Inside a Romance Scam with Nat Geo’s Mariana van Zeller

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

[00:00:04] Mariana van Zeller: So I decided, okay, I think there's an opportunity here to do a documentary where I can immerse myself as the victim, go undercover as the victim, and try to show to people how good these scammers are at what they do. How professional they are, how good the technology and the tactics, the strategies they use, and how any of us could become a victim.

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[00:00:32] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan. 

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[00:00:37] Bob: Mariana van Zeller has spent years going to some of the world's most dangerous places chasing interviews with some of the world's most dangerous criminals trying to get a grasp on black markets and fraud. The documentary journalist and host of National Geographic's Trafficked program, has a closet full of Emmy Awards to show for it. But for her latest project, she dives headfirst into a really dangerous place, online dating. 

[00:01:04] (clip) Mariana van Zeller: I don't actually know what it feels like to be on the inside of these scams. To be the target. What does it look like? What steps do they take? What do they do to try to gain your trust?  

[00:01:15] Bob: So Mariana goes to great lengths to learn what it feels like to be on the inside. You'll understand in a moment. Along the way, she immerses herself in the trail of tears that romance scam criminals create, all for a new NatGeo film called Super Scam Me. She's here today, and she's agreed to take us behind the scenes of the film, and also to pull back the curtain on the entire black and grey market economy, what is sometimes called “The Hidden Third.” Here's my conversation with Mariana. 

[00:01:48] Bob: Explain to perfect scam listeners what is meant by “The Hidden Third.”  

[00:01:53] Mariana van Zeller: So “The Hidden Third” is basically the estimated 30 to 35% of the global economy that are black and grey markets. It's what economists call The Hidden Third of the global economy. Most people don't know this, but these black and grey markets occupy a huge percentage of The Hidden Third of our economy, and they have an enormous impact in every single one of our lives. 

[00:02:15] Bob: So that, that's a shocking number. One-third of the money that flies around planet Earth has some connection to crime you're saying.  

[00:02:21] Mariana van Zeller: No, not crime. So those are purely black markets. We're also talking about grey markets. So it's unsanctioned goods. It can be something as simple as a man, people selling fruit on the side of the street. It's untaxed goods, but it's essentially by being untaxed, it's money that doesn't go to better schools and better hospitals and whatnot. So it's a huge chunk of the economy and it's a huge chunk of the economy that is not, that is either a black market but or a part of the economy that is really not, there's not enough education out there. There's not a lot, enough studying as to what, what it encompasses and what effects they have on our daily lives. And I think that's what I've devoted the past 20 years to try to attempt. 

[00:03:06] Bob: Now I'm listening, I have a regular job. I spend money in regular markets. I don't see any of this stuff. Why should I care?  

[00:03:12] Mariana van Zeller: Yeah, again, because you're impacted by this either because there's money that's untaxed and it's taken away from your wellbeing, but also because a lot of these black markets are actually operating all around us. I mean whether we're talking about drug trafficking; I mean you talk about the opioid crisis. We talk about scams as fraud and scamming is the fastest growing industry of our lifetimes. It's now surpassing drug trafficking. These are all corners of the economy that impact every single one of us. And I think it's important for us to be aware and to know that they're existent, to know exactly what motivates the people inside these black and grey markets. 

[00:03:49] Bob: And so, Mariana has spent decades reporting from crime hotbeds or around the globe getting access to dangerous criminals, often at great personal risk to her and her team. All because she believes that it's really important to understand criminals and their motivations, and the structures that enable their crimes. But everyone who watches her shows has one question on their mind. 

[00:04:12] Bob: Everyone who watches Trafficked or watches this film, or hears what you do, thinks immediately, how in heaven's name does she get these people to talk to her? And is it safe? But I've heard you, or read you say in other places that it's surprisingly, you think it might be an advantage that you're a woman. Can you talk about that? 

[00:04:29] Mariana van Zeller: Oh, absolutely. Being a woman I think is my superpower. I think that as women we're often underestimated, right? We're seen as less threatening. So I always say that I use sex bias, gender bias to my advantage, which is great. I also think that as women we have more empathy than men. We're capable of pla--, putting ourself in other people's shoes in a way, it's just easier for us I think, and that has really helped me in the work that I do. Very often when I approach people I tell them, look, I'm not here to judge you. I'm here with empathy. I'm here to really try to understand why you do what you do, and I think at the end of the day, apart from obviously people talk to us because of the ego, or because of impunity, but at the end of the day mostly I think people talk about with us because they want to be understood. It doesn't matter who you are in the world, it's a very common characteristic that we all share, that we want, yeah, we want to be understood.  

[00:05:25] Bob: And so recently, Mariana decided she wanted to take that empathy to another level.

