Relationship Cheating Stories

The Utility Panel Ledger: How a Widower Lost $47,300 to Love

Grief made him vulnerable in a way scammers exploit: a retired teacher from Dellport who lost his wife began sending money after a man named "Philip West" gave him intense, specific attention online - and a photograph found tucked in a utility panel later proved 47,300 dollars changed hands. Who was the man behind the profile, why was the ledger hidden forty feet from Carl's front door, and how did forty-one payment cycles erase the boundary between charity and theft?

In this episode, we follow the timeline of Carl Jensen's online relationship and financial transfers, how images of children and crisis stories fueled repeated donations, and the discovery that the profile photo and orphanage claims were fabricated - a revelation that raises the central question of how a careful, methodical man came to trust so deeply.

Person: Carl Jensen
Age: 52
Location: Grover Street, Dellport, Ohio
Event: Photograph found in utility panel recording "forty-seven thousand, three hundred dollars" and "paid"
Period: February 2021 to autumn 2022

- Carl retired from Dellport Regional High School in spring 2019 after 31 years teaching science.
- The photograph in the utility panel was four inches by six inches and had "forty-seven thousand, three hundred dollars" and the word "paid" written on the back in ballpoint ink.
- Carl sent payments across 41 payment cycles over eighteen months beginning after February 2021.
- The first transfer to "Philip West" was $300; subsequent transfers included amounts described as a few hundred dollars to $1,200.
- The man pictured as Philip West was actually Aaron Pryce, whose photo came from a 2019 charity newsletter and who did not know his image was being used.

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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].

She Left for "Charles": How a Fish Tank Exposed $41,000 Scam

Fear that the person you trusted was a fiction - and that a fish tank note could be the last real thing left behind. A $41,000 trail of wire transfers stopped the day a sticky note said the fish were last fed; who built the machine that lured Frances away, and why did it all hinge on her feeding schedule?

In this episode, we tell what unfolded when a methodical procurement coordinator disappeared from her home, leaving a dead fish, an emptied savings account, and a suitcase gone. How did a network of men, a stolen photo, and months of surveillance turn a dinner into a disappearance?

Person: Frances Hansen
Location: Millbridge, Ohio
Amount: $41,000
First wire transfer: $12,000 on February 19, 2022
Detective: R. Henderson, badge number 2214

- A yellow sticky note on the tank glass read "No exceptions. Last fed March 7th." dated March 14th.
- Frances's passport and suitcase were missing while her car sat in the garage and her phone was charging.
- The operation used a photo taken from contractor Dennis Pryor's public website as "Charles Young"'s profile image.
- A contractor named Kevin Slade, listed under a licensed company, had been inside Frances's home in July 2021 and seen her feeding routine.
- Frances wired $12,000 on February 19, 2022, the first of multiple transfers that totaled $41,000 by the time the feeding stopped.

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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].

He Melted a Ring Into Love: The Trail Left by a Fake Fiancé

Fear that the person you’ve fallen for is a fabrication begins with a ring hidden in tree roots and a card that reads, “For Marcia. I would cross every ocean.” Who built the seven-state web around a non-existent man, and why did one of his tokens disappear while the note remains?

In this episode, we tell the story of how a wellness app coach named Norman Cooper - a profile that never existed - moved from nutrition protocol to midnight calls, requests for money, and an engagement ring delivered into a forest hollow; how Marcia O'Connor’s symptoms improved even as the relationship deepened; and what investigators discovered when they followed the trail. What led eleven women across seven states to intersect with the same fabrication?

Person: Marcia O'Connor
Date: February 11, 2022
Location: tulip poplar tree on an unfamiliar trail
Value: $4,000-plus
Case: eleven women across seven states

- Marcia was 28 years old and had lived in Greer's Mill, Tennessee for three years.
- She downloaded NutriCoach in March 2021 and was assigned “Norman Cooper” within 48 hours.
- The ring found February 11, 2022 was valued at just over $4,000.
- Norman asked Marcia for $300 in September 2021 via a cash-transfer app and returned $250 nine days later.
- Marcia had weekly Thursday calls with her mother at 11:15 p.m. and began Tuesday calls with Norman around 9:30 p.m., sometimes running past midnight.

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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 UN Badge in the River: How a Rancher Lost $11,000 to Love

Fear that a single message can erase years of steady savings hits here: a laminated United Nations lanyard found dry in a river started a chain that would cost a rancher $11,000 and expose a patient three-year romance fraud. Who placed Thomas Campbell’s UN badge on the Sawgrass River bank before dawn, and why did the deception need that badge to vanish?

