This was the dark ages - my then partner and I (who were together for 17 years) had separated at year 10 for about 3 months. I was staying at a friends apartment in the city (where we both worked), and he remained in our home in the burbs. He had just started a new job and had befriended a woman who quickly settled in to being his confidant and best friend. I went to the house for dinner one night, and she was there - and I could tell from the first look, she was in love with my partner. The evening was OK, but the dynamic was they were a couple and I was just visiting, which was really odd. My partner and I ended up having a huge fight about it - I said this woman is an interloper and trying to worm her way in (no danger of romance - we are both gayer than a tree full of parrots). Anyway, long story short, this woman was very manipulative and took up all the oxygen in the room - but we felt bad for her, and when we reunited, she became our best friend, and spent a lot of time with us. She was from upstate NY and had traveled home for a HS reunion - calling us with exciting news that she had reconnected with an old beau. They began a long distance relationship, and after several months she went home for Christmas. She again called with exciting news that he had asked her to marry him, and he was coming home with her (she ended up buying a house in the same town) for a few days and she wants him to meet us. We invited them for dinner upon their return. Shockingly, before she comes home they are involved in a horrible car accident and his is killed instantly. She worked with my partner, so everyone there, and of course us, just rallied around her. She returned home alone and basically moved in with us as she was so distraught. I guess you can see where this is going.....it was unusual in that we had met her parents and they were lovely people, as were her brothers - but none of the usual activity was happening - no cards, no calls, nothing. I ended up calling her mom to ask about the services, which we wanted to attend - and then the shit his the fan. It was all completely made up. She ended up calling me at work after her mom called her confused - I quickly called home and told hubby to lock the doors and not answer the phone......that was about 30 years ago.

And you lived to tell the tale, R81!

Wow r80!

That explains it, then.

I worked at a prestigious hospital than had an internship program for high school seniors. They were volunteers at the hospital. After graduation, we got letters asking for references for one of the students. He was trying to pass himself off as an actual doctor. He came back begging us not to blow his cover but of course we told everyone the truth. He was a smart kid from India who got caught up with his fake life. But he did act like a psychopath. I have no idea what happened to him.

No, she was a fraud, R81, pretty much a total one. Mental illness does not preclude being a fraud.

I only have a tangential relationship to this and it's a weak version of fraud but ... I'm in AA and pretty moderate about it but there is a fanatic group, the Atlantic Group, in town. I went a few times and it was very much a cult. Not the weaken cult-like behavior you find in most groups. Anyway two biggies in that group were arrested and written up in the Times, including their role in Atlantic. Apparently they had a lucrative sideline going to apartment showings in wealthy parts of town and making off with expensive items.

R81, that’s so creepy.

I had a boss like this. He told really huge lies. The worst one, I think, was that he and a partner who was a social worker illegally adopted a baby the partner had encountered in his job. But somehow, the kid ended up living with the partner's parents. He and the partner were long broken up by the time I met him. He met a new partner, and they were getting married and planning to adopt a kid. What happened to the first one? Just still hanging out with his non-legal grandparents? It was very strange, a strange thing to lie about. Saying you have a kid is not like saying you drive a Ferrari when you really take the bus.

One day we all got kicked out of the office we worked in, a space in a doctor's office who was one of his clients. They had gone to some kind of meeting, found out all the shady shit he was doing, kicked us out, wouldn't allow us to take the computers, files, etc. That was the last day I worked for him. He has absolutely no online presence, which is strange for a person of his age, mid 40's. I suspect that's entirely down to the many people he has scammed in one way or another looking for him and him trying not to be found.

And there was the usual liar stuff about super-rich relatives, real estate all over the world, etc. People often think they've encountered a pathological liar, but I genuinely believe he was one. I have no idea what made him that way. I feel lucky to have escaped with only a sudden job loss.

Oh, shit, r79, you made me remember someone! This was about 20 years ago and my Bf was a real estate agent. He had a coworker who was British. She was fun and funny and we’d hang out drinking with her, many nights. She was a lesbian but had been married to a man.

She and the BF worked together on some deals and they did have a good energy as a team. He started to notice that she was getting phone calls that she’d hang up on quickly, and she moved apartments suddenly. She never seemed to be going out with women, and the guy popping up was her “ex” husband. She borrowed some money from my BF and promptly disappeared. Turns out that she’d been advertising apartments and showing them and taking application and non refundable credit check money from potential renters and saying they didn’t get the apartments. She’d promise to show them other things because they were already pre-approved with their credit checks and just stalling them. Sometimes she told people they’d gotten the apartment but the super wanted “key money” in cash, etc.