[00:05:31] Mariana van Zeller: Bob, I spent the past 20 something years covering these black markets and gaining pretty unique access to everything from drug trafficking, sex trafficking, scams, pirates, all of it. And I always saw it, I was reporting it, about it from, as an outsider, right, from the outside. And particularly when it came to scams, one of the things that happened every time I came back, and I told these stories, was the response was always sort of focused on what the victim should have done differently, and how it would never happen to me, that's never what I would have done. And that really bothered me, because I think the focus should be on the people operating, the people of the actual, the, the scammers themselves. So I decided, okay, I think there's an opportunity here to do a documentary where I can immerse myself as the victim, go undercover as the victim, and try to show to people how good these scammers are at what they do. How professional they are, how good the technology and the tactics, the strategies they use, and how any of us could become a victim.  

[00:06:38] Bob: So Mariana sets a trap for the criminals. 

[00:06:42] Mariana van Zeller: So we created this fake persona called Mary Zell, and Mary Zell, who was divorced, kids in college, lives in Arizona, and we did a photoshoot, fake nose, and fake hair. We actually thought about putting my real face out there, but obviously if they did a reverse search image, they would find out who I was. So that's why we came up with this fake per--, person. 

[00:07:04] Bob: You created a persona that if someone looked around, they would have believed you were a real Mary Zell, because you have a living Instagram account and everything else. 

[00:07:11] Mariana van Zeller: Yeah.  

[00:07:12] Bob: Okay, so there's plenty of dark moments in the film, but I want to talk about a bright moment at least. When you do the makeover, you put on the fake nose, the hair, all that, and then there's the reveal where you stand in front of the mirror. What was that like? 

[00:07:23] Mariana van Zeller: (laughs) So it's funny, 'cause they kept telling me that I looked so different. 

[00:07:30] (clip) Oh my god. Whoa. So different. Look at you, Mary Zell, you sexy beast. Okay, let's do this. 

[00:07:42] Mariana van Zeller: And then I go in the mirror and I did look different. I mean I had a fake nose, fake hair. Your expression totally changes when you have a fake nose. But I could still, and I have these like big glasses on, but I could still see myself in it. So I was still, I was still thinking, oh boy, I mean we're going to go online and there is a chance that somebody will recognize me. But they didn't, and I started talking about it and showing people photos of Mary Zell vs. me, and I tell people, you are not allowed to say that Mary Zell is more good looking than me. (laugh) 

[00:08:14] Bob: (laughs) Well, no comment from here. 

[00:08:19] Bob: Mariana and her team carefully curate an online presence with real social media accounts, including photos of Mary in her garden, enjoying wine, buying antiques for her business. But finally they are ready to spring the trap.  

[00:08:35] Mariana van Zeller: We put this, this profile on social media and dating websites, and I kid you not, within minutes, I started getting messages on both, on social media and also on date--, dating websites. It didn't take that long. It was well under an hour, actually. It was crazy. 

[00:08:50] Bob: So that all took awhile, and then boom, within hours it's an embarrassment of riches for leads, right?  

[00:08:55] Mariana van Zeller: Yeah, it was not only romance scammers, but I also started being approached, and this was, I didn't know how these are all around. 

[00:09:04] Bob: All around us, and in fact, while making this film, Mariana herself almost became a victim.  

[00:09:12] Mariana van Zeller: Here I am, doing a documentary, wide open, eye--, as open-eyed as, as I could possibly be, very aware at scams, the scams around me and the tactics employed, and I almost, I actually, there was one moment that I almost got scammed. It was a bank. He was calling from my bank, Chase, it looked like a very legitimate call from my bank, and they were so good that I almost fell for a scam. And this, again, is somebody that's reported extensively on scams, I was actually filming a documentary about scams, and I almost fell for one. So again, it was one of those moments that really proved that this can happen to all of us. 

[00:09:49] Bob: So that's a remarkable part of the story. You're, I mean I do want to get to how confusing this must be as you're going back and forth between being the real you and the fake you, but somewhere along the line you get a call that is believable enough that it might be your real bank and they're going to ask you to move money or enter a pin or something, right? Is that, so what happened? 

[00:10:04] Mariana van Zeller: That's right. And Bob, yeah, and that, that actually didn't make it to the, to the actual documentary, so this is an exclusive, just for you. 

[00:10:11] Bob: Fortunately, Mariana doesn't respond to those criminals, but Mary Zell starts interacting with her online suitors right away.  

[00:10:20] Mariana van Zeller: I think the scope of the project started by being more, let's open up to all scams and I was just answering every single phone call that came my way, responding to every email, opening letters and...

[00:10:32] Bob: That sounds like it would take infinity, honestly, 'cause, 'cause... 

[00:10:34] Mariana van Zeller: Yeah, it did. It did take a long time. 

[00:10:38] Bob: There's a scene in the film where you're responding to texts and you mentioned, "My husband is in the other room, but yet here I am having this sort of flirtatious exchange with this person," and so I know there's no romantic element for that, of that for you, but there's still, even though you know it's an act, there's still is an excitement to getting these messages, right? I mean how much were you able to really put yourself in the shoes of the person looking forward to those communications?  

