Fake Relationship Stories

The birthday card that outlived him

In this episode, we follow the timeline from James's quiet life after divorce through his encounter with a profile named Jessica Draper, the eighteen months of transfers totaling $61,400, and the VOIP servers that revealed two distinct call patterns-one from Manila during weekday afternoons, another from Atlanta suburbs on Thursday nights when he was alone. We examine Patricia Turner's discovery of the spreadsheet that tracked emotional milestones, the real Jessica Draper's stolen identity, and the moment Karen Aldridge understood her brother had been selected not randomly but deliberately, because he was methodical, faithful, and capable of printing, sleeving, dating and filing twenty-two photographs by hand.

Person: James Simpson
Age: 53
Location: Harmon Falls, Oregon
Perpetrator: Diane Corrales, age 41, Marietta, Georgia
Amount stolen: $61,400
Duration: 18 months

- James Simpson was a procurement coordinator living alone at 402 Dellwood Circle after a 2016 divorce.
- A profile for "Jessica Draper" appeared in September 2017 on a faith-based dating platform, using the real identity and photographs of a dental hygienist in Bend, Oregon.
- Transfers began in March 2018 at $800 and continued for eighteen months, liquidating James's mutual fund and requiring a loan against his truck.
- VOIP records showed two server signatures: one from Manila handling weekday calls, one from Atlanta suburbs handling Thursday night calls when James was home alone.
- A birthday card with Manila postmark dated March 28 arrived at his mailbox four days after James was dead, addressed to arrive on April 9, the last scheduled touchpoint in Diane Corrales's emotional calendar spreadsheet.

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© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: [email protected].

The face that held her hand: how a contractor became a ghost

In this episode, we follow the operation that used Bevins's photographs, traced Marcus Dwyer from a November handyman job to a New Year's Eve party in Findlay, and examine the three men who played distinct roles in a romance scam that targeted at least eleven women across four cities since 2015. We explore how Gloria noticed small fractures-the wrong truck seat position, the cigarette smoke that vanished, a phone voice that sounded like performance rather than presence-and how one night of careful hesitation before sending $4,200 became the moment that broke the entire scheme open.

Person: Gloria Carlson
Person: Todd Bevins
Person: Marcus Dwyer
Event: Romance fraud operation, January to March 2019
Location: Maplewood, Ohio; Findlay, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio
Amount: $4,200 requested but never sent

- Gloria Carlson had been a billing specialist at Harmon Regional Medical Group in Maplewood, Ohio for eleven years and was described by colleagues as meticulous and deliberate, not naive.
- Marcus Dwyer, age 39, performed handyman work at Peg Novak's cousin's house in Findlay in November 2018, two months before the New Year's Eve party where he met Peg and gained access to Gloria's social circle.
- The first date between Gloria and the man calling himself Clifford Osborne was at the Briar Cup coffee shop on Clement Avenue in January 2019; over six weeks they had four dinners, two coffees, and one walk along the Maplewood Canal towpath.
- On March 14, 2019 at 8 p.m., Clifford called Gloria with an unusual request for $4,200 due in 48 hours, claiming a wire transfer had been flagged and a lease renewal was due; Gloria noticed his voice sounded subtly different and did not send the money.
- Darlene Wilson, a fraud examiner and Gloria's closest friend, identified the photographs as belonging to Todd Bevins of Dayton within four hours using reverse image search on March 15, 2019; a storage unit east of Columbus later revealed printed dossiers on eleven women across four cities and wire transfer confirmations showing the operation had been running since at least 2015.

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© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: [email protected].

The photograph through the window: how he built trust in parallel

In this episode, we trace the architecture of a romance scam that began fourteen months before any money changed hands, involving forty-seven photographs across six addresses and two financial victims. We examine how a stolen fitness influencer's face became "Chad Zimmerman," how a forged driver's license opened a shell account, and why the repayment of eight hundred and eighty dollars was not generosity but calibration-alongside the unanswered question of what Frey intended when Marcia agreed to a meeting in April.

