But when Jeremiahs wife leaves him, she shares her doubts with Darlene about his illness.
It’s plucked from our archives while we work on more new episodes ofThe Perfect Scamfor you.
[00:00:59] Darlene Asher: He’d say he’s going to the doctor.
She’d say, “Can I come with?”
And he’d say, “No, I don’t want you there.
I don’t want you to hear what they have to say.”
Just little things like that were like, something doesn’t seem right.
[00:01:18] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Bob Sullivan.
Last week we spoke with Darlene Asher of Minnesota, queen of the local dart league.
Darlene rallied the dart club to help Jeremiah.
At the event, Jeremiah’s exhausted wife confides in Darlene about just how hard things are.
And some of the things she says are confusing.
Jeremiah isn’t taking traditional cancer medicines, for example.
That’s what Amanda told Darlene.
[00:02:19] Darlene Asher: I kept saying, well what are they doing for him?
But well, Darlene is asking questions.
Some things Amanda says just, just don’t add up.
She’s worried about the young mother who’s responsible for so much right now.
A little voice inside of Darlene is starting to get louder and louder.
[00:03:02] Darlene Asher: Things started to kind of not feel okay, like this is crazy.
There’s things out there to help people.
Amanda had said that he wouldn’t let her go to the doctor with him.
He’d say he’s going to the doctor.
She’d say, “Can I come with?”
And he’d say, “No, I don’t want you there.
I don’t want you to hear what they have to say.”
Just little things like that were like, something doesn’t seem right.
[00:03:37] Bob: And it isn’t just Darlene.
How is he doing?
Is he as sick as he thought he was?
Are they trying a treatment?
[00:04:03] Bob: Only a few weeks later, there is strange news.
Amanda takes a drastic steps, feels she has no choice.
And it said, “I just can’t do this anymore.”
So I immediately reached out to her and said, “What is going on?
Why are you, you know, that far away?”
And she said, “It’s the only friend that I knew I could go to.”
She said, “Jeremiah had physically abused her,” and she took the kids and left.
But she really has nowhere to go.
Darlene steps right in.
[00:05:13] Darlene Asher: I am about an hour closer to where she was living.
So I offered my home to her and her children.
That turned into them living here for probably a little over a year.
[00:05:47] Bob: Wow.
[00:05:48] Bob: Even from a distance, Jeremiah keeps making things hard on her.
[00:06:41] Bob: I don’t think Jeremiah’s sick?
It’s an almost unthinkable thing to hear but then not really unthinkable.
Darlene had begun to have her doubts.
[00:06:53] Darlene Asher: And I said, “What?
You’re his wife, and you’re telling me you don’t think he’s sick?”
Of course, she didn’t want anybody to know that she had went to the police.
She was scared, but she said, “I don’t know what else to do.”
Your jaw must have hit the ground.
Like, how could we ensure that you and the kids are okay?
You know, are you going to get a divorce?
At least until the police come calling on the once famous dart player.
[00:08:12] Darlene Asher: At that time, there was a lot of yelling.
How come people don’t believe him?
[00:08:47] Bob: But he still maintained that he was sick this whole time.
[00:08:50] Darlene Asher: Oh yes, yep.
I think he just got busted and that was that.
[00:09:05] Bob: He just busted, and that was that.
After a brief investigation, Jeremiah is arrested and charged with Theft By Swindle.
Darlene has a really hard time dealing with the complex feelings that arise from the news.
I still was hopeful that it wasn’t true.
In a way it was kind of a double-edged sword.
Oh my God, he’s not going to die.
On my God, he pulled the wool over our eyes.
We all believed him.
That is the most horrific thing somebody could do to somebody.
So it was a hard balance to figure out, you know, where your emotions were at.
I don’t want to know.
I don’t want nothing to do with this anymore.
[00:11:19] Bob: It is just an unthinkable crime, and it still haunts Darlene.
I wanted something to happen to show people that this is not the way to go.
Jeremiah had a 10-year-old son at the time who he told that he was going to die.
Who does that to a child?
[00:12:31] Bob: Who does that indeed?
[00:13:08] Bob: Will Darlene get the justice she seeks?
He’s been studying people who fake illnesses for many decades.
But these days…
[00:13:46] Marc Feldman: The technical term these days is Factitious Disorder.
It’s like fictitious, except “a” is the second letter.
He encountered it early on in his career.
The whole school thought she had terminal breast cancer.
I was the youngest member of the faculty at Duke University.
And so I got assigned the cases no one else would take.
And the conventional thinking at that time was that Munchausen Syndrome or Factitious Disorder was totally untreatable.
And so she was sent to me.
No one else would take her.
[00:16:48] Bob: There are a lot of reasons someone might mislead others about being sick.
The motivations run a gamut really, but they fall broadly into two categories.
But they start to really enjoy the attention they’re getting.
And so it merges between Malingering and Factitious Disorder going back and forth.
This sounds like a very painful and sad uh, illness.
And fortunately, she did, and she did well with treatment.
So it shows that even in the most extreme cases, there’s cause to be optimism.
But let’s back up a little bit in our explanation of this disorder.
So there’s a little bit of this in all of us, right?
[00:19:56] Marc Feldman: That’s right.
It’s on a continuum.
My second book was called, “The Spectrum of Factitious Disorders,” recognizing that huge range.