[00:11:04] Mariana van Zeller: So yeah, so I put my profile out there, and like I told you, I, immediately I started being contacted. Eventually it was hard to, to know who was a scammer and who was not. It turns out Mary Zell was extremely popular on dating websites, so there was some legitimate guys. A lot of youngers guys out there too, which I was very happy about. But, but eventually...

[00:11:27] Bob: That's a different episode.  

[00:11:27] Mariana van Zeller: Yeah, it's a different episode. But eventually I started having a rela--, serious relationship with one man. 

[00:11:36] Bob: There's a specific criminal, a man who claims to be a 4-star general named Mark, who Mariana and her crew decide to communicate with on a more in-depth basis. Remember, the goal is to meet and confront a criminal wherever they may be. More on that in a moment. But along the way Mariana encounters more than romance scams.  

[00:11:58] Mariana van Zeller: I, as Mary Zell, also started liking all these fan pages, fan accounts for people like George Clooney and Brad Pitt and all that. And I kid you not, within a couple of days I was talking to three George Clooneys, a couple of Brad Pitts, several Keanu Reeves. I mean my burner phone, I had a burner phone, it was ringing and messages nonstop. 

[00:12:21] Bob: And this encounter with celebrity scams, well that takes Mariana on a detour of sorts.  

[00:12:27] Mariana van Zeller: So in the process of filming all of this, I actually got contacted a woman called Leslie, who is down in Louisiana, and she said, "Hey, I watched your stories. I've been essentially communicating with a person that I believed was Jon Bon Jovi for about a year, and I'm in the process of almost losing my house because I've given so much money to this man, and I need your help." She needed my help in trying to figure out if this guy was a real guy or what was happening there. Here is a woman who has been a fan of Jon Bon Jovi all her life. She commented on what looked like a, one of those Instagram pages with a checkmark, looked completely legitimate, and then he started communicating with her. And if you hear her story and she showed me some of the messages and videos that he sent to her, many, this looks, it actually does look legitimate. I mean the messages looked like they were from Jon Bon Jovi saying, "Good morning, Leslie. How are you doing this morning? I've been thinking about you." And eventually he was doing these meet and greets, which is something celebrities do a lot, and all she needed to do to be able to actually meet him was to pay X amount of money, and then there was more money, and then there was more money, and then it all took to the point where she was about to lose her house, which is when she contacted me.

[00:13:44] Bob: So Mariana and the crew make plans to fly to Louisiana to meet Leslie and find out what's happening to her. We'll get back to how they helped Leslie investigate a little later. But in the meantime... things heat up with the general.  

[00:14:00] Mariana van Zeller: He was pretending to be a 4-star general stationed in Syria fighting against the terrorist groups. Very vague when I asked him actually concrete questions about location or what exactly they were fighting, or any details. I mean obviously, very vague, but he would always have an excuse for why he was vague, right? He's doing, well he's protecting the country. He's out there fighting terrorists, and there's only so much he can say. He was a, a former military guy, so he was using the profile of a military guy that actually exists; a man, an American man, a former Marine, and so this, my scammer was using his photos. And I started initially it was just text. So we were texting back and forth, and I would get, I mean dozens of texts a day. If I, it wouldn't go more than an hour without a text, and...

[00:14:48] Bob: You wouldn't go more than an hour without a text.  

[00:14:50] Mariana van Zeller: Without a text. Yeah.

[00:14:51] Bob: Wow.  

[00:14:53] Mariana van Zeller: And it starts by just like we want to know each other, right? So I am asking questions about him, he's asking about me. And then eventually it starts being romantic, right? I really think you're interesting, and you're beautiful, and then he'd send me lots of photos of him, a lot of bare-chested photos of him, and this was a guy. 

[00:15:11] Bob: And within a few days, the texts get more and more intense.  

[00:15:16] Mariana van Zeller: He started love-bombing me and it got to a point where he actually sent me a bouquet of red roses, quite a large bouquet of red roses. I come to the office, he'd asked for my address, and we were going, my team and I were going back and forth like, should I give the office address? Is there, because we know some of these groups are very dangerous, and I thought maybe that's not safe. But we decided, okay, let's to do it. Then immediately we regret it, we thought this is so stupid. Why did we just do this? But a few days later I get to the office and there it is, a big bunch of, lots of flowers, with a little note. I mean one of the sweetest notes I've ever gotten. 

[00:15:52] Bob: But by the way, I had an FBI agent once tell me that husbands could learn a lot from romance scammers in this regard. 

[00:15:59] Mariana van Zeller: Oh, you have no idea. If I was half as love-bombed by my husband as I was, by my 4-star general. (laughs) It's very true. I mean, he was, this guy would make sure that I was, at the end of the day that I was home and make sure you take a warm bath and put some salt in there and you deserve to be rested, and you work so hard. 

