I just felt young again.
I trusted him; I had no reason not to trust at that point.
(MUSIC SEGUE)
[00:00:26] Michelle: Welcome back to AARP’s The Perfect Scam.
I’m your host, Michelle Kosinski.
This week, we’re going deep inside the very dark world of romance scams.
So first, let’s welcome Debby Montgomery Johnson.
Sit back, get ready, she has quite a story to tell.
[00:01:10] Michelle: That’s right.
I was down in the Navy Yard for a while.
He was also Air Force.
And I decided to go Reserves.
So it was a great experience.
[00:01:58] Debby Montgomery Johnson: Well I was an imagery analyst.
I was looking for Russian equipment and things in the trees.
[00:02:13] Michelle: That’s fascinating.
[00:02:22] Michelle: And that were suspicious.
Let’s go back there.
Debby was also serving as treasurer in her local school district.
It was an April morning, and Debby had been in meetings.
And the first one was from my oldest son, who was 23.
And a long pause.
And I listened to that, then I checked out the rest of the messages.
You know, everybody was calling to let me know what they had heard.
It happened so quickly, I had to react very quickly.
I think I just went into what I call suspended animation.
[00:04:21] Michelle: It had come out of nowhere.
Lou had had a heart attack while he was on a business trip.
For Debby then, it was like a blur for months.
She was struggling, trying to be strong.
[00:04:40] Debby Montgomery Johnson: Honestly, in that six months I was really running on empty.
The hardest time for me was between 12 and 4 at night, when I was in bed alone.
I did 10 laps of one stroke, 10 laps of another.
And they said, “You know, try dating.”
So how was I could to meet somebody?
And so I figured, what the heck?
I’ll just try it.
Plus, it was hard to imagine finding someone who measured up to the man she missed.
[00:06:27] Debby Montgomery Johnson: My husband was extraordinarily smart and articulate and well written.
He was handsome, and so I was judging everybody by my perfect idea of what Lou was.
[00:06:51] Michelle: And one day, up pops Dr. Eric Cole.
A handsome guy in his mid-50s.
Dark, wavy hair, a little graying at the temples, deep soulful eyes.
He’s kind of a babe.
He looks tan and confident and friendly.
And they have common interests.
Debby, with all her intelligence background, immediately does some due diligence on this guy.
And they said, “No.”
[00:07:50] Michelle: Yeah.
[00:07:50] Debby Montgomery Johnson: Which made sense.
It was a legitimate company, and it, everything sounded, you know, like it should.
[00:07:58] Michelle: He tells Debby he is just about to start a job overseas.
He’ll be in Malaysia for months working on a deal with India.
So, he says, it’ll be easier for them to chat over Yahoo Messenger.
So long distance text chats suit her just fine.
I had pictures of his son and his dog and his sister, and uh pictures of his home.
Things that would build a profile of this is his family.
[00:08:34] Michelle: At any point, did he look or seem too good to be true?
He was very well educated, he was from London, and everything seemed right.
One was with Mary and Kenny, Mary is his sister, Kenny is his son.
[00:09:26] Michelle: And do you felt like you were getting to know them too?
[00:09:30] Debby Montgomery Johnson: Absolutely.
[00:09:52] Debby Montgomery Johnson: And then the stuff a few weeks later came back to me.
So I said, “Eric, why am I getting this mail returned?”
And he always had a plausible reason for why something didn’t get delivered or something didn’t happen.
And it was incredible the over, it was two years, it was a two-year relationship.
And I thought I knew just about everything.
When Kenny and I were writing, it sounded to me like a child.
[00:10:36] Michelle: And excuses, plausible excuses are Eric’s specialty.
He’s going to come back home to the US, but then work delays him.
The deal in Malaysia is delayed over and over again.
There’s trouble with customs and other life events.
He was a way away from us.
[00:11:21] Michelle: Because love is also developing.
And it is strong.
I just, I believed him.
I believed everything he was saying, and I just, I trusted him.
I had no reason not to trust at that point.
She sees that for the first time in really decades, she felt deeply understood, listened to.
[00:12:09] Debby Montgomery Johnson: He listened for hours.
And then he would write back.
And I could feel that he loved me.
The things he was saying, the songs he would send to me were just beautiful.
