A Pilot’s Stolen Identity Leaves a Trail of Broken Hearts, Part 2

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[00:00:01] Bob: This week on The Perfect Scam.

[00:00:04] Lisa Fletcher: It's about just being human and wanting companionship and wanting somebody to hear you and to love you." And that is the way in for these scammers. So that creates a pretty strong hold on a person's heart. And when I would talk to these victims independently and say, look, I just want you to understand the research we've done, how my reporting got to this point, and what we found out so you can protect yourself. I talked to an attorney, I talked to teachers, I talked to a PhD; these were all educated professionals, and there was resistance. There were a couple that said, "Oh no, Lisa, that can't be, that can't be true. My, my Pat is the real deal. I don't believe he would do that to me."

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[00:00:54] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan.

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[00:00:59] Bob: The gifts, the flowers, the cards, they just kept arriving at the home of Pat Marsh from lovers he doesn't know. That's where we left our story. This is part 2 of a two-part series, so please consider going back one episode now if you're just landing here. Pat Marsh's identity has been used for nearly a decade to facilitate romance scams. Maybe cards and flowers don't sound so menacing, but sometimes these lovers arrive at his home looking for the money they'd sent or looking for revenge. Even a TV news story by DC-based reporter Lisa Fletcher about Pat's plight doesn't seem to slow down the crime. Fast-forward 8 years, 8 years of this, and Detective Eric Gillespie from a small town in South Carolina begins investigating a crime in his town. A victim there had sent $600,000 to a man she thought she was dating. His name is Pat Marsh.

[00:02:01] Det. Eric Gillespie: Yep, so and through digging into everything and looking into everything, we, I quickly realized that particularly based on the setup and again, my, I've got a little bit of experience digging into this kind of stuff, so I knew that it was highly unlikely that she was going to be the only one, led me down the path to eventually finding Lisa Fletcher.

[00:02:25] Bob: Lisa Fletcher. We met her in episode 1. She's a Washington DC-based TV reporter who did a story on Pat's situation all the way back in 2017.

[00:02:36] Lisa Fletcher: I got a call from Detective Gillespie in South Carolina, and he said, "I'm working on a case about a man named Pat Marsh whose identity was stolen and is being used on dating websites." And he said, "I came across your series of reports online, and I think it's the same guy that we're talking about." So he and I did a couple of calls, compared notes, and it was a little bit of a surprise because I think couple of years had gone by, I thought that it had finally all died down. And then to get this call from a detective out of the blue saying I'm working on this, it was a sad surprise because obviously it said this scam had legs for 8 years and dozens of women were still being victimized. It was a little unusual talking to a police officer in that capacity. But it's also, it also made me feel pretty hopeful that something was finally going to be done.

[00:03:28] Bob: Then when Detective Gillespie talks to Lisa Fletcher, he realizes he's got a lot more work to do. A lot.

[00:03:37] Det. Eric Gillespie: I say hey, I need records for this Gmail account from X date to Y date. What they're going to give me back is I'm going to see every single email exchange during that time. So like for this particular instance we have somewhere north of 100,000 emails give or take.

[00:03:54] Bob: Oh my God.

[00:03:55] Det. Eric Gillespie: Um, just in, now a lot of that too is including, I'm sure you get spam emails.

[00:03:59] Bob: Sure, yeah.

[00:04:00] Det. Eric Gillespie: I get spam emails. Scammers do too. So...

[00:04:02] Bob: But so like you are personally picking through 100,000 emails?

[00:04:05] Det. Eric Gillespie: Yeah. So it, we do use a couple of, there, there's some software that makes some of that a little bit easier. But yeah, it's by and large it is a, uh, just you're looking for a needle in a stack of needles essentially.

[00:04:18] Bob: That there, I mean, there can't be. I mean there's no software, I mean you're still in the end looking through 100,000 emails to find a group of 100 messages, right, where someone says, hey, I think you're pretty. Why don't we start chatting, right?

[00:04:30] Det. Eric Gillespie: Right. I don't think triaging it is the correct word here, but it, you've got to...

[00:04:35] Bob: You prioritize.

[00:04:36] Det. Eric Gillespie: Right, you prioritize and you pick and choose your battles.

[00:04:38] Bob: Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Yeah, you're looking for terms like gift card or something probably, right?

[00:04:44] Det. Eric Gillespie: Usually not gift card in this particular instance it wasn't something like gift card. Uh, we, for this particular case, since I knew that it was all starting through dating websites, or what I found what that if you make a profile on eHarmony for example, you attach your email to that profile. What happens is when you connect or whatever they call it for their platform, with another user, eHarmony shoots you an email. They're going to let you know. So I would use, I kind of use those as my goal posts, I guess to, to mark where some certain communication started or maybe a name that I had to look for and that I can kind of whittle that down from there to identify individual communication across each.

[00:05:32] Bob: So just I, but I'm imagining we're talking about here, and I just want to make sure I'm not incorrect, is that you found one Gmail account that the fake Pat Marsh uses to register for dating sites, and you found 100,000 emails just from one fake email account, is that right?