[00:16:23] Bob: One of them read, according to the movie, "Every moment with you feels like unwrapping a beautiful gift layer by layer, discovering the magic of who you are." 

[00:16:33] Mariana van Zeller: (laughs) It's so good, yeah. I mean I think 90, 90%, 99% of these were written by AI, by Chat GBT probably. But they are still, really, some of them were really good. 

[00:16:46] Bob: And then soon after the flowers, as Mariana keeps making her pitch, the criminal finally makes his.  

[00:16:53] Mariana van Zeller: And eventually I kept on insisting we have to have a phone call. I have to see your face. And this, this is actually how we got him, is that he said in order to be able to do a video call, he needed to upgrade his internet, and to upgrade his internet he needed $1000. And if I gave him $1000 he would pay me back because he was supposed to leave Syria and come back to the US and live with me forever, hap--, happy forever. 

[00:17:21] Bob: At this point, Mariana enlists the help of a white hat hacker named Arman, so they can set another trap for the general.  

[00:17:30] Mariana van Zeller: He came up with a, basically a website that looks exactly like a crypto ATM website, or a crypto website where you send like a Bitcoin website basically where you can go on this website and send crypto to whoever, all around the world. And, but it was a fake one. It was completely fake. But it looked so legitimate. Arman built it from scrap and it looks completely legitimate. So when I tell him, okay, I sent you the money. On his end, I send him a QR code. He clicks the link for the QR code, and it takes him to this fake website that looks legitimate, on his end it looks totally legitimate. So he, the first thing he needs to do in order to be given the $1000 that I supposedly sent him, is that he has to put in his name and address, and he has, also has to allow share location, and he did all of this. 

[00:18:21] Bob: When they use the fake crypto web page to track the general's location, they learn he's not in Syria.  

[00:18:28] Mariana van Zeller: Yeah, it turns out he was in Ghana, which is interesting because I have done, I did an episode of Trafficked about romance scammers, and we ended up filming with a bunch of scam--, romance scammers in Ghana as well. So it didn't entirely shock me. 

[00:18:43] Bob: So that's a big win, and win number two, since he thinks he has $1000, he now agrees to a video call. And Mariana learns a bit more about General Mark.  

[00:18:56] (clip) “Hello, can you hear me?.” "Mark, is that you?" "Yeah, it's me. How are you doing?" "I'm doing good. How are you?" "I’m so fine, I'm so happy to see you  to see your beautiful face. I miss you so much.” “Oh, I miss you too."

[00:19:18] Mariana van Zeller: And I was able to see his face, and it looks kind of like the face of the man that I'd been talking to, but only the mouth moved, nothing in the body, so that wasn't super professional. Quite frankly, there's a lot better AI out there now unfortunately. But you were able to see that this was just the mouth was moving, but he came up with all these excuses. The internet isn't great, and all that, and that was also a funny moment because he had a very different, he didn't have an American accent as I thought he would since he had told me he was born, he was born and raised in the US.  

[00:19:49] Bob: And then he said he was from Italy or something like that, right? 

[00:19:52] Mariana van Zeller: Yeah, he told me he was from Italy. And because I asked him, "Wait, your accent is not what I expected." He says, "Oh you know, I was born and raised in Italy." And I speak Italian, so I started speaking in Italian with him, and then he said, "Oh, no, and then we moved somewhere else, and then we moved this where, and my family traveled a lot." But that, that's the moment that we realized okay, we've got this guy. So eventually, I'm trying to sort of plan it all out. Okay, now I have this guy's location. The goal of the film was always to go and confront one of these scammers face-to-face.  

[00:20:23] Bob: She'll get the chance to take things to the next level when he asks for a much larger sum of money. 

[00:20:30] Mariana van Zeller: He starts saying, "We're coming up with a plan," and he starts saying that now he wants to come back to live with me, and also, all he needs is $10,000 in Bitcoin. And I told him I'm not going to send him more Bitcoin. At this point he's also mad, 'cause he's realized that he can't get the $1000 that I had sent him. And I said, "Look, the best way to do this since the $1000 disappeared, I don't know what's wrong with these crypto websites, I'm going to send you money in cash." And this was another sort of tactic on our end to try to figure out, okay, this guy is in Ghana, but if we're sending him money in cash, where is that going to end, end up, and who else is working with him. And so we waited awhile, and then eventually he said yes, and he sent us an address, and he made me do a whole film where I, you could see me packing, I think a box. He wanted me to stuff the money in a cookie box, $10,000 in a cookie box. We went and got all this fake money, and, and we did. We took all the photos, and then he said, only after we got this cookie box full of money would he give me the address.  

[00:21:34] Bob: So they stuff a cookie box full of fake cash, make the video, and when the criminal tells them where to send it, the clock starts ticking. 