Person: Marcia O'Connor
Person: Douglas Frey, age 37
Location: Mechanicsville, Virginia
Amount: $880 (repaid); $11,000 from second victim
Event: Photograph taken through kitchen window, February 2022
Platform: NutriPath Connect

- Marcia received an autoimmune diagnosis in fall 2021 and joined NutriPath Connect, assigned to profile "Chad Zimmerman" with 43 positive reviews active for two years.
- The first Wednesday call at six thirty a.m. lasted two hours; weekly calls became ritual by November 2021, lasting 90 minutes to two hours.
- On a Wednesday morning in January 2022 at six thirty-one, the man said he loved her; she confirmed the feeling after several days of consideration.
- Marcia's brother Tom reverse-image-searched the profile photograph on Friday afternoon and found it belonged to Rafael Borges, a fitness influencer in São Paulo posted in October 2019.
- The sealed envelope recovered from the impounded silver Kia Sportage contained a print photograph of Marcia taken at 6:47 a.m. through her kitchen window; forty-seven similar images of six different women were found on a burner phone inside the vehicle.

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© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: [email protected].

The badge in the creek: how a UN peacekeeper never existed

A laminated credential bearing the name "WALKER, R." emerges from Sallow Creek in eastern New Mexico on a January morning, pristine despite months underwater. The face on the badge belongs to a man named Stuart Albright, a retired civil engineer in Flagstaff who has never heard of Roger Walker. How did a constructed identity built from stolen photographs pull two women into a grief they did not expect, and what did a four-minute video call reveal that unraveled everything?

In this episode, we follow the architecture of a romance fraud operation that researched its victims for over two years, using stolen CD maturity dates and a shell vendor account to engineer crises that arrived in perfect synchronization with Susan Jones's available funds. We examine the wire transfers, the deepfake video, and the moment a claims investigator ran a reverse image search that exposed a civilian's face being used to build a lie.

Person: Susan Jones
Perpetrator: Emeka Adeyemi
Location: Broken Bow Ranch, Harlan County, New Mexico
Amount stolen: approximately $62,000 from Susan Jones; $62,000 from Barbara Novak
Event: Romance fraud via constructed "Roger Walker" identity
Sentence: eleven years federal prison

- Susan Jones's husband Dale died of a cardiac event in March 2017; he had structured six staggered certificates of deposit at Kellner Savings and Loan.
- Roger Walker's friend request arrived in early June 2018, claiming to be a UN peacekeeper deployed to Mali.
- A laminated UN credential bearing the name WALKER, R. was mailed to Broken Bow Ranch in September 2018 with deployment orders on UN letterhead.
- The first wire transfer of $4,000 left Kellner Savings and Loan in late November 2018, each subsequent transfer timed precisely to CD maturity dates across months.
- Investigators traced the shell vendor account used for wire transfers to Emeka Adeyemi in Houston; the account had been dormant since targeting Barbara Novak between 2016 and 2017.

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© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: [email protected].

The missing knight: how one chess piece undid a romance scammer

On December fourteenth, a county surveyor named Judith Stroud found a black lacquered chess piece in a frozen drainage culvert along Colbert Road. Two miles away, Angela Richardson was sitting at her grandmother's dinner table, unaware that two thousand two hundred dollars had already left her bank account. How did a small wooden object discarded in the winter dark become the evidence that tied together a carefully constructed double life?

In this episode, we trace the eleven-week romance between a twenty-two-year-old reception desk worker and a man claiming to be a civil engineer in Scotland-a man who was actually forty-one-year-old Randy Christensen living in a rented duplex twenty-six miles away. We follow the IP logs, the routing numbers, the deleted text message reading "took care of the set, will explain," and the moment Christensen realized the chess piece he threw away had already been found.

Person: Angela Richardson
Person: Randy Christensen
Perpetrator: Randy Christensen, age 41
Amount stolen: $2,200
Location: Sycamore Township, Millhaven
Event: Arrest warrant executed December 28

- Angela Richardson transferred $800 on December 3rd and $1,400 on December 9th to an escrow account that did not exist.
- Randy Christensen created a fake profile using photographs stolen from Brian Kowalski, a real civil engineer in Tulsa, whom Kowalski had reported three months before Angela received the first message.
- Judith Stroud found a black lacquered knight in a drainage culvert thirty meters from Christensen's rented duplex carport on December 14th.
- On December 27th, Christensen discarded one knight from his regulation chess set; forensic analysis confirmed the recovered piece matched the empty slot in his carrying case.
- Christensen was convicted on four counts in April after deliberating less than four hours; he received a six-year federal sentence.

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© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: [email protected].

The blue bin: how a fake teacher stole from her walk

In this episode, we follow the discovery of the blue bin behind a concrete footer, the spiral notebook filled with women's names and dollar amounts, and the forensic moment when Detective Melvin Anderson asked Paula a single question that rewrote her understanding of intimacy and proximity. We trace how Kenneth Prouse built his infrastructure inside communities of grief and survival, how Stephen Norris's stolen face circulated for fourteen months after an FTC report no one acted on, and why the margin between Paula's second and third payment mattered more than any conviction.