[00:05:49] Det. Eric Gillespie: Yeah, that's, so it was spread across, for this particular one, it was spread across I think 3, 3 or 4 different email accounts.

[00:05:55] Bob: Yeah, I imagine it, it's Pat Marsh 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or something like that, right?

[00:05:58] Det. Eric Gillespie: Yeah, yeah, and it's just variations of that.

[00:06:01] Bob: One reason I'm drilling down on this, this is just one in your case, three email accounts and we all know how easy it is to set up email accounts so there could be hundreds of those, right?

[00:06:10] Det. Eric Gillespie: Oh yeah, easily.

[00:06:12] Bob: Combing through all those emails, Detective Gillespie finds a pile of victims.

[00:06:19] Det. Eric Gillespie: So a couple in South Carolina predominantly, outside of South Carolina that was, so we ended up with a pretty exhaustive list, so exhaustive that you really have to whittle down the timeframe that you're willing to absorb and to actually work and dig into because there is just, there's just that much to go on.

[00:06:39] Bob: It could go on to infinity, right?

[00:06:41] Det. Eric Gillespie: Right, right.

[00:06:43] Bob: Detective Gillespie painstakingly tries to reach out to all these victims he's uncovered. That's not easy.

[00:06:51] Det. Eric Gillespie: E--, especially a lot of times what happens with these and that communication aspect of it is so important to the degree that I make it a point, I don't want my, the first contact that I have with these victims to be over the phone. They're already in the midst of a, a situation where somebody is presenting themselves as a member of the government, some kind of authority, or somebody important, somebody who they're not ultimately. So just hearing some random voice on the other end of the telephone a lot of times I know is not going to convince somebody otherwise. So I will...

[00:07:24] Bob: Yeah, your first hurdle is for them to believe that you are who you say you are, right?

[00:07:27] Det. Eric Gillespie: Correct, yeah, so I will usually contact local law enforcement and wherever that area is to try and get them to make that first contact. And then provide them with, have them provide them my contact information, have them reach out and go that way with it. Usually a little bit more successful with that, but even then, it's, I have had some that just still refuse to believe.

[00:07:49] Bob: He finds dozens of people, around 60, who've sent money to the fake Pat Marsh.

[00:07:56] Det. Eric Gillespie: Yeah, that's a good ballpark. I think there's, I would call it plus or minus. I, at this point, I would say definitely on the minus side for a handful because they just, I, there are people that I've reached out to who I know are part of this, they're involved in it, they have sent money. They meet the demographic for the rest of the victims who are adamant that they're not victims, that they are, they're in love with it, whoever this person is and then that's that. They, and ultimately at the end of the day I can't force somebody to be a victim.

[00:08:32] Bob: And, and you've talked to, or at least communicated with women who are in the middle of this scam and you just can't persuade them it's a crime?

[00:08:40] Det. Eric Gillespie: Yeah, yeah.

[00:08:41] Bob: What does that feel like for you? That must be awful.

[00:08:43] Det. Eric Gillespie: It's, it's extremely frustrating. Yeah.

[00:08:46] Bob: Detective Gillespie can't give us a precise number because some of his victims, well they insist they're not victims. They're still in love with the fake Pat Marsh, and even a call from him doesn't persuade them.

[00:09:01] Bob: You believe those are 60'ish people who, who've sent money, but there, there must be hundreds, maybe even thousands of people who've connected with this person, right?

[00:09:09] Det. Eric Gillespie: Oh, absolutely, yeah. And the reality of it too is it gets a little bit easier to think about when you realize that most of the time the bad guys that are doing this, especially over this stretch of time, the fake Pat Marsh here is actually probably a dozen if not more people. It, it's just, and depending on where that scam is originating, it's going to depend on how they set that up. But you've got professional outfits in West Africa and Southeast Asia that you might have 100 people who are the same person more or less for lack of a better phrase. And who are, they're just cycling through. But yeah, as far as our digging into it, it is an extremely exhaustive search for what could be a substantial number of victims that we just don't know about. There's so many that go unreported, it's unreal.

[00:10:08] Bob: When Detective Gillespie reaches out to Pat Marsh, the real Pat Marsh, Pat's grateful someone is finally interested in his case, but it just confirms some of his worst fears.

[00:10:23] Pat Marsh: I was told by the guys down in South Carolina, the guy in South Carolina was working 61 cases. That told me there's thousands of victims just on my identity.

[00:10:32] Bob: Sure. That makes sense.

[00:10:34] Bob: And even when victims do cooperate, well it takes a long, long time to really investigate their situation.

[00:10:42] Det. Eric Gillespie: You're talking about every single victim is going to have financial records. Every single victim is going to have records associated with their communications, so if it's, Messenger, I've got to get records from Facebook, right. Similarly, if it's text messages, emails, so on and so forth, every single one of these companies, I've got to go to individually, provide them legal process in order to compel them to produce these records, which is a pretty, it's a time thing. There's a lot of time and work that has to go into that side of it to even get these records to start looking into what's going on.