[00:21:44] Mariana van Zeller: And we knew that as soon as gives us the address, we had essentially 24 hours to go to that address and get there before the box did, because he also wanted us to send him the tracking number, so he could track the box. And so finally he gives us the address, and it's a storage unit in Houston, and then we had 24 hours to get there before the box did. 

[00:22:07] Bob: They hop on a plane and race to Texas. It won't be the last time they jump on a plane. And they meet the person at the storage facility who is expecting their package. 

[00:22:17] Mariana van Zeller: I mean, yeah, a woman who'd been talking to a scammer for over three years, she had a relationship with him. She, supposedly he was an oil, an American oil worker living in Russia. But what she told us was shocking. I mean she's been receiving for the past three years, every single week, boxes of cash and checks, of thousands and thousands of dollars. She actually showed me her bank account, and you could see transactions of thousands and thousands of dollars, but then she was taking out of her account and transferring to Bitcoin and sending to this guy, to her scammer. And she had no idea she was being scammed. And that was a really difficult moment. I'd had to go meet this woman at her place of work at a storage facility where she works and tell her that I am so sorry. I'm not sure how to tell you this, but, but you've been scammed and you're in a, you've been talking to a scammer for three years. And she also broke down in tears, and that was a really hard moment.  

[00:23:14] Bob: You also had to tell her that she might be doing illegal, right? 

[00:23:18] Mariana van Zeller: Yes, and she was not aware. She kept on telling us that the reason he told her why she was receiving all this money, because he had this, this investment company in the United States, and he was receiving basically money from all these investors and these businesses, and the only way he had to get it back to Russia was basically through her bank account because he had some problems with his own bank account. If you look at this, if you hear their stories, it's not completely unbelievable, you know. There is a chance that this was happening. There is a chance, she showed me lots of photos of this guy. She showed me the voice messages that this guy had sent her, and I realize the voice was not the same. So the scammer was, they were working together, these scammers, but it wasn't my scammer. But it showed me that this was a network of men and each of them was sort of using whatever the other had that was benefitting them. And so he was, the scammer was charging a fee to use his money laundering victim from the States. And so my scammer was paying this guy a fee, I don't know what it was. He never told us, but to be able to receive this money and to get that money to Ghana where he was.  

[00:24:25] Bob: The woman who was receiving the money and passing it along, acting as a money mule, well she stops after Mariana explains what's really happening. 

[00:24:35] Mariana van Zeller: I continued talking to her for several months. I think the last message we had was two months ago, and yes, she has completely stopped all communication with him. But she's still too ashamed, embarrassed, doesn't want her family to know, and that's understandable. And her husband died a few years ago from cancer, she's very lonely, and she was you know the perfect victim.  

[00:24:58] Bob: But now that she's talked with the woman who was supposed to receive the box of cash and pass it along, ultimately to Ghana, well, that means Houston is the end of the line for the cookie box full of fake cash. So Mariana leaves the storage unit and decides it's time to come clean to her lover and confront him. The conversation does not go as expected. 

[00:25:22] Mariana van Zeller: Yeah, so I go back to my car, and he's expecting $10,000 to arrive at this location. And so he's checking the tracking number, and he's sending me messages, and the shipment was actually delayed a little bit, so he was getting worried, and eventually once I confront the woman, I get back in my car and he calls me, and I say, hey, by the way, the money isn't coming. There is no money. And I know your full name. I know your real name, and my name isn't Mariana van Zell--, my name isn't Mary Zell, my name's Mariana van Zeller, I'm an investigative journalist.  

[00:25:56] Bob: So it's confusing even for you still. 

[00:25:57] Mariana van Zeller: Yeah, it's still confusing. I really embodied Mary Zell. I took it very seriously. And he, initially, you'd think that he would say, oh no, and hang up. That's what I thought was going to be the reaction, but it wasn't. He kept on talking to me and telling me, I don't believe you. You are Mary Zell. I know you're Mary Zell. Why are you suspicious of me? Why are you saying these things? Our love is pure. We're going to live the rest of our life together.  

[00:26:24] Bob: He says I don't care what your name is. The important thing is I fell in love with you. So he's still telling you he loves you. 

[00:26:29] Mariana van Zeller: Yeah, he does, yeah.  

[00:26:30] (clip) I don't really care what your name is. The most important thing is that I fell in love with you, and I'm coming to meet you.

[00:26:38] Bob: Yeah, okay, so you eventually say, I don't know how to say this anymore clear; I'm not in love with you. I'm an investigative journalist, and you hang up and everybody thinks that's going to be the end of it, right? But then you decide to fly to Ghana and find him anyway.  

[00:26:50] Mariana van Zeller: Yes. 