In this episode, we follow the timeline from a river discovery on January 9, 2022 to the online courtship that began in October 2021, showing how conversations moved from practical cattle questions to voice calls and then to wire transfers - and ask whether a badge was part of a deliberate cover-up.

Person: Denise Berry
Date: January 9, 2022
Location: Sawgrass River
Amount: $11,000
Complainant: Sharon Overton

- The badge was recovered at 6:40 AM on January 9, 2022 and was completely dry.
- Denise Berry had run 480 acres of beef cattle in Haskell County and had been managing it alone for 11 years.
- The online courtship began about October 2021 and moved to voice calls by the first week of January 2022.
- Sharon Overton, age 61, filed a fraud complaint in November 2021 after sending $9,000 in three wire transfers.
- The profile photo used the same gray-bearded man in a blue UN peacekeeping uniform with a UN patch on the left shoulder.

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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 Chessboard Bride: How a Stolen Identity Cost Diane $6,000

A steady, morning-after-morning campaign of attention turned into a six-thousand-dollar loss - and every message was calculated to feel like proof of love. The fraud used a stolen engineer's photo, daily chess puzzles, and a ninety-second video call to build a believable future; how did routine and patience do what warnings and budgets could not?

In this episode, we lay out the timeline from the first public chess post to the transfers that followed, showing the tactics, the touchpoints, and the precise decisions that escalated the scheme - and ask how Diane’s routines and online openness became the leverage that cost her everything.

Person: Diane Bailey
Person: Gary Dale Dale
Person: Angela Richardson
Date: December 4 (first request for $800)
Amount: just over $6,000 (total sent by December 19)

- Diane sent a first transfer of $800 on December 4 with a promised 72-hour repayment.
- By December 19 Diane had sent four separate transfers totaling just over $6,000.
- Daily morning messages arrived before 7 a.m., often with chess positions or personal questions.
- The fraudster used a profile photo belonging to structural engineer Martin Delacroix and presented himself as a 41-year-old civil engineer.
- Angela Richardson noticed Diane's withdrawal and odd behavior on December 10 and later brought records to the sheriff's substation.

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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].

He Said He Was A Chaplain - She Sent $16,500 Before The Lie Crumbled

She believed she had found someone who understood surviving illness - a retired hospital chaplain who messaged her on a cancer-survivor Facebook group and spoke with her for four hours the first night. But the man’s face was stolen, his backstory fabricated, and $16,500 she sent turned into $12,500 gone before his arrest - how did a careful, cancer-survivor medical coder get stitched into a scheme so convincing?

In this episode, we follow the timeline from a mysterious card tucked behind a house to the online friendship formed in a support group and the growing doubts raised by a sister’s request for video. You’ll hear how the impostor built trust with specific details, which documents were recovered after an arrest, and the question that drove the investigation: what methods did the perpetrator use to bypass verification and take $16,500 from Rebecca Smith?

Person: Rebecca Smith
Age: 39
Diagnosis: non-Hodgkin lymphoma (finished chemotherapy 4 years before)
Amount sent: $16,500
Amount missing at arrest: $12,500

- The card was found on November 9 at 7:40 a.m. in the utility access bay behind a house on Finch Mill Road.
- Rebecca joined the Facebook group Living Through It in January, two years before the card was found.
- The fake profile “Gail Roberts” contacted Rebecca in March and they spoke for four hours the first night.
- By June, Rebecca called “Gail Roberts” her boyfriend despite refusing a video call due to his claimed camera phobia.
- William Farr was arrested three weeks after the card was found with four IDs in four names, a burner phone, and an active VoIP line.

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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 Dead Lover's Photo: How a Red Ribbon Exposed a Pen‑Pal Fraud

A decades-old death certificate and a red ribbon turned a quiet Ohio routine into a puzzle: a laminated photo of a man who had been dead six years arrived in a mailbox with no address, and a shoebox of letters revealed mismatched dates that could not be coincidence. What exactly connected a 62-year-old Brackett seamstress to handwritten letters from Kampala, a 64-pound wooden crate, and a church fundraiser stranger - and why was a red ribbon threaded through the photograph?

In this episode, we walk through the chain of documents, dates, and small procedural details that link a longtime volunteer’s neat habits to an elaborate pen-pal correspondence; we present the records and the unanswered question left at the scene. Can the pattern of postmarks and dated letters tell us who manufactured the relationship, and what the ribbon was meant to signal?