[00:11:17] Bob: Yeah, ever--, every single bank subpoena's six weeks or something, right?

[00:11:21] Det. Eric Gillespie: Yeah, it varies bank to bank. A lot of the smaller banks are really good, they're just, if you have a small credit union that's only in three cities in the upstate of South Carolina, their turnaround for legal process is going to be maybe a week or two. If it's Wells Fargo, it's 6 months.

[00:11:40] Bob: God. You must be doing a lot of this on your own time, right?

[00:11:45] Det. Eric Gillespie: Yeah, some of it. Uh, much to the chagrin of my wife, yeah, I, see it's hard not to take some of it home. I, as the case has progressed, I've gotten a little bit better at that, but yeah, it, usually end up spending a little bit of time outside of the office digging into certain stuff just 'cause it's, when it comes to this kind of a thing, there's not enough hours in the day.

[00:12:09] Bob: He learns more about how the gang works.

[00:12:13] Det. Eric Gillespie: What we quickly realized was that we had, for every victim or I would say for every 5-ish victims, give or take, we had a different "iteration" of Patrick Marsh. And what I mean by that is I could see in emails, I can see where our bad guy email is getting another email, or he's getting an email communication from somebody who is associated with the scammers, and the email is a, it'll be a pdf that has, it's 20 pages and each page is a picture, an AI generated picture of a man that does not exist. And that subset of pictures is what you would find for that particular iteration of Patrick Marsh on that particular dating website.

[00:13:03] Bob: Interestingly, Pat told us that he didn't think they used his photos at all.

[00:13:06] Det. Eric Gillespie: No, I have yet to find one where they actually used Patrick Marsh's photos. It's all, most of them from what I could tell were either AI generated or they found good-looking white guys in their 60s on Facebook and just ripped their pictures directly from Facebook.

[00:13:24] Bob: So then why Pat? Do you know?

[00:1:27] Det. Eric Gillespie: I genuinely don't. And then I told him the same thing. My, I say that. I had, my hunch is that Pat is, his background I think leaves a lot open for interpretation for victims. And what I mean by that is the real Pat Marsh is, if you go online and you google him, even if you're looking at him on the scam webs--, or on the, Lisa Fletcher's news story, well you watch a video of the real Pat Marsh, and he's flying a plane and doing flips in a plane. The dude's awesome, right. So it's not a super far stretch for them to take that and go, he's a pilot, maybe he does work for the government. Or maybe he, X, does X, Y, and Z. I think there was a degree of that in that his, some of his background I think left a lot of room for interpretation for victims, and then in addition to it, that he, at least sometime prior to about 2015, his, all of his information was stolen. And, and I told him the same exact thing. His, whether it was a data breach, whether it was, however it started, all of his information was stolen, and I think once it started working, they just stuck with it and didn't want to, and didn't, haven't let it go. Um...

[00:14:57] Bob: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[00:14:59] Det. Eric Gillespie: Exactly. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[00:15:00] Bob: Certainly for Pat and for dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands of victims, something is still very broken. And so 8 years later, Lisa Fletcher airs another story about the Pat Marsh scam.

[00:15:14] Lisa Fletcher: Yeah, we did. We did a story with Detective Gillespie saying, we first brought this to you in 2018, it's still going on. There's dozens of other women that are being scammed now in South Carolina and beyond. And there's this one lone detective trying to figure it out, and we featured him in the piece. And I think we circled back with Pat at the same time to see if he was still getting as much of the gifts in the mail and the cards. And he was. It didn't seem to have let up that much.

[00:15:43] Bob: In fact...

[00:15:47] Lisa Fletcher: We had more people reaching out to us. It's interesting, sometimes family members will reach out to us too. I remember I had one guy reach out to me and say, "I think this is happening to my mom. And I've tried to talk to her about it and she doesn't believe me."

[00:16:01] Bob: Lisa follows up with as many victims as she can.

[00:16:05] Lisa Fletcher: These weren't gullible people, right? And I think that's an important point that these victims aren't gullible. The scammers just use emotional vulnerability as the entry point, right.

[00:16:16] Bob: Yeah.

[00:16:16] Lisa Fletcher: So intelligence doesn't have anything to do this. And one of the FBI agents told me this. He said, "This isn't about intelligence. It's about need-driven behavior, right. It's about just being human and wanting companionship and wanting somebody to hear you and to love you." And that is the way in for these scammers. So that creates a pretty strong hold on a person's heart. And when I would talk to these victims independently and say, look, I just want you to understand the research we've done, how my reporting got to this point, and what we found out so you can protect yourself. I talked to an attorney, I talked to teachers, I talked to a PhD; these were all educated professionals, and there was resistance. There were a couple that said, "Oh no, Lisa, that can't be, that can't be true. My, my Pat is the real deal. I don't believe he would do that to me."