[00:26:51] Bob: Mariana and her crew decide to jump on a plane again and they fly to Ghana to try to confront this man in person. Thanks to the information from the fake crypto page and her contacts on the ground in Ghana, she already has a good lead on who he really is and where he might be.  

[00:27:08] Mariana van Zeller: So as soon as I got this guy's name and address, I sent it to my friend in Ghana, the journalist there, and I asked him if he could look into this guy and he did. And he was actually able to connect with him before I even got to the country. And he was very shrewd. He was very good and eventually, initially obviously the guy did not want to meet with me in person, but my local journalist contact was really good at convincing him that it was in his, it was good for him, that he should meet with me in person. And we told him, look, if you meet us in person we won't show your face or your identity, but we really think it's important for you to share your story and for you to hear from my end what it was like, what I know about the victim side of this of what you're doing. 

[00:27:55] Bob: So they set up a shoot at a neutral location, a place where Mariana, Mary Zell, will meet the romance scammers face-to-face. They hope.  

[00:28:05] Mariana van Zeller: I mean we were so nervous that day, thinking maybe he's not going to show up and then, or maybe he's going to show up with a big group of people, and maybe this is a dangerous situation. You know we do a lot of training and we, and a lot of preparation to make sure we're minimizing the risk in situations like this, but you never know. And so he shows up at the door. He came alone. And at the beginning he continued denying it was him. He said he was just a crypto guy, that he was hired to try to get the crypto out of that Bitcoin safe platform, and that he wasn't my scammer. But of course, by this point I knew his voice when I had recorded all the conversations we'd had together. So I showed him the recording, and I confronted him, and I said, “I know it's you. And I know you're pretending you're not, but I know it's you.” 

[00:28:51] (clip) "Okay. Actually I'm the person you were talking to. The one pretending to be Mark Turner." "So the whole time it was you." "Yeah. My intention wasn't to scam you of your money because I'm living good. It's the relationship part that I was, I was most after."  

[00:29:17] Mariana van Zeller: And then he came up with a different excuse, and the excuse was that he had fallen madly in love with me, but as an African man, I would never fall in love with him, so he had to come up with this different persona, who was a fake American, military guy who wasn't really him. But obviously, that also was not true. And it was a lot more push back than I was expecting, and in the end I asked him, like do you, I told him, this is what victims, there are people who actually commit suicide because the things that you do. Is there anything you want to share with them? Is there anything you want to say to them? I gave him an opportunity to sort of apologize and have sort of a moment of atonement, and I think that was a really powerful moment. 

[00:29:59] Bob: In the end, the criminal never really breaks character, still maintains that he was, is really in love with Mary Zell. So they fly home with the interview, and a first-hand glimpse of just how relentless romance scam criminals can be. Meanwhile, Mariana and her team have used the same white hat hacker techniques they used to track the general to Ghana to identify the location Leslie's online friend, who was claiming to be Jon Bon Jovi. While Leslie had told Mariana she was pretty sure it wasn't the real Jon Bon Jovi on the other side of the keyboard, well this news is still hard for her to hear.  

[00:30:38] Bob: Until then she was still holding on a little of hope, wasn't she? 

[00:30:42] Mariana van Zeller: Oh absolutely. That reaction really surprised me. I mean we'd been talking; we spent the day with her. She was, in my mind, fully aware that this guy was a scammer impersonating Jon Bon Jovi. So I was expecting that when we found out exactly where he was, she would be sad, obviously, but also somewhat joyful to finally figure out where this guy was, and this would be the end of it. And, but she didn't. I mean she broke down in tears, and she explains it herself. It's, it's, there was a little hope. There was a little bit in my heart that was still hopeful that this was true, and what this would mean for her. It's not just the opportunity to meet Jon Bon Jovi. I think that's a very small amount, the percentage of what this actually would mean for her. What it would mean is that something exciting was happening in her life, right. That there was a reason why she wanted to wake up in the morning and she was communicating with this person all day. This person knew her intimately. This person, for the first time in many years, was somebody who was interested in her life, and she felt she was swept away by this guy, and she thought, okay, I have something special, some real human connection with this person. Whether he's a celebrity or not, it's a person that knows me deeply and who's interested in me and cares for me. And I think that's what happens with so many of these scam victims. At the end of the day it's more than anything what they're yearning for is connection. I mean she'd wake up every morning, being love-bombed by this person. She'd go around; she had a smile on her face all day. She knew that every time she'd get a message, her heart would be beat faster, and she'd be so happy. And when you have that, you then, it's hard to let go. Letting go means two things; it means the end of that dopamine, it means the end of that, those moments of joy in your life. But it almost means the acceptance that you have fallen for this. It makes you doubt your own skills and your own competence in a way. It's embarrassing, it's, yeah, you stop trusting yourself and trusting other people, and that's a really hard thing to do. 

[00:32:40] Bob: But Leslie does start to reclaim her life after meeting with Mariana. 

