The chess set on the bench: how grief became a research tool

A rosewood board frozen to a park bench in December, mid-game at move fourteen, with one black rook fallen on gravel below. A widow in Ohio had bought it as a gift for a man she loved, left it there at dawn, and never knew he had studied her late husband's obituary for two weeks before ever sending her a message. How did one carefully constructed online persona turn public records and a dead man's chess lessons into a weapon?

In this episode, we trace the two-week research phase that preceded the first message, the three wire transfers totaling twenty-two thousand four hundred dollars, and the portable hard drive that would reveal forty-one victims across nine states. We examine the Sicilian Defense opening, the video calls with technical problems that were always deliberate, and what a spreadsheet of emotional targeting profiles actually represents.

Person: Monica Walker
Perpetrator: Kenneth Sorrells, age 48
Location: Millhaven, Ohio
Amount stolen: Twenty-two thousand four hundred dollars
Event: Arrest on December 11, 2019
Platform: ChessMate

- Monica Walker was a sixty-two-year-old part-time accountant living on Aldermere Circle in Millhaven, Ohio, for over twenty years when she created a ChessMate account.
- Ted Walker, Monica's husband of thirty-one years, died of pancreatic cancer in spring 2015; he had taught her to play chess in the early 1990s.
- Kenneth Sorrells, using the alias Brian Petersen, spent approximately two weeks reading Monica's late husband's obituary, employer listings, and ChessMate profile before sending his first message in late April 2019.
- The first wire transfer of four thousand dollars left Monica's account in September 2019, routed to Hong Kong, followed by transfers in October and November totaling twenty-two thousand four hundred dollars.
- A portable hard drive found in a storage unit at the freight yards contained a spreadsheet with forty-one victims across nine states, each with emotional targeting profiles; Monica Walker was line thirty-one and Sorrells was sentenced to eleven years in April 2020.

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The water tower benchmark: how a cancer survivor became a fraud database entry

A pale blue birthday cake sat untouched on Douglas Allen's kitchen table, candles shaped like "26" beside an envelope addressed to himself with a Nigerian return address. The apartment was empty, his morning walks stopped, and what investigators initially read as a mystery was actually a closing door-the moment a young cancer survivor realized the voice on the other end of the phone for twenty months had been a calculated fiction the entire time.

In this episode, we follow Douglas from his 2017 Hodgkin's lymphoma remission through his recruitment into a Facebook support group called Survivors in Step, where he met "Marcus Webb," a kind-faced retired consultant who remembered his scan dates and called several times a week. We trace $41,200 transferred across twenty months, a physical encounter at Renner Park where Sullivan confirmed Douglas's routine, and the blog post about West African romance scams that finally broke the illusion-revealing that the man Douglas believed was his closest friend was Melvin D. Sullivan of Baytown, Texas, operating a database of victims with forty-seven stolen photographs.

Person: Douglas Allen
Perpetrator: Melvin D. Sullivan
Location: Pallister, Ohio; Baytown, Texas
Amount stolen: $41,200
Period: February 2018 to October 2019
Date of arrest: March 2020

- Douglas Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma at age 22 in 2015 and completed his final infusion in spring 2017.
- He joined the Facebook group Survivors in Step in spring 2017 and began private calls with "Marcus Webb" in autumn 2017.
- Sullivan used a stolen LinkedIn photograph of Wayne Cutler, a retired engineer in Spokane, Washington, for at least three years across multiple fraud cases.
- The first request for money came in February 2018 when "Marcus" claimed a pipe failed at his property and needed $1,600, which he repaid eleven days later to build trust.
- Sullivan traveled to Renner Park in Pallister in autumn 2018 and approached Douglas to confirm his voice, face, and daily routine before returning to Texas.

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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 handwriting that broke a twenty-six-month con

A sealed box arrived at a refugee resettlement organization with a photograph meant to prove Edward Hicks existed in a Kenyan camp. Inside were thirty-one handwritten letters, carefully organized, each one building trust through granular detail: the shade of tent canvas, an instructor's name, which days the coffee ration ran out. But one detail unraveled everything-and it was something almost no one would notice.

In this episode, we trace how a county property assessor reading all thirty-one letters in a single afternoon discovered that the handwriting's slant had shifted at month fourteen, exactly when the payment requests changed character. We follow the reverse image search that exposed a digitally altered photograph, the discovery of a hard drive in a Lorain, Ohio storage unit, and the revelation that this was not one victim but at least nine people, each kept separate and silent for years.