Person: Paula Chambers
Perpetrator: Kenneth Prouse, age 49
Location: Harlan County; Sutter Mill Road rental property
Amount stolen: $2,200
Event: Discovery of blue storage bin in crawl space
Victim: Also used image of Stephen Norris, retired teacher in Flagstaff, Arizona

- Paula Chambers, age 38, had been in remission from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma for three years and walked a two-mile route past a blue grain elevator near Route 15 every morning.
- Russell Long, a profile on Beyond the Bell with approximately 400 members, claimed to be a retired widowed teacher in Flagstaff, Arizona; he communicated only through voice messages, never live phone calls.
- Kimberly Phillips, a well-service contractor, discovered a pale blue locked storage container sealed with electrical tape in a crawl space on Sutter Mill Road on a morning when the temperature was thirty-one degrees.
- The container held 43 printed photographs of Stephen Norris (a real retired teacher in Arizona), a prepaid debit card, and a spiral notebook with columns of dates, dollar amounts, and women's first names.
- Kenneth Prouse rented the Sutter Mill Road property for nine months under the name R. Lonigan, paid with money orders, and drove a gray Chevrolet Equinox registered to a third alias; he was arrested six days after Detective Anderson's call and accepted a plea for wire fraud, identity theft, and two counts of theft by deception, receiving six years.

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© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: [email protected].

The letters under the oak tree: how a pen pal wasn't real

A birdwatcher found forty-three opened letters stacked under a white oak tree outside Galton, North Carolina, weighted down with a creek stone. Alice Chambers had spent two years writing to Paul Carlson, a refugee in a Greek transit camp, sharing her love of literature and her quiet retirement life. But Paul had never read a single word she sent.

In this episode, we trace how a carefully constructed literary romance was engineered months before the first letter arrived, revealing nine forged postmarks hidden beneath foreign stamps and a ledger that reduced two years of correspondence to operational shorthand. We follow the reverse-image search that exposed the real face, the man who appeared at Alice's door asking her to sign paperwork, and the ghostwriter whose words Alice kept in a box-a voice that was never actually anyone's.

Person: Alice Chambers
Location: Galton, North Carolina
Event: Romance scam via pen-pal letters
Perpetrator: Bruce Yoder, age 49
Date: 2019-2021
Amount: Four to eight thousand dollars (estimated; no transfer completed)

- Alice Chambers, 62, received 43 letters over two years from a pen pal named Paul Carlson in a Greek refugee camp.
- Nine of the 43 letters bore domestic cancellation marks from Atlanta, Georgia and Charlotte, North Carolina, hidden under foreign stamps.
- Paul's photograph belonged to a real comparative literature professor at a university in Accra, Ghana, who had never heard of Alice Chambers.
- A spiral-bound ledger found in Bruce Yoder's storage unit in Concord, North Carolina listed Alice on page 23 as "lit angle, slow build, package play, est, yield four to eight thousand."
- Bruce Yoder was arrested six days after appearing at Alice's door requesting her signature on fraudulent paperwork; he carried a prior federal wire fraud conviction from Florida.

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© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: [email protected].

The envelope he mailed to himself

A fourteen-year-old mail carrier named Leon Price found something impossible in an outgoing mail flag on September fourth: a self-addressed envelope in the sender's own handwriting, containing a cashier's check drawn on his own account. How did Kent Baker, a careful twenty-four-year-old bookkeeper in Millhaven, Ohio, end up mailing money to himself without remembering doing it?

In this episode, we trace eight weeks of late-night messages from a man claiming to be Ronald Jensen, a deaf architect in Edinburgh, who used Kent's own sister's deafness as the key to his trust. We reveal how the targeting preceded the connection, how a single notation in Jensen's case file read "deaf angle - strong resonance," and how the same method had claimed another victim eight years earlier in Dayton, Ohio, before that case went cold.

Person: Kent Baker
Victim: Kent Baker, age 24, bookkeeper
Perpetrator: Jensen (also used the name Ronald Jensen)
Location: Millhaven, Ohio
Amount stolen: Seven thousand dollars
Date: July through September

- Kent Baker worked as a bookkeeper at Archer Logistics and visited Fenner's Diner every Thursday morning at seven-fifteen sharp for a short stack and black coffee.
- A dating app profile appeared in early July showing a man named Ronald Jensen, forty-one, claiming to be a deaf architect in Edinburgh, Scotland.
- On August twenty-ninth, Jensen requested four thousand dollars citing an emergency; Kent wired it on August thirtieth and three thousand more on September third.
- On September fourth at seven forty-two in the morning, Kent received a long message describing Jensen's fictional childhood of deafness; he mailed a self-addressed envelope containing a larger cashier's check before leaving for work.
- Eight years earlier in Dayton, Ohio, a man named Robert Gaines had been defrauded of more than thirty thousand dollars using the same method; he died by suicide before the case resolved, and DNA evidence later matched Jensen to that case.