[00:32:45] Mariana van Zeller: I think what is so incredibly brave about Leslie is that even though she felt all of this, and she also felt shame, she decided it was more important to reach out and to raise awareness of what had happened to her, to be able to prevent this from happening to other women. And she said, I know she had a hard time telling her, she has two kids, two, a boy, a son and a daughter, and she was, she told me before she told them. And but she said, and I wanted to make sure that she was comfortable with doing this, because obviously this was going to be public, and she said, "Look, it's going to take me a little bit longer, but this just helps me to have courage to go and tell them. Because I do think as, as embarrassing as it is, as much as I know they're going to be mad at me, I do think this is important for other people to know that they're not alone, and that there are so many other people going through the exact same thing." 

[00:33:34] Bob: Leslie still spends time on celebrity social media, but with a different goal now. 

[00:33:40] Mariana van Zeller: She goes on all these celebrity so--, social media profiles, and she comments in every single, she sees a woman believing that, commenting as if she's believing this is the real George Clooney, or the real Jon Bon Jovi. She immediately writes back to every single one of these and explains this is a scammer, and this is why I know, and please be careful. And she's trying to prevent as many women as possible, or men, from falling, from going through what she went through. She's pretty incredible.  

[00:34:08] Bob: Also incredible, Mariana is able to share a really happy moment with Leslie before it's all over. 

[00:34:16] Mariana van Zeller: Leslie is an incredible human being. We've become quite close, and her long-life dream was to eventually be in the same space as Jon Bon Jovi. I mean she wasn't even asking. She wanted obviously to meet him. She wishes she would have had a romantic relationship with him, but mainly she just wanted to be in the same presence with him. She'd been listening to Jon Bon Jovi since she was a teenager. She had posters of him around her bedroom growing up, and, and she listens to her songs on repeat, and he had a huge impact. His songs had a huge impact on her life. It's what she listens to when she's sad and when she needs a pick me up and all that. And so at the end of the film, we found out that Jon Bon Jovi was playing, was having a bunch of concerts in New York, and so I called Leslie and I told her that I wanted to see if she wanted to go with me to the Jon Bon Jovi concert. And again, she had a reaction that I should have seen coming but didn't.  

[00:35:10] (clip) "So I wanted to ask you a question." "Yeah." "Do you want to go with me to the Jon Bon Jovi concert in New York in July?" (pause) "Are you serious?" "I am serious, yeah. Leslie, you're making me cry too." 

[00:35:36] Mariana van Zeller: And she started crying, and I started crying, and then we met. In New York she had brought her son, and we had an incredible night. I mean jumping up and down, cheers. For her it was the end of a journey, but at the end that happened with joy instead of with sadness, and all of her suffering, there was some meaning brought to everything that she went through and all the trauma she felt right at the end, and she has now become a sort of a scam fighter.  

[00:36:06] Bob: I have to say, as a Jersey kid, I'm a bit jealous I wasn't invited to see Bon Jovi with them, but okay, now that the fake nose is gone and Mary Zell is no longer on the dating websites, the real importance of a project like this is, what can we learn about criminals and how does that help us deal with the massive problem of international scams? For one, Mariana says she learned how well-trained these criminals are, and they're particularly well-equipped to overcome initial resistance, like an initial no, or hesitation. So no, her criminal didn't just hang up when told, I know you're a criminal, he still had angles to work. 

[00:36:45] Mariana van Zeller: But I have come to find out through all my investigations, is that with scamming there is a moment where you're tested as a scammer. And if you can pass over that, that initial suspicion, then you've got in their mind, the keys to the kingdom, right? If, if there's always going to be a moment of initial suspicion, and that's what I kept hearing from people and experts and other scammers that I spoke to that, when I called and I told him, hey, by the way, I know who you are. In his mind, he's like, I have too much to lose at this point. I've spent months investing, investing in this woman, and if she believes me, and if I can convince her that I am in fact, worthy of this relationship, then I have her full trust, and that, and then she can become my cash cow forever. And that's, yeah, I heard this a lot. And that's why they fight until the end, they really do to make you believe that they are not scamming, and that they're, in this case, really in love with you.  

[00:37:46] Bob: And I, I want to stress this point to people who are listening, because in my experience, they never break, which is a remarkable skill. And in fact, I've heard from victims where the criminal, the jujitsu is incredible. They'll say, okay, I am a criminal. At the beginning I was trying to scam you, but now I really love you and I need your help. 

[00:38:04] Mariana van Zeller: Yes. 

[00:38:05] Bob: Mariana is also interested in why people become criminals. There are a myriad of answers. 

