Family means everything, and when someone dear to you makes a questionable decision, it’s only natural to be concerned. Dana has always had her family’s best interests at heart. When she found out that her grandfather, Joe, was moving in with a woman that he recently met online, Dana felt uneasy about the entire situation.
Taking The Bait
Joe had recently met a woman from the online dating site, Plenty of Fish, and they hit it off quickly. The woman charmed him, and he believed everything she had been saying. One thing led to another, and after a few weeks, they decided to take the next step by moving in together. Joe packed everything up, left his house, and started the drive to his “new home.”
Dana felt like something was off, so she decided to take matters into her own hands. Ironically, she remembered that Nev from the MTV show “Catfish” had used Spokeo to search for people. She thought to herself, “This actually can’t be happening to us, can it?” She joined Spokeo, did some research, and found out that the whole situation was a scam. Dana realized that the woman had given her grandfather a fake name and location. Joe was already on his way to Indiana, where the woman said she lived, but in reality, he was talking to a person who actually lived hundreds of miles away in New Jersey.
Discovering The Truth
Dana immediately called her grandfather to tell him what she discovered. At first, he didn’t believe her, but he eventually accepted the bad news. He turned his car around and headed back home. He called the woman to confront her. After the girlfriend realized that he was serious about driving down to “meet” her, she didn’t answer and stopped responding to him. She disappeared and fell off the radar, which only further proved that she wasn’t being honest about who she was.
“There was no woman, the whole thing was a scam – not sure what the scammer’s end goal was, but she got an 85-year-old man to drive over 900 miles to an abandoned house!”
Although the circumstances were unfortunate, Dana was very thankful that she was able to help her grandfather avoid finding himself in a potentially unsafe situation.