Person: Erin Zeller
Perpetrator: Edward Hicks
Location: Dunning, Ohio; Lorain, Ohio
Amount stolen: 11,400 dollars from Erin Zeller; approximately 8,000 dollars from Beverly Crane
Event: Romance fraud spanning 26 months via pen-pal service
Date: August 2022 to October 2024

- Erin Zeller registered with Global Friendship Exchange in August 2022 and was matched with a profile for Edward Hicks, listed as a Kakuma camp resident.
- The first letter arrived six weeks later; thirty-one letters followed over twenty-six months before any financial request was made.
- The first payment request came in month eight for forty dollars to replace broken glasses; subsequent requests followed a two-week pattern of warmth after each payment.
- Carl Stevens, a county property assessor, noticed the handwriting's slant shifted at letter twenty-three, corresponding to month fourteen when payment amounts escalated more rapidly.
- The laminated photograph in the sealed box was digitally altered and depicted a man photographed at a Nairobi community center in 2017, not a refugee camp, and had been pulled from a deleted social media profile.

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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 laminated note: how surveillance became romance

A small card sealed in plastic, pressed against a drainage culvert on Kent Jones Trail in September 2019, contained a single pale blue chicory flower and four words: "For James - every distance closes. Yours always, K." Within forty-eight hours, the photograph had reached fraud investigator Scott Powell, who recognized the name and began to understand that the romance was never digital at all-it was surveillance.

In this episode, we follow the eleven-month investigation into the Kenneth Griffin profile and the moment Powell discovered that James Stewart's Thursday schedule at Reedy's Diner, his corner window table, and his parking habits on Kent Jones Trail had never been disclosed online. Cell tower data, loading dock footage, and a handwritten grid on an apartment wall revealed that Victor Shade had been watching James in person for weeks before the note appeared, documenting twelve simultaneous victims with the same methodical attention.

Person: James Stewart
Perpetrator: Victor Shade, age 47
Location: Columbus, Ohio; Kent Jones Trail
Amount stolen: Six thousand two hundred dollars (James Stewart)
Case: Romance fraud involving twelve victims and physical surveillance

- James Stewart posted a photograph from Reedy's Diner corner window in February 2019; Kenneth Griffin messaged him two months later.
- Shade's phone records placed him at Kent Jones Trail at 5:44 a.m. on the Tuesday the note was found; loading dock footage captured him at 5:47 a.m.
- James never disclosed his Thursday schedule, Mallard Street location, or parking habits on Kent Jones Trail to Kenneth Griffin on any platform.
- Victor Shade's apartment contained three laptops and a handwritten grid listing twelve active victims with their emotional vulnerabilities and specific personal details.
- Shade was sentenced to eleven years in federal custody on twelve counts of wire fraud, twelve counts of aggravated theft, and one count of criminal stalking specific to James Stewart.

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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 in the album: how they built a man from three strangers

A fisherman pulls a waterlogged photo album from Carver Lake on August ninth-forty-one photographs of the same face, annotated in pencil with initials and dates. The man in every image has no idea the album exists. So why was his face printed, sorted, and handed to a stranger as proof that someone else was real?

In this episode, we trace how Roy Slade constructed Marvin Marshall from three real people-Thomas Wrede's LinkedIn credentials, Scott Hagan's blog about divorce and fatherhood, Ed Novak's patterns of vulnerability-and deployed the composite persona to extract thirty-one thousand dollars from Lloyd Bennett across four July wire transfers. We follow the moment a utility inspector entered Lloyd's home with a clipboard, the four-second reverse image search that exposed the fraud, and the evidence chain that revealed Slade had been operating under multiple aliases since at least two thousand fifteen.

Person: Lloyd Bennett
Perpetrator: Roy Slade, age 46
Event: Fraud conviction, spring following arrest
Location: Harwick, Indiana
Amount stolen: $31,000
Platform: Professional networking app, messaging app

- Kenneth Hoffman pulled a waterlogged spiral-bound photo album from Carver Lake on August ninth, twenty-two, containing forty-one photographs of the same face with pencil annotations of initials and dates.
- Lloyd Bennett, a fifty-two-year-old project coordinator for the Harwick County Water Authority, received the first message from Marvin Marshall in February of twenty-two and made four wire transfers totaling thirty-one thousand dollars in July of twenty-two.
- Marvin Marshall was constructed from three real people: Thomas Wrede, a civil engineer in Columbus; Scott Hagan, a project manager from Louisville whose private blog detailed his childhood in Terre Haute and divorce; and Ed Novak, a seventy-year-old retired teacher in Fort Wayne with a semi-public Facebook profile.
- Roy Slade was arrested in Carver County under the alias Mitchell Moore and convicted on six counts of wire fraud and identity theft; he had used at least four aliases-Marcus Mills, Matt Morgan, Mitchell Moore, and Marvin Marshall-across at least two thousand fifteen through twenty-two.
- Paige Bennett, Lloyd's daughter, ran a reverse image search on the Marvin Marshall profile photograph in early August twenty-two and identified it as Thomas Wrede within four seconds, prompting her to contact Christine Casey, a fraud investigator with the Indiana State Police financial crimes unit.