[00:38:12] Mariana van Zeller: Yeah, in every story there's a different story, meaning look, I've spoken, I've spent a lot of time with these romance scammers, not as a victim, but as an investigative journalist. And there's some moments I will never forget, I, I will, ... one of the people we, I spoke to was for a season of Trafficked was a woman called Tweety in Jamaica. She wasn't a romance scammer actually; she was one of those lottery scammers. And her saying that she works a 9-5 job at a luxury resort in Montego Bay, and she made less in a full year than Americans come and spend in a week at the resort. And then her grandfather got very sick and he needed an operation, a surgery that cost $2500. And her family couldn't afford that surgery. She was the only one that worked full-time and she couldn't afford that surgery. So the grandfather died. And that's the day she decided to become a scammer.  

[00:39:02] Bob: Oh gosh.

[00:39:03] Mariana van Zeller: And you hear these stories, and obviously that, you do not condone what they do, but it's certainly important to understand their motivation. And I heard these stories from romance scammers in Ghana as well, before I went to do this, this story, and we were spending time with one of the heads of a romance scamming with him taking me to the slum where, to a slum similar to the one where he grew up. And him saying, "Look, the vast, 99% of the kids in the slum are going to live in the slum forever, and they have dreams and aspirations just like all of us do. And for me, the only way that I was able to pull myself out and give my family a better life, because there is no job opportunities in this country, because education sucks, because there's so much corruption, the only way that I could get out and pull my family out was through scamming. And I know it's not fair. I know what I'm doing to victims is awful, but I hope you at least understand why people do it on this, this side of the world." And these are stories that again, you do not condone, but you certainly try to understand why they do what they do, and I think that's really important, to understand. What empathy means is that you are able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes in a way that you can fully comprehend why somebody did what they did. If you are trying to actually prevent all the evil that exists in the world, any of these black markets, you have to fully listen and understand why people are doing this. And that is the only way to prevent from these horrible things that happen in the world from happening. It's the only way. So if you want to protect yourself, if you want to have a better life, if you want to have less crime out there, empathizing with other people, understanding their motivations, and then actually going after the root causes that cause these things, that's the only way that we'll get there. I think there's a misunderstanding about empathy versus condemnation or condoning, or accepting people, or excusing people's actions. I do not excuse people's actions, I do not condone it, I ask questions and challenge them vigorously in the reporting that I do. But I also do so with empathy and humanity, and I think that if you treat people humanely, with respect and dignity, generally they will treat you with respect and dignity back.  

[00:41:18] Bob: It's also really important to understand how quickly the threat landscape is changing. Even during the time it took to make this film, Mariana says the quality of AI video improved dramatically. 

[00:41:31] Mariana van Zeller: I think education the public is incredibly important, but I, what I think is that we have to, technology is moving fast. I mean particularly now with AI. It's moving very fast. So I think that it's more important than ever now to, for the public to stay informed and very up to speed with how fast this is moving. I mean if we're talking about generative AI for example, I mean I had, I could, even within the few months I, we spent about six months filming this film, making Super Scam Me, and from the beginning until the end, in that six months I could see the videos from the fake George Clooneys and Brad Pitts getting better and better. It went from somebody that was a shaky version that didn't actually very much look like George Clooney, and in six months, this actually looked like George Clooney was waking up in the morning and wanted to have, wanted to say good morning to Mary Zell. And it improved dramatically in just six months. And real--, I mean this, it's moving faster than ever. Yeah, I think look, with every fight out there, there is a multi-pronged strike. You have to do it; attack it from multiple fronts, right? Education is extremely important, but at the end of the day, I think it's really, I'll go back to this again, it's hard. It's like, no, you're not going to have any politician out there onstage talking about, we have to invest and put money into these communities and neighborhoods and developing countries in order to prevent crime. But that, you just want to say you're going to fight crime. You're going to be hard on crime, but at the end of the day what actually makes a difference is investment. Is giving people opportunities, jobs, actual education is removing corruption from these countries, having a strong justice system, and if you have a democracy and again, if education that works and job opportunities and an economy that works for you, then it's the best, I think it truly is the only way to fight crime. But it's, it's a long-term project, right?  

[00:43:31] Bob: Okay, last question. Since you've been doing this for so many years, you're a good person to ask. Are we winning or losing this fight right now? 

[00:43:39] Mariana van Zeller: Against scams or against crime in general? 

[00:43:41] Bob: Against scams. 

[00:43:43] Mariana van Zeller: Oh Bob, I hate that you asked that, because you know I am a very optimistic person and I always like to see the light, the glass half full, the light at the end of this tunnel, all the things, and so I'd like to say that we're winning obviously, but unfortunately that's just not the reality. I mean in romance scams alone there was a 38% increase in the money lost that by, from Americans between 2024 to 2025. I mean it's very clear to me that we're losing this war, unfortunately.  

 [00:44:15] Bob: It's losing ground, anyway that's what it feels like to me too. So as the technology speeds up. 

[00:44:20] Mariana van Zeller: Yeah.  

[00:44:22] Bob: For The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

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[00:44:47] 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.

(MUSIC OUTRO) 

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