[00:17:08] Bob: So you talked to women who were still in the middle of the scam.

[00:17:11] Lisa Fletcher: Yeah.

[00:17:12] Bob: Wow.

[00:17:12] Lisa Fletcher: And they just, they didn't believe that this, that somebody could be scamming them.

[00:17:17] Bob: Could we talk about that a little bit, because I think that's a really powerful thing that you know somebody who's still, we call it sometimes under the ether here, but you're a national correspondent who finds them and yet you weren't able, you hung up the phone and they still didn't believe you.

[00:17:30] Lisa Fletcher: Yeah. And it's, it just, it really does a number on their head because the scammer starts with their heart, right, and they all, these scammers, they call do the same thing, right? They manipulate in a very predictable manner, so there is rapid emotional intimacy with these victims, and these are oftentimes, they're typically women, they're older, they're retired, they may have lost their spouse so that is a really huge thing to have that emotional intimacy again. And then these scammers will communicate with them multiple times a day. Some of the women I talked to would share text messages. It would be dozens of text messages sometimes in one day, and they would do the, the very lovey, dovey good morning, and good night routines, and talk about their future together, and it just, it would escalate. And so these women, now they, this person has this emotional hold on them. They're feeling loved and needed, and for them to have to admit to some reporter on the phone that they have never met that they might have made a mistake? that is, that is hugely embarrassing. And it creates a lot of shame and that's exactly what these scammers are counting on, that they're going to shame you into silence. And you're going to, that the victims are going to protect them because really, they're having to protect their integrity to their friends and their family.

[00:18:56] Bob: You go from thinking you have a future with someone to so first of all it's as bad as a breakup, and then you have to realize the ram--, ramifications to your financial situation are often completely horrifying. And so it makes sense that people resist that scary moment, right?

[00:19:13] Lisa Fletcher: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely because think about the stigma that they're thinking about is going to be attached to them after they admit that they have been manipulated by a criminal. They shouldn't feel the least bit guilty. They have been victimized. But because of the way the scammer approached them and manipulated them, they're embarrassed. They want to keep silent because of it.

[00:19:37] Bob: Romance scams are, sadly, very common. But the use of one victim's identity as the main character in such a scam for years and years? Well that really set this story apart.

[00:19:53] Lisa Fletcher: Yeah, I think it ebbs and flows and I'm not really sure why. One thing that the FBI and other experts have told us was the Pat Marsh identity scam has stuck around for so long because it works.

[00:20:06] Bob: Sure.

[00:20:06] Lisa Fletcher: And it has so many real, authentic components to it, that's what makes it believable. So that's what makes it successful for criminals. So it's not surprising that it ebbs and flows, because obviously this is one that's worked for the criminals for a really long time. You think about Pat, right, you think about just his profession and his biography and his photos and his hobbies and his personal traits, it's all perfect and that perfection is what made the scam so effective.

[00:20:36] Bob: And it would be even more effective if not for the real Pat's willingness to engage with the victims and try to persuade them to break off the fake relationships.

[00:20:46] Lisa Fletcher: Much of it is to Pat's credit. With him taking the time to contact these victims, to send the letters explaining in very specific detail everything about this scam, I think Pat has probably saved more women from losing their life savings than he has any idea.

[00:21:04] Bob: Hmm, that's really interesting. You know he is, he is rough around the edges, but it's obvious to me he could just be ignoring all this, but instead he's actually making the effort, which I find really impressive.

[00:21:12] Lisa Fletcher: Well that was one of the things that struck me initially, even on the phone he came off that way. He's this tough guy, a fighter pilot, ugh, and then he starts talking about these women, and you could just, you could actually hear him soften, and I could even see it in person when I sat down at the dining room table with him amidst all of these cards and letters and gifts. He felt terrible. He felt really terrible. It was just, it was an interesting position for him to be in to be the person trying to alert these women to the scam when he too was a victim.

[00:21:48] Bob: Yeah, he didn't sign up for that.

[00:21:50] Lisa Fletcher: No.

[00:21:51] Bob: He's not a public servant of some kind, yeah.

[00:21:53] Lisa Fletcher: No.

[00:21:55] Bob: Meanwhile, Pat the victim, Pat the public servant, well he's also learned a lot about how these criminals operate. Remember, Pat has a form letter he uses to reach out to victims. Sometimes he gets to them just in time.

[00:22:12] Pat Marsh: One of the women that we saved, she's getting ready to wire the money. She talked to me and I told her, stop what you're doing. It's not real. But even after that, they wouldn't leave her alone. No, that Pat Marsh is full of crap. He's a liar. I'm the real Pat Marsh. We have a love affair, I love you, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. And they would not leave her alone. They just, and all day long, every day ...

[00:22:38] Bob: Oh man.

[00:22:38] Pat Marsh: They just wouldn't leave her alone. And that was probably the computer algorithm doing that. But I was told that one of the victims had over 50,000 texts from her imaginary boyfriend.