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The envelope in the dirt: how Beverly Brooks built a six-year fraud inside grief

In this episode, we trace the architecture of the scheme from the Compassion Circle sign-in binder-where Beverly attended unannounced before introducing herself to Monica-through the photo metadata showing borrowed images dated six years prior, to the transaction chain that moved money in nine clean steps to an apartment two states away. We examine how the same fraud had worked seven years earlier against a woman named Sandra Voss, and what the incomplete purpose of the buried debit cards reveals about whether the scheme was truly finished when Beverly Brooks was arrested.

Person: Monica Whitley
Perpetrator: Beverly Brooks, age 46
Victim: Also Sandra Voss (seven years prior)
Location: Harlan Township, Crestwood Drive
Amount stolen: $11,400
Event: Grief support group infiltration and wire fraud, June-July

- Monica Whitley was 44 years old, 22 months past the death of her husband Paul from pancreatic cancer, when she joined the Compassion Circle grief support group in March.
- Beverly Brooks attended the Compassion Circle unannounced as Susan or unsigned in March and early April before introducing herself to Monica and beginning in-person coffee meetings by mid-April.
- Nine wire transfers totaling $11,400 moved from Monica's account between June and the third week of July to accounts tracing to Beverly Brooks's rental unit two states away.
- The photographs Beverly sent Monica over months of texting were metadata-dated six years prior and belonged to Patricia Nolan, a veterinary technician near Raleigh, North Carolina, who had received a prior warning her images might be misused.
- Beverly Brooks had three prior fraud convictions-two online-relationship schemes and one church-community scheme-before the Harlan Township case, and had used the same photographs and sister-with-multiple-sclerosis story against Sandra Voss seven years earlier in a different city, stealing $6,000 before a coworker intervened.

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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 ring on the plate: how a fake engineer stole thirty-one thousand dollars

A diamond solitaire placed deliberately on a ceramic plate in an empty utility room, left behind by a woman who walked out eight months earlier and never returned. Marcia Marshall had saved thirty-one thousand dollars carefully over years, but a man calling himself Philip Myers-who sent her flowers, a ring, and marriage proposals-had asked for it all, a little at a time, in increments that each seemed reasonable. Why did she leave the ring behind, and who was really on the other end of those phone calls?

In this episode, we trace how a man using a stolen face from Portland and a Columbus area code built a romance scam across three states, returning a single two-hundred-forty-dollar loan to prove he was real, then systematically extracting money from Marcia and four other women to purchase a forged house in Ghana. We follow Detective Nora Finch and bank analyst Julie Campbell as they map a network of wire transfers, a changed padlock on an empty property, and an area code noticed by a coworker in a break room-details that connected a 2016 property inspection to a 2018 fraud to a 2013 unsolved assault.

Person: Marcia Marshall
Perpetrator: Convicted wire fraudster, sentenced February 2020
Location: Fostwick Township, Virginia; Columbus, Ohio
Amount stolen: $31,000 from Marcia; $94,000 across five victims
Event: Property inspection discovery, June 2019
Conviction: Five counts wire fraud, one count identity theft

- Marcia Marshall, 28 years old in 2018, worked as a medical technician in Fostwick Township, Virginia.
- She met Philip Myers online in September 2017; he sent her a $240 loan in February 2018 and repaid it in eleven days.
- Between February and October 2018, Marcia transferred $31,000 to the perpetrator in increments, moving out of her rental house on Deller Road.
- A coworker named Sandra Novak noticed Marcia receiving a call from a Columbus area code during a summer 2018 shift.
- Bank analyst Julie Campbell identified five victim accounts losing money to the same VOIP-linked identity cluster, totaling $94,000 used to purchase a forged-deed house in Accra, Ghana in March 2019.
- Detective Nora Finch confirmed the perpetrator had used the same Columbus area code VOIP number to call Harmon Brothers for a 2016 septic inspection, and Marcia had later mentioned Harmon Brothers to him by name.

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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 that didn't dissolve: how a waterfowl photographer unraveled a sixty-one-thousand-dollar romance scam

In this episode, we trace the nine-month romance between Earl and Lloyd from a gardening forum reply through escalating financial requests, the moment a traffic camera caught the supposedly broken-down truck operational, and the critical discovery that the face in the dock photograph belonged to Nathan Doyle, a physical therapist in Ohio who had never heard of Harmon Reservoir. We follow Douglas Phillips through the storage unit warrant that recovered conversation scripts, crisis email templates, trust account numbers, and cultivation notes on at least three additional targets-a portable hard drive that became Kevin Morse's operational confession before he ever spoke a word.