Person: Alice Chambers
Location: Brackett, Ohio
Date: October 4, 2019
Topic: Pen‑pal correspondence with letters postmarked from Kampala, Uganda
Event: Laminated photograph of a deceased man threaded with a red ribbon found in a mailbox

- The laminated photograph was of a man who had been dead for six years.
- Alice Chambers was 62 years old and ran a tailoring and alterations shop on Weller Street.
- Alice saved 23 months of handwritten letters in a shoebox, each envelope still intact.
- Several envelopes showed Ugandan postmarks 3 to 5 days earlier than the dates written inside the letters.
- A wooden crate weighing 64 pounds was declared at customs as ceramic decorative goods.

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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].

He Loved an Architect That Didn't Exist - The Night He Found Out

He fell in love with a persona built from glass-and-steel renderings and a floor plan taped above a sink, and by the time he realized the man never existed he had wired $2,340 to strangers. The smell of burned coffee, an open window, and four words in red marker - THIS IS NOT HIM - point to a deception that unfolded entirely in text; who designed the image that convinced him, and why did it take a printed rendering for the truth to arrive?

In this episode, you will hear how a twenty-six-year-old man living in a house he inherited slowly became involved with an online profile presented as a forty-one-year-old architect, how the relationship moved from architecture talk to financial favors, and how a refunded payment and a taped printout led to a final, revealing moment. What did those four words mean to the people who found them?

Person: Kent Baker
Age: 26
Location: 412 Tanner Court, Westhaven Terrace, Dillard, Ohio
Amount sent: $2,340
Number of transactions: 4

- The morning Leon Price noticed the house incident was a Thursday in September 2019.
- Kent inherited the house after his grandmother died in 2017.
- Kent worked as a bookkeeper at Hartwick & Sons and held an associate's degree from Winthrop Community College.
- The online profile "James Young" claimed to be a 41-year-old architect working in Lagos and deaf, communicating entirely via text.
- Kent was the eighth-largest contributor among twelve active targets who sent money.

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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 Unopened Birthday Card That Bought a Man Six Years Behind Bars

A sealed birthday card addressed only to "Connie" was found in the gravel on County Route Nine - nine days after it was postmarked and with no mailbox for half a mile. That unopened envelope is tied to more than $22,000 in transfers and a romance that cost a woman six years of her life; how did a card in the road become the hinge of a criminal case?

In this episode, we tell how an online friendship turned into repeated wire transfers and suspicion, how specific details like a hotel balcony photo and an Allegheny College mention built credibility, and how a friend’s careful observation cracked the story open. What exactly did the card mean, and how did it connect to the money that changed Connie Lewis’s life?

Person: Connie Lewis
Location: Parrish, Ohio
Date found: second week of August (Tuesday morning)
Amount lost: more than $22,000
Photo clue: degraded edges consistent with screenshots

- The card was postmarked nine days earlier and found sealed in gravel on County Route Nine east of the Tillman Township line.
- The envelope front had only the single word "Connie" and no return address or street number.
- Connie was 48 years old when the events began and worked as a billing coordinator on Whitfield Street in Parrish.
- Connie wired $3,800 in one transfer, $6,000 in another, and by June had sent over $22,000 total to "David."
- A shared photo from "David" showed a hotel balcony with palm trees and had degraded edges Jennifer recognized as a screenshot artifact.

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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 Dish on Culver Street: How a Grief Scam Almost Cost Her Life

Fear and tenderness collide in a single blue ceramic dish: someone left exactly one-third cup of kibble under a clay saucer at an empty house, and that small, careful gesture eventually exposed a grief scam that nearly destroyed a woman’s life. How did a measured online stranger turn routine compassion into a trap that took twelve days to reveal itself?

In this episode, we tell the sequence of events from the blue dish on a utility pad to the private messages and phone calls that followed, tracing April Sharp’s feeding routines, online forum exchanges, and the warning signs her friend noticed - and ask how grief can be weaponized against the very structure someone builds to survive.

Person: April Sharp
Person: Connie Sharp
Person: Russell Burns
Location: Culver Street
Item: ceramic blue dish with one-third cup of dry kibble

- The dish held exactly one-third of a cup of dry kibble and was topped edge-to-edge by a clay saucer.
- The house behind which the dish sat had been empty for eleven days when the utility lineman found it.
- April Sharp was 32 years old and worked as a billing coordinator in Denton Falls.
- April fed her cat Obie at 6:00 AM and 6:00 PM, weighing one-third cup to the nearest gram and noting each feeding on a notepad.
- Russell Burns, who messaged April from the Continuing Bonds forum, said he was a 40-year-old civil engineer based in Columbus and had lost his father the previous winter.

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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].