[00:22:51] Bob: Ugh.

[00:22:51] Pat Marsh: And the FBI mentioned this as behavior basis. Once they get their hooks into somebody, and they start getting a response, then I guess they turn on some kind of algorithm that keeps sending text messages through the computer to them all day long. So that I guess it gets to the point where they're not even texting to a real person. The computer's doing it, and you know making sure that every 10 minutes it texts them all, "I love you" "I can't wait for us to meet." "I've been waiting for this," and they say that basically it's behavior based so the computer program knows exactly what to text them, when to, and how to follow it up to just dig the hooks in deeper. How do you get 50,000 texts? I don't think I've gotten that from everybody in my life.

[00:23:39] Bob: And also, you're sleep deprived at the end of all this, right/

[00:23:42] Pat Marsh: Yeah, they're doing it 24 hours.

[00:23:44] Bob: Between all the news stories, the police investigations, Pat is hoping potential victims might finally be warned off dating the fake Pat Marsh.

[00:23:54] Pat Marsh: And so these women that are on these dating websites, if they google my name now through Chat GPT, Grok or whatever, that's going to come up too. So maybe that's starting to mitigate it some.

[00:24:08] Bob: I sure hope so, but man, that, that seems like that would have started to happen years ago, so I, I...

[00:24:13] Pat Marsh: I, I would agree, but...

[00:24:15] Bob: Yeah, no. I, it's very, all very unnerving. It, do, do you, does this affect your social life in any way?

[00:24:21] Pat Marsh: I don't really date anymore.

[00:24:24] Bob: I don't think you can blame Pat for feeling very, very frustrated by all this. You can probably hear the heavy dose of cynicism in his voice.

[00:24:34] Bob: Now I'm trying to just get at the fact that you're in this weird, helpless situation where obviously your life is degraded, but you're not the victim of a "crime."

[00:24:41] Pat Marsh: Yeah, exactly.

[00:24:43] Bob: So the police just tell, so do, did you try to go to the police?

[00:24:46] Pat Marsh: Yeah, I talked to the police. In fact I've talked to attorneys and all those dating websites, who, by the way, there's 30 or 40 of them, but they're all owned by the same group of people. And we contacted them and say, they're using my identity to scam all these women, and you guys need to exercise due diligence and screen your users. They ignored us. It's a free-for-all.

[00:25:12] Bob: And, and has anyone ever responded to you from these companies?

[00:25:15] Pat Marsh: No.

[00:25:16] Bob: Wow.

[00:25:16] Pat Marsh: No. Not even then, I figured they would ignore me, but I was surprised they ignored Lisa Fletcher.

[00:25:21] Bob: Yeah.

[00:25:21] Pat Marsh: I was surprised.

[00:25:22] Bob: Where do things stand today? Are you getting these calls even as I interview you?

[00:25:27] Pat Marsh: It's been quiet for the last two months.

[00:25:30] Bob: Oh great. Okay, that's good.

[00:25:32] Pat Marsh: But there again, and maybe that's because now when you google me, it's Google response is warning you that, that I'm being used for romance scams.

[00:25:42] Bob: Well what is it you want people to learn from hearing your story?

[00:25:47] Pat Marsh: Stop dating people online.

[00:25:49] Bob: Fair enough, yeah. (chuckle)

[00:25:52] Pat Marsh: Go out there and socialize face-to-face. Even then you can get caught up with the wrong person, but at least you met them face-to-face. I don't know if I'm even qualified to voice on that because I guess plenty of people have met their boyfriends or their husbands or their spouses online, and they're happy with them. So you know, I'm jaded, I'm tainted on it. I'm more of a meet somebody in person type.

[00:26:20] Bob: But certainly I think someone hearing your story is going to be new--, newly skeptical of somebody that they meet online, and that's what we want, right? We want people to know that this is happening.

[00:26:29] Pat Marsh: I would say it's easy. The number one rule, anybody asks you for anything online, money, anything, then just disconnect. You just, nobody should be asking a stranger for money or whatever. Pay my electric bill. I couldn't pay it because I lost my job. Pay my car bill. Send me some money. As soon as that comes up, people should say, okay, goodbye and block them.

[00:26:56] Bob: You don't get many stories that carry on for 8 years. It's given Lisa Fletcher a lot of perspective on these kinds of crimes.

[00:27:05] Bob: Okay, so what do you hope that people learn listening to this story?

[00:27:12] Lisa Fletcher: I think my number one hope, and because we know, and I keep saying women, but we know that women are the primary victims. I hope that women feel empowered listening to this. I don't want them to feel shame. I don't want them to feel guilt. I don't want them to feel stupid because they are none of those things. They were manipulated with a very exacting method that criminals know works. And if they have any sense that they're seeing any of the warning signs, they need to come to a full stop and reassess, and talk to your kids, talk to your friends, talk to a local police officer, talk to someone at AARP. You guys have amazing resources for things like this. But I want women to be aware of the warning signs. These rapid declarations of love, these the, the reluctance on the part of these men to meet in person. Their elaborate travel, their elaborate work excuses. They have a big need for secrecy. They have repeated emergencies that will get in the way of meeting or a Zoom or something like that. They make requests for a lot of things, for wire transfers, for gift cards. So just I really want women to be aware of the warning signs. Don't be afraid to come forward, don't be afraid to speak up, and do not feel shame or guilt about this. In fact, the more women that come forward, the easier it's going to be for police detectives like Gillespie to do something about it and to actually get their hands on these criminals.