She disappeared overnight, no one knew where she went. Turns out she’d borrowed money from everyone.

I still miss drinking with her, though. She was so much fun.

When I was in high school I had a friend who moved away pretty suddenly. A year later his family moved back to the same block, different house. They all had new names.

I used to know a guy in college who lied about absolutely everything and was a notorious mooch.

He would couch-surf among our mutual friends and stay until they threw him out. They would be happy to have him around at first because he was actually a lot of fun, but inevitably he would wear out his welcome because he rarely offered to pay for anything. On the rare occasions when he was flush with cash (i.e., whatever he had left over from his financial aid at the beginning of the semester), he would make a grand show of throwing a party and buying lots of top-shelf booze.

He claimed his parents were wealthy, but his closest friend pulled me aside one day and told me they were actually dead and he was raised by his grandmother in a working-class neighborhood. Sometimes he would pretend to talk to his mom and dad on the phone about what he thought were rich-people things, like his nonexistent fraternity pledge process or having money deposited into his nonexistent bank accounts.

His wardrobe was all fratty labels like Tommy Hilfiger and Polo, but you could see up close that a lot of his clothes were old and frayed.

He had a thing for the boys on our school's baseball team, who, to hear him tell it, were all secretly gay and unable to resist him.

The main thing I remember him lying about, though, was having a Jeep Cherokee that was always "in the shop."

I had a friend who was clearly gay but said he was bisexual to his gay friends.

He was in a relationship with a woman. They both came from European Catholic families but he and her were born in Australia.

They both planned a big trip together - a trip to New York including a cruise from there that would include him propsing to her before flying of to Europe for him to meet her extended family. I believe she was aware the proposal was coming and she would be introducing her fiance to her extended family. The newly engaed couple would have an European trip thereafter.

Whilst on the NY cruise he met a gay couple, called off the proposal and the rest of his trip - letting her know he was staying on with his new gay friends. She continued on her trip including the visit to her extended European family.

I caught up with shortly thereafter querying why he was back from his trip so soon. He spilled the beans I told him he was disgusting.

It turns out the girlfriend had been previously married - the ex having left her for another man.

So he wasn't a total fraud but fraudulent enough to do serious damage.

In my years in San Francisco I met a fake Getty, a fake Selznick, and a fake member of the Nepalese Royal Family. I suppose it must be much harder to pull off this kind of grift now that everyone has a camera and Google in their pockets...?

Well, there was that fake Austrian princess who just got out of jail--she scammed a bunch of people only a few years ago.

Wow R81! Don’t leave us hanging. I feel there must be more to the story? You must have interacted with her in some way after the beans were spilled?

A French Armenian guy I knew. Absolute fraud - lied about everything, ripped people off, total scumbag. And the biggest penis I have ever seen in my life.

Donald Trump and the entire Trump family. All of them. Every last one of them including Melania and all those who married into that vile, fraudulent family, and those who are dating or living with a Trump.

Everyone...except Mary Trump, who is an honorable person other than to be stuck with her unfortunate surname.

Off the cuff, the mango Mussolini comes to mind.

I had a coworker who began living in the basement of our work building. He directed all his mail to our work address, kept toiletries in the work bathrooms, tons of food in the shared fridge / freezer, etc. At some point, he was fired (at-will). He sued and the lawsuits went on forever.

R95, Armenians are hugh.

R81's post reminds me if the woman who faked surviving 9/11 and losing her fiance, Tania Head. There's a great documentary about her called The Woman Who Wasn't There.

The world is your mirror, r79.

I worked at a university dealing with transfer students and the Saudi embassy contacted us to confirm a transcript from our university. It was on our official paper, but it had been hand-typed and the courses and grades were all fake. I had to inform them it was fraudulent. I actually felt bad for the guy, 'cause who knows what the penalty in Saudi Arabia is for stealing money from the government?

[quote] He would get really angry whenever I would catch him in a lie, but would never admit to lying. It has to be some sort of a personality disorder.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

[quote]Her dr referred her for “behavioral therapy”’or some such, but she never went—funny because it might’ve actually helped her!

It takes a personality disorder to do these things (pick any of the Cluster Bs). They are generally not treatable.

[quote] Expat communities are filled with frauds who make up alternative histories to reinvent themselves.

R69 R71 there's a lot of truth in what you say. There was an old British acronym, FILTH: Failed in London, Try Hong Kong.