And so we wouldn’t call that Factitious Disorder or Malingering.
We would call it the Benign Use of Illness, or some people call it Normal Illness Behavior.
[00:21:22] Marc Feldman: This is especially true when it comes to the terminal cancer patients.
People start to wonder if you have terminal cancer, why are you alive four years later?
And it goes on and on and on.
They say, “Well God has cured me, and to question me is to question God.”
And that’s something nobody wants to do, and it, it causes people to stand back.
[00:22:43] Bob: So this problem is not new.
But nowadays, Factitious Disorder has a new ally.
[00:22:51] Bob: I believe you coined the term Munchausen by Internet.
And I’m, I’m wondering if the internet has made this problem worse?
It just seems like it makes things easier for this kind of syndrome.
[00:25:28] Marc Feldman: Absolutely true.
With that said, there are instances where individuals take a stab at take advantage of other’s generosity.
Go Fund Me has taken action and banned the individual and will provide refunds to all donors upon request.
[00:27:20] Marc Feldman: Usually there’s no prison sentence which is disappointing to me.
In fact, the police aren’t even interested unless the amount of money exceeds $5,000 or more.
These people don’t have the resources.
That’s a very distressing thing.
Um, most patients don’t do well with treatment which is disappointing.
But again, as I stated before, the punishments tend to be slaps on the wrist.
That’s a very big step to be taken very carefully.
I asked Marc what people should look for if they suspect something like this is going on.
[00:29:33] Marc Feldman: I always look for inconsistencies in the posts.
There is also excessive drama.
You know, we have the saying, “Things can be too good to be true.”
But they can also be too bad to be true, and that’s what these patients exploit.
Some of the claims are really fantastic and they contradict themselves or are flatly disproved.
[00:31:12] Marc Feldman: We have to bear in mind that this is relatively uncommon.
And so I wouldn’t want people to approach all such cases with a jaundiced eye.
And we needn’t be caustic when someone tells us about their up and down story of cancer.
Dismissing things as being …
[00:32:14] Marc Feldman: Yes.
[00:32:14] Bob: …all, in their head.
So we don’t want to lose our perspective on that.
It takes an accumulation of positive warning signs for me to start to doubt what I’m being told.
[00:33:26] Bob: But among these rare cases some of the stories can be really awful.
There is Munchausen by Proxy, for example, where sometimes people say their children are sick.
And in very extreme cases, actually make their children sick so you can get attention or money.
In fact, some people do this with pets too.
And I, of course, told her to go the police.
[00:35:05] Bob: So she essentially killed 30 dogs before someone called law enforcement?
[00:35:11] Marc Feldman: I don’t even know that they’ve called law enforcement yet.
But yes, that’s what was quoted to me.
They seem to delight in all of that.
So these can be very perverse individuals.
[00:35:55] Bob: Marc, I’ve got to be honest.
There’s shivers going down my spine hearing you describe this.
How, how do you study this all the time?
And so I feel more hopeful about the prognosis in these cases than most experts do.
It’s also fascinating.
It’s just amazing to study the human condition and see how extreme it can get.
[00:37:02] Bob: So what did happen to Jeremiah John Smith?
As Marc said, most criminals who fake an illness for money don’t serve jail time.
Smith pled guilty to Theft by Swindle, a felony in Minnesota.
He was sentenced to 10 years probation.
[00:37:19] Bob: And you think that’s not enough.
[00:37:21] Darlene Asher: It’s definitely not enough.
He needed jail time.
[00:37:25] Bob: He’s a free man basically, right?
[00:37:26] Darlene Asher: Yeah, he is.
I don’t believe his sentence was strong enough.
[00:37:49] Bob: Smith hasn’t reached out to any of the victims, Darlene says.
[00:37:53] Darlene Asher: Like, there was no, I’m sorrys.
He fell from the face of the earth as far as no more Facebook posts, no more communication.
The only reason I knew more is because his wife was living in my basement.
[00:38:26] Bob: Darlene says the episode is still very raw for her.
And I just couldn’t wrap my head around it.
It just, I still can’t honestly wrap my mind around it.
[00:39:25] Bob: And it’s left her with doubts about her entire generous nature.
[00:39:34] Darlene Asher: It is.
It’s like feeling like you’ve lost a loved one, but you didn’t.
It’s still very hurtful.
A friend of mine is putting on a benefit and it makes me nervous.
It makes me, you know, I’m like, let’s not do a benefit.
I don’t need people questioning you know why are we doing a benefit for my 1-year-old grandchild.
You know I just feel like everybody has that fear now of is this really necessary or not?
You start questioning everything.
It just, I mean even right now I’m in knots inside.
It just blows my mind that somebody could do that.
[00:40:58] Bob: Naturally, the entire episode has left her a lot more cautious.
[00:41:03] Darlene Asher: For me, I have been limited involvement in any fundraiser since.
This is what we learned at the doctor’s visit today.
Be cautious I guess is what I want to say to anybody.
I am, I am skeptical of any and every benefit right now.
I probably always will be.
[00:43:09] Bob: Darlene is naturally a bit more skeptical now.
[00:43:33] Darlene Asher: Thank you.
Call the AARP Fraud Watch web link Helpline at 877-908-3360.
Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next.
That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org.
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.