[00:28:49] Bob: It's such an important message. We talk about this all the time. The shame is the criminal's most important tool.

[00:28:55] Lisa Fletcher: Yes. Yeah, they are counting on women feeling shame. And something else and this may be better for a part of your conversation with Detective Gillespie, but we're talking about organized crime here. We're not talking about a one-off where some person is sitting around trying to scam a woman. These aren't isolated individuals, and that was one of the biggest things we learned with doing these stories. These are criminal enterprises. They're often overseas, they use scripts, they have teams of people. Sometimes they have multiple people posing as one romantic partner. So this is very organized, very intentional, very methodical.

[00:29:36] Bob: And there's something very different about this Pat Marsh story. It's very important, and that's why we're bringing it to you, why we're spending two episodes on it. Remember, Pat doesn't date online. He has nothing to do with it. Nothing to do with this crime at all. And yet, he's a victim in a very real, tragic, and ongoing way. That's why we all have to care about digital crime because it really can impact anyone.

[00:30:04] Lisa Fletcher: Oh, absolutely. And this sort of internet crime identity theft creates real world dangers for people, and in this case, particularly Pat, right? Because Pat became the investigator on this case, he was a counselor to these women. He acted as their warning system. In many ways he became this unofficial victim advocate spending years writing these letters to these women. And I remember sitting across the table when he was talking about that and thinking there's something deeply tragic about him trying to rescue strangers from someone pretending to be him.

[00:30:41] Bob: Yeah, deeply tragic is the word for it, and it's not like he can go to the police station and fill out a police report because we can't really identify a crime that he's a victim of.

[00:30:51] Lisa Fletcher: No, but I'm telling you, when there's somebody at 2 in the morning banging on your front door threatening you, and he's on the other side of that door, I, that's got to be terrifying.

[00:30:59] Bob: It's got to be just awful. So hopefully he'll, he'll have some answers soon enough. But even, it's even hard to picture what would close the door on this for Pat, because let's magically say they arrest someone, as you talked about there's a team behind this, right? So other people are going to use his identity still, right?

[00:31:17] Lisa Fletcher: Yeah, I'm not sure how you unwind this because it's, once it's out there, it's out there.

[00:31:22] Bob: Yeah.

[00:31:23] Bob: And it's realistic to think the flowers will never stop.

[00:31:29] Lisa Fletcher: I think perhaps the dating sites have some ability to remove these profiles. Perhaps that's the only way that Pat would ever be freed of this. Is it his identity was taken down if it was removed from these dating sites? But I think there also has to be then policing by the dating sites as well, right, just because they take them down, they also would have to act in some sort of prevention capacity to keep them from being reposted.

[00:31:59] Bob: It sounds like you, you don't really think they're doing enough.

[00:32:02] Lisa Fletcher: I just have a little trouble understanding how these sites can be notified of these horrendous crimes against their customers. They have victims identifying themselves and saying, please do something about this, begging them to do something about it because it's a devastating, or has devastated their life. And these victims tell me and including Pat, they get nothing but a shrug of the shoulders if they even get that.

[00:32:30] Bob: That must be so frustrating.

[00:32:34] Lisa Fletcher: Yeah. It's got to be very, I can't even think of the word. I think it's beyond frustrating, right. It's, it's so deflating. It's like they're what, you want to do something to fix it and you can't. You're just basically being told this is the way it is so the rest of your life you're going to have to field all of these, all of this contact from women who think they're in love with you and you ultimately, they think that you've ultimately ended up scamming them. Or these women, they continue losing their life savings.

[00:33:02] Bob: Yeah, the cards are flowers are never going to stop, it's crazy.

[00:33:05] Lisa Fletcher: No, the cards, the flowers, the balloons, the gifts, those are never going to stop. But again, when it escalates and it has, and these women are showing up in his driveway or their family members are showing up on his front doorstep, that's a much bigger problem.

[00:33:21] Bob: And it's not hard to conclude what's happening to Pat is probably a much bigger problem than we realize.

[00:33:31] Lisa Fletcher: It always pains me to think about the thousands, if not tens of thousands of victims out there that we don't know about. I'm grateful for the ones who've come forward, and I hope others continue to do that because I think that's the only way that we're really going to get our arms around this.

[00:33:43] Bob: And there must be more Pat Marshes too, right? Who don't know, yeah.

[00:33:47] Lisa Fletcher: There's got to be more Pat Marshes who have no clue that this is happening.