Admittedly, I was an expat (I should really say immigrant) but it was in my mid-20s and I never stayed anywhere very long, just travelled and drifted around and worked a bit and had fun for a few years. Other wealthy westerners go abroad in their 60s to live and work as a kind of retirement project, this doesn't really apply to them.

The suspicious ones are the ones who travel to somewhere in Asia or Latin America in middle-age intending to stay long-term, especially if it's a fairly low-end position or something they weren't recruited for at home. They are usually the ones that don't have a lot going for them, or who have a good reason for why they can't get hired in their own country. My line manager for my second English Teacher job (in China) was an alcoholic and sociopath who was determined to constantly start drama and made it his mission to periodically get rid of some junior coworker he was jealous of (he hated me because I was 20 years younger and because of my education). I did some digging and it turns out he was repeatedly fired from every job he ever had in the UK for drunkenness or drug abuse or just plain incompetence. Later on he ended up in Hong Kong and the cycle of binge drinking and getting fired continued. Really a fucked-up person. I have suspicions (from his online presence and things he said to other people I know) that he was sexually abused as a child and has allowed it to destroy his life.

Of course there are people who move abroad simply to enjoy a slower pace of life and are not dumpster fires. But I always felt sorry for the Thais, Chinese, etc I encountered who were culturally conditioned to look on all white westerners with admiration, because they always eventually twig that the people whom they are dealing with are nothing in their own countries.

R47 My dad spent 20 years in the Navy. He told me once, "I never met a SEAL when I was in the service, but I sure met a lot of 'ex-SEALS' when I got out."

How is it possible never to meet a SEAL during a 20-year career in the Navy?

I’ve known two pathological liars in my life, a guy & a gal, both Armenian (they don’t know each other). Both told elaborate stories about themselves that were totally preposterous, would go out of their way to lie, Then of course would get tripped up after. I had started to think their lying is a cultural thing, until i met my BFF in college, also Armenian, & the most down to earth person ever.

We started hanging out with a gaggle of mostly thirty-something gay couples (at the time) in a West Coast queeropolis. There was a single guy in the group nicknamed ‘Buffy’ who they all seemed so entertained by as if Buffy was the court jester. Initially charming, Buffy was so full of shit and lied through his teeth or at least exaggerated everything. For instance, he lived a lifestyle that didn’t make sense with his job or industry. He boasted about his salary which was really inflated for what he did. Both my OH and I worked in fields dealing with risk, credit and fraud, so we were ‘underwriting’ between us all Buffy’s BS he said that didn’t add up. Looking back, he was sort of an Andrew Cunanan type, haha, and had a hold on so many. All of our warning bells were going off, but Buffy was firmly part of the group. It was like they were all blind that he lied about everything. We decided to just let it all die on the vine and stopped socialising with them because Buffy came with the deal. We had a discussion whether were were being too hard on him, but ultimately we didn’t want Buffy even in our home because of his vibes.

About a couple years later, Buffy was apprehended because it turns out he was wanted for major check fraud in his native flyover state. Buffy was living off an assumed identity as well. It later also turned out Buffy was embezzling from the organization he worked. And no, he didn’t have the job title or salary he claimed. Buffy did time in prison after all this.

Always trust your instincts about people even if no one else around you sees it.

Am I a naive fool if r90 makes me sad? I mean, the people who lie in a relationship context are absolute predators, fuck them, but some of these other cases just seem like lost souls, willy loman types. 'Salesman' makes me cry, too. :(

Also, I will never understand the amount of work and effort it must require to have a second family. My god, why??

It’s quite possible to never meet a SEAL in 20 years in the Navy.

R107 As I understand it, there are very few SEALs. It's difficult to get accepted into the training program, and a big chunk of the candidates don't even finish it.

Not a fraud, really (though there were some seemingly credible accusations of fraud against him), but a man who could have written a book on the high art of self-invention. In bars and auction houses I crossed paths with this man often enough that we started speaking and while he was a bit absurd on the one hand with his grand taste in tailored clothes, velvet jackets, Hermès scarves, expensive shoes and his clipped way of speaking, but he was also charming, soft spoken, attentive to everything you said, asked lots of questions, and told his own interesting stories, always with a sense of humor aimed inwardly. He was always fresh back from Middleburg where he'd gone to talk to Bunny Mellon about larkspurs and look at some books in her library, always some story like that; alternately he would give some description of some young hustler or trashy guy he had picked up the night before.