Person: Earl Richardson
Person: Kevin Morse
Person: Nathan Doyle
Event: Badge discovered at Harmon Reservoir, early May
Location: Harmon Cove, south bank of Harmon Reservoir
Amount stolen: 61,000 dollars

- Earl Richardson, fifty-six, retired from thirty years at a machine shop due to back injury, lived alone at Harmon Cove in a house belonging to his wife's family.
- Earl bowled anchor position for Driftwood Four league at Harmon Reservoir every Thursday for nine consecutive years, missing only twice before autumn in question.
- The conversation between Earl and Lloyd Jones began in late summer with a gardening forum question about soil pH for blueberries and escalated to evening phone calls within three weeks.
- Between November and April, Earl wired sixty-one thousand dollars in transfers ranging from nine hundred to eighteen thousand dollars, each with a stated reason tied to Lloyd's supposed emergencies.
- The portable hard drive found in a storage unit registered to Diane Morse contained Nathan Doyle's sourced photographs organized by use, conversation scripts calibrated for emotional registers, crisis email templates, seven trust account numbers, and cultivation notes on at least three additional targets.

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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 rose on the welcome mat: how a file clerk built Glenn Russo

A fifteen-year-old on a paper route found a long-stemmed rose sealed in its florist sleeve, card in block letters addressed to Cheryl, left on a welcome mat she hadn't used in months. But Cheryl Stevens had already been brought home from a Columbus motel where she'd waited three days for a man who never existed-a man whose voice on the phone came from thousands of miles away. How did a file clerk named Patrick Odom transform four visits to an insurance office into an eighteen-month romance, and why did he leave a rose for someone he knew would never see it?

In this episode, we follow the anatomy of calculated predation: Odom's observation of Cheryl's solo morning window at the front counter, his theft of a stranger's marina photograph from a family account, and the spiral notebook filled with scripted crisis scenarios and blank spaces for victim names. We examine the prepaid SIM card routed through West African infrastructure, the eleven documented calls traced to an overseas relay, and the deliberate one-letter misspelling that created legal distance between fiction and fact-all leading to the question that haunts the case: was the rose a signal, a test, or proof he was watching the door she stopped using?

Person: Cheryl Stevens, Patrick Odom, Andrew Foss
Location: Dunbar, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; Youngstown, Ohio
Event: Romance fraud operation, April 2019 arrest
Perpetrator: Patrick Odom, age 41
Amount stolen: Not specified in transcript
Platform: Connex dating app

- Patrick Odom made at least four documented visits to Hargrove and Associates insurance office in spring 2018, where Cheryl worked the front counter alone from 7:30 to 9 a.m.
- Glenn Russo's profile appeared on Connex in August 2018, one month after Odom left Dunbar Commercial Printing, using a marina photograph stolen from Andrew Foss's family account posted in June 2017.
- The prepaid SIM card used for Glenn Russo's calls was activated at a gas station in Garfield Heights under the billing name "Rusco," and all 31 of Cheryl's outgoing calls were routed through a VoIP relay in West Africa.
- A long-stemmed rose in a sealed florist sleeve with a card reading "FOR CHERYL, FROM YOUR ONLY REAL ONE" was found on Cheryl's welcome mat in late March 2019, eleven days after she returned home from waiting three days at a Columbus motel.
- Investigators found a spiral notebook in Odom's Youngstown apartment containing character notes, scripted crisis scenarios with blank spaces for victim names, and at least eleven names in columns tracking relationship stage and money transferred; Odom was convicted on three counts of wire fraud and one count of identity fraud on April 22, 2019.

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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 Zip-Lock Bag That Unraveled Six Years of Lies

A county snowplow operator found a zip-lock bag containing a ring, ribbon, and four notes signed "Rachel" on a frozen road shoulder. This discovery would eventually expose six years of calculated deception across at least three communities, but how did a simple bag unravel such a complex web of lies?

In this episode, we delve into the intricate scheme built from ordinary interactions like shared recipes and morning walks, which felt like the beginning of something real for the women involved. The narrative begins with Lisa Harrison, a 38-year-old nurse in Harwick, whose steady routine was disrupted by the arrival of Rachel Sanders.

Person: Steven Wilson
Location: Glenmore Road, Harwick
Date: A Tuesday morning in March
Item Found: Zip-lock bag
Duration of Deception: Six years

- A snowplow operator found a zip-lock bag containing a ring, white satin ribbon, and four handwritten notes.
- The deception spanned six years and affected at least three communities.
- Rachel Sanders, 43, joined the women's fellowship group in January 2022 and targeted Lisa Harrison, 38.
- Rachel proposed marriage to Lisa in the third week of February and later asked for $400 in cash for a car repair.
- Patrice Nolan, the women's fellowship group leader, observed Rachel giving private attention to four different women.

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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].