[00:33:52] Bob: You might remember that this episode began with a woman, a single victim, in South Carolina and a detective who wouldn't let go of the case.

[00:34:01] Bob: The initial $600,000 victim, how is she today?

[00:34:05] Det. Eric Gillespie: She's getting there. She's still not, pro--, probably not back where she needs to be mentally, because it is, it's a, when you go into this and you tell a victim, hey, you've been scammed. This person that you think that you have been communicating with and that you have built this relationship with, and that you have sent X number, number of dollars to, doesn't exist. They do exist, but not in the way that you think they do. It has a way of turning somebody's life upside down, and that was absolutely the case with the victim here. But yeah, slow--, slowly but surely, she's getting where she needs to be, but even then, there's only so much that, I'm only good for helping somebody on the criminal side. I can't, the reality of it is for a lot of these victims, you still took out loans to do this. You played with house money that was sent overseas and the reality of it is the bank's still going to want that money. They're not going to walk away from hundreds of thousands of dollars. And there's not really a good way to unravel that on the back end. At least not here that I'm aware of.

[00:35:16] Bob: And you haven't been able to recover any of her stolen money yet, right?

[00:35:20] Det. Eric Gillespie: No, so for her, there have been seizures, a portion of which was return to her.

[00:35:28] Bob: Okay, great.

[00:35:30] Bob: At least she got something back. Many Pat Marsh victims have nothing, and some, well some even turned to the dark side. That really demonstrates the ripple effect that the theft of one person's identity can have.

[00:35:45] Det. Eric Gillespie: Unfortunately too, what we run into, especially with romance scams and uncooperative victims, is what they will do to get this money out of the United States is, they'll use these victims to essentially create a mini-term money laundering network.

[00:36:01] Bob: Oh, sure.

[00:36:02] Det. Eric Gillespie: So you've got victims sending money to other victims, sending money to other victims, sending money to other victims, and then this one person who is the off-ramp, who's going to send that out through whatever means that they're getting that, they'll open up a Coinbase account or something and fund the money with other victim funds and then send it out as crypto. It's one of the harder things to do is when you run into these victims is ensuring that they understand that there's a certain point if you're involved in that. There's a certain point where yes, you were a victim, I'm telling you what you're doing is criminal. And should you continue to do so, that would, in turn, make you a criminal, right.

[00:36:46] Bob: Sure.

[00:36:46] Det. Eric Gillespie: And, and it's hard, that is a hard balance to find. More, I would say more often than not, most victims when you, when we come to them, we're like, hey, like this is going to get super real, super quick unless we stop this activity. Most victims are cooperative as, as far as that goes. But a lot of the times that's what it takes is them seeing, oh, like I could go to jail for this. Like if this is a real person that I'm doing all this for who's my boyfriend or girlfriend or whoever it is, they wouldn't want me to go to jail over anything. Why would I do this?

[00:37:22] Bob: But that's what it takes to snap them out of it.

[00:37:24] Det. Eric Gillespie: Yeah. Sometimes it does. It's, it is very difficult.

[00:37:28] Bob: So where does this investigation into these 60-odd Pat Marsh crimes that he knows about? Where does that stand today?

[00:37:37] Det. Eric Gillespie: It's uh kind of a, a crossroads right now. There's certain aspects of it because it is active, certain aspects of it and details of it that I can't, I'm not at liberty to, to talk about unfortunately.

[00:37:48] Bob: Sure, sure, yeah.

[00:37:49] Det. Eric Gillespie: But uh it's, it is still being worked, it is still being investigated. A lot of these things, especially when we're, we get to a point where we're, we are looking at people who are overseas that are doing this. Our, even though it's, yeah, we're local law enforcement, whatever, we do have some mobility to reach out and, and touch somebody if need be. But it's, there are certain things, certain hurdles that we run into where it, depending on the local laws of whatever that country is that we're reaching out to, they may not have any kind of unilateral agreement with the United States government as far as information sharing or law enforcement assistance, so on and so forth. So there, there are certain black boxes that we run into and those are, there's a good bit of them depending on the area of the world that you run into, but so there are certainly hurdles that I won't say they're impossible to get around, but they are extremely time consuming to have to get around. And these, the reality of it, unfortunately, is that just in the same way that this scam has been going on for as long as it has, a lot of times it takes years for us to get through some of these hurdles and jump through some of these hoops to be able to get what we need.

[00:39:04] Bob: Now we're talking about international diplomacy, right?

[00:39:06] Det. Eric Gillespie: Yeah, you get into a total--, a whole different landscape there on, on the geopolitical side of things.

[00:39:13] Bob: Well that must be really frustrating.

[00:39:15] Det. Eric Gillespie: Yeah, yeah, it, it's definitely one of those where we um, to a certain degree, we're kind of uh, at the whim of you know the geopolitical landscape at that point in time to be able to get certain information or take certain action, even as far as seizures, because there are countries out there that are, like I said, effectively black boxes that cannot be, there is just no relationship there between the United States government and that government. So...