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© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: [email protected].

The badge in the gravel: how a photograph became a key

In this episode, we follow the evidence chain from the photograph Debra sent Marcus on August third to the laminated badge that appeared eleven days later, and the magnetic key box pressed against her gas meter. We trace how Jennifer Russo, running a nonprofit teaching financial literacy, used a licensed reverse-image search tool to identify the stolen photographs of Derek Storey, a football coach in Tallahassee whose image became "Marcus Webb." We examine the spreadsheets found in the second storage unit listing nine women across multiple states, each assigned a column for contact date, cumulative transfer amount, and current stage of the script-and ask why Bruce Bowers stored his real name on the lease that led investigators straight to him.

Person: Debra Jones
Perpetrator: Bruce Bowers, age 44
Event: Romance fraud and planned home invasion, August 2024
Location: Hargrove, North Carolina
Amount stolen: $9,400
Victims identified: 9 women

- Debra Jones, 49, worked as billing coordinator at a dental practice and co-organized the board game club at Hargrove Public Library for four years.
- Marcus Webb's profile appeared in early April; by late May, Debra had sent $1,100, then additional payments totaling $9,400 by the end of June.
- Derek Storey, a football coach in Tallahassee, Florida, had his Instagram photographs stolen; both images were taken in the same parking lot wearing a dark green shirt.
- Bruce Bowers used a fake Piedmont Gas and Electric badge identifying himself as Travis Kemp and placed a magnetic key box containing a copied house key on Debra's gas meter on July 23rd.
- Investigators discovered two storage units: one with a laminator, blank ID cards, service uniforms, and the badge with Debra's photograph; a second in Cumberland County containing spreadsheets listing nine women with contact dates, transfer amounts, and script stages.

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© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: [email protected].

The photograph on the pole: how a grief forum became a trap

A laminated picture wedged into utility hardware, custom-cut corners worn smooth from months in a pocket, a routing number inked on the back-found six miles from where Rachel Zimmerman lived. How did a photograph she posted to a members-only grief forum end up on a rural utility pole, and what did it reveal about the months of surveillance that preceded it?

In this episode, we trace Rachel's eighteen-month unbroken medication log for her diabetic beagle against the nine months she spent on daily calls with "Vernon," the false widower who quoted her own words about Brian's death back to her as proof of understanding. We follow the forty-eight thousand dollars that moved through a secret credit union account in eleven weeks, the cell tower records placing the same device at her apartment complex and at the pole on Carteret Road, and the moment she left Hector's seven o'clock injection undone to meet a man who did not exist.

Person: Rachel Zimmerman, dental hygienist, widow
Perpetrator: Vernon Hunter
Location: Orrville, North Carolina; Sayers County
Amount stolen: $48,000 from mutual fund inherited from Brian
Event: Photograph discovered on utility pole, July 16
Platform: Members-only grief forum

- Rachel posted a photograph to the grief forum in March showing herself and Hector with a caption about eighteen months without a missed insulin injection.
- Hunter used the stolen VOIP-connected phone number and posed as a forty-year-old widower named Vernon from Asheville with a daughter and yellow Lab.
- The first transfer was $4,000 in February; Rachel opened a secret credit union account in April and made two more transfers totaling $48,000 over eleven weeks.
- On July 9 at 6:22 p.m., Hunter entered Fairview Gardens apartment complex and questioned Joyce Pelletier about Rachel's family and work schedule before Joyce dead-bolted her door.
- The laminated photograph with routing number was discovered on Carteret Road at 8:10 a.m. on July 16 by utility lineman Amanda Russo; a partial thumbprint on the edge matched Hunter's left thumb.

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© 2026 OBOMEDIA. All rights reserved.
This episode and its content (audio, text, and related materials) are the exclusive property of OBOMEDIA and are protected by applicable copyright laws. Reproduction, distribution, editing, or commercial use, in whole or in part, without prior written permission from OBOMEDIA is prohibited. For permissions, licensing, and business inquiries: [email protected].