He was a society florist in Washington DC, a talented name dropper (Oatise Charles, C.Z. Guest, Deeda Blair - who brought her ambassador husband to his funeral), he moved about dressed such that he would be noticed in any room, as if he had just come from or was going someplace more elegant still. He moved through a room like a host at his own party, eyes everywhere but with a destination firmly in mind.

The linked and long article about Kenneth phoenix Love is quite interesting if you have any interest in self-invented people. It works backwards from a crime, his murder by a young hustler and reconstructs something of how he constructed his life.

Here's a section recounted by C.Z. Guest about he insinuated himself into her friendship, more clever than cunning I would say, which was my impression of the man. As much as he embellished things it was more by toying with someone else's expectations, and not by telling lies and deceiving. He could laugh and say, "You know, I wasn't born like this."

[quote]"He called me out of the blue and said he'd like to give a tea for me in Washington," said Guest, who had just published her first gardening book. "He was going to meet me at the plane. I didn't know he was black. So, I get off the plane and I'm looking for him. He had told me he'd be in a red MG. Listen, I was brought up with black servants -- the stables and all -- and there he was in this red MG. He was so divine. Had lovely manners. The minute I came out he was waving at me, black as coal. I got into that MG with the top down and drove into Washington. I was brought up in Boston with white and black servants, but I never heard a black man speak like a white man before Kenneth.

[quote]"Guess what we did? I told him I'd like to introduce him to Oatsie Charles, and he drove right over to Oatsie's house. I'll never forget the look on her black butler's face when he opened the door and saw Mrs. Guest with a black man. I introduced myself and we went into the drawing room. We had the best time... .

[quote]"He knew I knew a lot of people. I can see him now in that red MG, always well dressed. He wasn't an unattractive homosexual. He was the most warm, delightfully charming person. And I have never had such delicious tea sandwiches as at that tea for me."

Did someone drop my name, darling?

Jose Diaz aka Monchito Diaz, Jose de Terreforte-Diaz, Jose R. Hennessey-Diaz, Jose Rodriguez-Diaz.

He's the grifter who has pretended to be a medical doctor from Argentina (He's actually Puerto Rican who never went to medical school) and worked at LGBT-serving organizations throughout the US. He has cheated people out of thousands along that.

One of DL's classic threads is about him:

I went to a top college and met many kids for extraordinarily wealthy families,

What's interesting is they NEVER talk about their wealth unless they are amongst each other.

So my spidey sense turns on whenever I hear some new acquaintance go on and on about how wealthy he and his family are and all the celebrities they know.

Some are so obsessed with status that they have to invent what they don't have,

Gay men do it alot (interestingly not so much nowadays as I recall from the past--perhaps as societal acceptance goes up, some feel less need to inflate their histories).

Ex-military always seem to have stories about how they personally and individually saved the world from total destruction.

Fat women do it too.

At a party a very cute gay guy was telling me about how he just sold his script to Hollywood. He described the story in detail. While smiling and nodding, I was totally rolling my eyes inside. I was so used to gays telling tall tales about their success.

A few years later I was watching a movie on cable with a story line just like the guy describe, and , coincidentally, there was an interview with the movie writer afterwards. It was him!!

It was true all along!!

The movie is Final Destination, which had a ton of sequels. He must be a rich MFer now,

The movie was

This is R118. He's the guy

Good grief, R113, Guest was a big racist! In this day and age, people with black skin aren't confined to stable work, but I suppose you could miss that if you were a real numbskull.

R120: And thought nothing of saying so to a reporter for the Washington Post as recently as 1993.

C.Z. Guest seems a much bigger fraud in that interview than her black acquaintance.

I did think she was superb in Twin Peaks, however.

He is hot, r118. Is he family?

Ex-pat communities are certainly a deep well of fraudulence. I also had a college professor fired mid-year for lack of credentials, but it sucked because he was actually good.

Hillary "Hilaria" Baldwin

R110 that post made me sad, too. A lot of adopted or orphaned kids make up stories (to tell themselves) about how their family is really rich and fantastic and will be reunited with them soon. That this fantasy spills out into telling other people is sort of pathetic.

R123, yes, gay

I agree, R110 and R126, it is sad, and I feel sorry for them, but they also victimize. I was just out a bunch of free dinners and my precious time (my fraud claimed she wanted to write a book with me, but was lazy and totally unproductive), but some people lose their hearts, money, trust in others, etc. I think social lying is normal (I can't because I have a dental appointment), but lying about who one is, has, knows, etc. creates chaos. I had a bad childhood and might enjoy spinning some wild background story that skipped the sad reality, but that would be so disrespectful to the listener. Daydream and tell yourself stories, but don't lay that trip on others.