[00:39:42] Bob: And this might be the most frustrating part of all. As Detective Gillespie has described, there isn't one fake Pat Marsh, or even 10. There's a small army of people working this crime. And that makes it really hard to even imagine what justice would look like.

[00:40:00] Det. Eric Gillespie: Yeah, the, the reality of it unfortunately is that I think the easiest way to think about it is when the automobile was first made. Henry Ford does his thing and he makes a, his first Model T or whatever it was. He gets the bright idea and he's, you know what, I'm going to make a factory and we're going to, we're going to mass produce these because we're going to do this whole, whatchacallit, like assembly line production, and innovate in that way, and we're going to be able to push these out to everywhere across the United States. Super great concept. The reality that we're running into today is that scammers are doing the same thing. They have more or less industrialized white-collar crime. And it is, to the degree that we've got billions of dollars that are laundered every single day through, through stolen schemes, or through identity fraud schemes, through investment schemes, through you name it, romance scams, business email compromise scams, or attacks rather, ransomware attacks, you name it. The reality of it is that these operations don't work with just one guy. It, it takes dozens if not hundreds of people across the world to get the wheels of that machine turning. Ultimately there's as far as to answer your question on justice, what that looks like, for something like this, it's, I don't think there's a good answer for it. Unless we somehow figure out a way to stop money laundering overnight globally. That would probably be justice, but short of that it's, I don't know that it is entirely possible.

[00:41:35] Bob: One point that Detective Gillespie wanted to leave our listeners with is, how much romance scam criminals work at finding the vulnerabilities in their victims.

[00:41:46] Det. Eric Gillespie: Especially as far as this particular case was concerned, as far as commonalities, there's a reason that most of the dating websites that Patrick Marsh, this whatever iteration of Patrick Marsh was found on, their user base was predominantly elderly. They were over the age of 65. There's a reason that most of those were predominantly women. And insofar as the commonalities are concerned for this particular instance, I, because there were a couple of men, so they were branching out at a certain point, but it's, it's one of those where there are, they're absolutely targeting seniors, they're absolutely targeting people who, and I guess as far as the emails go specifically, one of the things I saw communication-wise was that it felt a lot of like they were trying almost to, they were trying to find that person's crutch, or their, what do I have to go on for this particular individual that I can feed on. For an elderly woman, that might look like I lost my husband four years ago. Okay, so now I know that I, that's what I'm going to feed on, right. And they're going to, there's going to be sections of that communication that is based around, I'm sure that Jerry would want this for you and it...

[00:43:16] Bob: Oh God.

[00:43:17] Det. Eric Gillespie: Oh, it's terrible. Yeah, it's awful. But that is what they do.

[00:43:20] Bob: They're probing for vulnerabilities and then they find one and they seize...

[00:43:23] Det. Eric Gillespie: Yeah, absolutely. If they, and as soon as they have a thread to, to grab onto, they are not going to let go.

[00:43:30] Bob: And it seems criminals are never going to let go of Pat Marsh.

[00:43:36] Bob: What's remarkable and very depressing about this story, frankly, is it's, there's no way to imagine an ending for Pat. It's not as if, if you were to arrest people using his name for example, I'm sure his name is being used by teams of people in all sorts of places. So he can't really put that genie back in the bottle, can he?

[00:43:54] Det. Eric Gillespie: No, no, there's no walking that back. Once that information is out there, it's out there. Again, once that genie is out of the bottle, you, there's no walking that back. You, from that point forward, you're, the rest of your existence is essentially moderating and playing damage control, which is...

[00:44:13] Bob: He's going to be getting cards and flowers till the day he dies probably. That's crazy.

[00:44:17] Det. Eric Gillespie: Potentially, yeah. I, and again, that's, that is the conversation that we've had. It's not a great conversation to have with somebody. I would want to be able to tell them, hey, I'm going to fix everything. I'm going to make all your problems go away. But the reality of it is that until it stops making them money, they're not going to stop using that bank, they're not going to stop using your information to generate, because it's generating income. So there's a lot of incentive on the bad guy's side to keep that, keep that gravy train going as long as they can. But yeah, unfortunately there's not a, we don't have an off switch to, to just turn that off at any point in time and make that identity null and void. I wish we did, but...

[00:45:00] Bob: We don't have an off switch, and that's why all of us need to be vigilant. Even if you've never directly encountered an online criminal, you can still be a victim. For The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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[00:45:26] Bob: If you have been targeted by a scam or fraud, you're not alone. Call the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360. Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next. Our email address at The Perfect Scam is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org, and we want to hear from you. If you've been the victim of a scam or you know someone who has, and you'd like us to tell their story, write to us. That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org. Thank you to our team of scambusters; Associate Producer, Annalea Embree; Researcher, Becky Dodson; Executive Producer, Julie Getz; and our Audio Engineer and Sound Designer, Julio Gonzalez. Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For AARP's The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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