And he wrote poetry, and now, was it his?
We talked about business.
We talked about business plans.
He was trying to do something for his company, and it was a multi-level relationship.
[00:13:03] Michelle: And then, one day comes a request, a small one.
It was $45.
No problem at all.
In fact, she’s happy to.
Let’s go help him out.
And so I, I honestly, I didn’t think even about it.
And I thought, the more the merrier.
[00:13:37] Michelle: So that $45 doesn’t even go to Eric.
Later, Eric starts having some problems with his business in Asia.
Eric needs some help, and Debby is there for him.
[00:14:05] Debby Montgomery Johnson: The first time was a request for $2500 through Western Union.
I got a really odd feeling about that, ‘cause I’d never done it.
That was the first thing that we had to do.
And I had to send them the money, and it wasn’t money going to him.
And that was a little unusual.
It was for his benefit.
But the person that I was sending the money to was one of his friends.
And I said, “Well who is this guy?”
He goes, “Well he lives here,” I think he was in Malaysia at the time.
And again, I thought, well that makes sense.
That is how close she feels to this man.
[00:15:30] Michelle: And so then did $2500 turn into more and more?
Not huge ones, but then it moved to wire transfers.
And I’m like, “Well why would you do that?
You have to trust me; as a customer this is what I want to be doing.”
And so I ended up leaving that bank.
[00:16:21] Michelle: So what was all this money for?
So I understood that in a way, that he was going to get paid when this was done.
Let’s get the job done so he gets paid.
[00:16:41] Michelle: Whoa.
And when I say all in, get ready for this.
[00:17:15] Michelle: And how much did you send him over these two years?
Again, that was over two years.
I didn’t have the million sitting in the bank.
I came up with it.
I turned in my retirement accounts thinking it was a loan.
You know, it was always a promise of, we’ll get this back before you get penalized.
If I quit now, then look at all the money I’ve lost.
But if this is the last one, then, then he’ll be here.
Then he’ll be home.
And that’s how my thought pattern went was that just this last one and he’ll be home.
[00:18:04] Michelle: More than one million dollars.
Money that she had to sacrifice her own future for.
You just wish that some hands could have reached into that bubble and pulled her out of there.
[00:18:29] Debby Montgomery Johnson: Well, I’m sure it was painful.
At that point, again, I was so invested into it that it was, he needed it.
He was family, and I was going to help him.
[00:18:39] Michelle: Did your family know that you were sending him money?
[00:18:42] Debby Montgomery Johnson: No.
[00:18:43] Michelle: Okay.
[00:18:43] Debby Montgomery Johnson: Uh, my accountant did.
And he was all bought in on it, too.
You know, everything that we put in, plus interest.
It’s the one thing I regret the most, is that I took that money and sent it.
But, you know, my father would say, two years?
There’s no way that this could be a scam.
This has gone on for two years.
Don’t do that."
And I’m thinking, you guys, I’m the adult here.
And Eric would say, don’t, “You don’t have to let your kids know.
So if he asked me to do something, I basically did it because we were partners.
He was coming home to me.
[00:20:11] Michelle: Two years.
One morning Debby wakes up, just a normal day, and it all cracks wide open.
I thought that was an interesting question.
We had had many spiritual discussions over the years.
It’s going to hurt you, and I need for you to be able to forgive me.
I have to tell you this.”
And I said, “Eric, I don’t know that I want to hear this.”
And I’m reading that going, what’s been a scam?
And you know, what are you talking about?
And I said, “Are you okay?”
I thought he was sick.
I said, “There’s something wrong.
What is going on here?”
Only now does she not trust his words.
He said, “I’m not lying.”
I said, “Then you should probably prove to me that you’re not lying.”
So I said, “Walk me through how to do this.”
[00:22:38] Michelle: Oh.
[00:22:40] Debby Montgomery Johnson: And I’m thinking, oh my gosh.
What has happened here?
He’s Nigerian with a round, boyish face, a dimpled chin.
He looks like he’s in his 20s with a big warm smile that lights up his whole face.
He’s sitting in a black office pop in chair against a nondescript gray wall.
He’s at work, and Debby has been his work for the last two emotional years.
And he was smiling, and he just said, “Can we keep this going?”
And I’m thinking, are you out of your mind?
And then he said, “Is it because I’m young?”
And I’m thinking, well, maybe, but no.
You scammed me out of a million dollars.
[00:23:40] Michelle: Oh my god.
And I’m thinking, yeah, right.
But I said, “Why did you do this?
Why did you confess?”
because scammers don’t confess.
And I’m thinking, well thank you for that.
Because when Lou left, he left, and I never saw him again.
If Eric had just stopped communicating with me, I would have felt like he had died.
[00:24:41] Debby Montgomery Johnson: It’s awful, you know.
Because he, he has my life.
I have 4,000 pages of, I printed it, thinking I was having family history.
I have 4,000 pages of communication between Eric and me.
[00:25:01] Michelle: Did he want to have a relationship with you?
I was a Defense Intelligence Agency officer.
If I can keep him in contact now, maybe we can catch him.
[00:25:28] Michelle: Debby is devasted and furious.
She needs to do something.
She goes to the FBI.
[00:25:39] Michelle: Yeah.
[00:25:52] Michelle: Did Joseph say what he did with a million dollars?
[00:25:56] Debby Montgomery Johnson: He didn’t get it.
That’s the thing.
And that’s what’s so frightening.
[00:26:20] Michelle: Did he give any of it back?
And honestly, he said he was scared.
He was scared that if he tried to send it to me, that perhaps he would get arrested.
And I don’t know what part is real after the scam, after his reveal.
He did say that he had siblings he was taking care of.
I don’t know if that was true or not.
He did stay in touch with me for several months.
Not ever asking for money, always saying, “How are you?”
Maybe Joseph, aka Dr. Eric, was hoping he could become Mr. Debby and move to America.
So, yeah, we started dating…
[00:27:22] Michelle: Oh.
That’s, like this has a happy ending.
Like, did you still feel love for this person even though he turned into Joseph?
[00:27:53] Debby Montgomery Johnson: No.
It wasn’t love at that point.
It was concern, but I was mad.
We paid premiums for years.
[00:28:10] Michelle: Right.
[00:28:17] Debby Montgomery Johnson: And he refused to pay it.
Two months later he died.
[00:28:26] Michelle: Oh.
[00:28:27] Debby Montgomery Johnson: So, I had no life insurance.
[00:28:36] Michelle: Right.
That’s why it was so extraordinary that I gave money away like I did.
Again, I expected it to come back to me.
It was always a loan.
It was never, take it.
It was going to come back.
I had lost my trust in another human being.
And that was difficult for me because I am a very trusting person, or I was.
[00:29:25] Debby Montgomery Johnson: …years I’ve been lied to.
And we never dated anybody else after that.
[00:29:41] Michelle: How long have you been married?
[00:29:43] Debby Montgomery Johnson: It’ll be five years in, in October.
[00:29:45] Michelle: Congratulations.
That’s so wonderful.
And when I started, I realized that that’s the way to help me heal.
And I just said, “Don’t do this to anybody else.”
I’m just sad that what he, what he did really destroyed me from the inside out.
I had told him everything about me.
Eric became my life in those two, in those two years.
[00:31:27] Michelle: What amazes you most about the cases that you see?
[00:31:32] Debby Montgomery Johnson: That it’s happening today so quickly.
And it’s very intelligent, very well-trained, well-financed women that are being taken.
I’m not sure that I care.
I just felt young again.
As soon as I get paid, we’re going to, we’re going to pay you back.
We’ll make you whole; we’ll make it better.
And we’ll be fine.
So it was this security of, he’s going to take care of me when he gets here.
That was my hope.
[00:34:05] Michelle: But that, isn’t that makes it worse?
Isn’t, doesn’t that make it more cruel?
[00:34:09] Debby Montgomery Johnson: Absolutely.
For all I know, he could be doing the same thing now.
But I felt for, for a moment, I mean why else would he confess?
Why else would he talk about forgiveness?
Why would he be so worried about what I did?
And she gives some practical advice to people looking for love out there.
[00:35:20] Michelle: Her goal is that people openly talk about their experiences.
Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For AARP’s The Perfect Scam, I’m Michelle Kosinski.
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The two grow closer, texting every day.
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AARPs Fraud Watch data pipe can help you spot and avoid scams.
