Catfishing in Yemen

And now for something completely different:

A while back I delved into the unforgiving world of online dating. I sincerely never thought I would be fishing in these waters, but also I never thought I would become a widow at age 50. When I joined my bereavement support group for loss-of-spouse, in October 2019, I met 13 beautiful souls who supported each other, listened to one another, laughed together, and of course cried together. Out of the 14 of us, only 2 of us had experienced instant, sudden loss of our spouses, and of course, the loss was way too soon. It's been more than 2 years since our bereavement group met regularly for a course of 9 weeks, and yet we are still there for each other no matter what. It's a nice feeling to be able to pick up the phone and call on my girlfriends Pat or Barb and know that their understanding is like a warm hug. Others in the group are also like family, and during the pandemic, we have been hell-bent on keeping in touch through zoom meetings and the occasional in-person gathering.

I remember during the course, in November 2019, the two of us who had experienced sudden loss bravely admitted to the group that the thought of dating again was intruding on our minds. Were we crazy, we thought? How can we even be thinking this? How could we possibly be any healthy companion to anyone when our wounds were far from being healed? 

It turns out these thoughts are completely normal and as our facilitator, Andrea, put it, not surprising at all. When Misha died, all his warmth, his embraces, his winks, and our snuggles went with him (Well, Misha would mistakenly say, "let's snorkel" instead of "let's snuggle"). This sudden elimination of any physical comfort and affection greatly affected me. My son Andrew also had many cuddly moments with Misha, and they also often joked together and shared a midnight snack unbeknownst to me while I slept soundly upstairs, happy as can be knowing I had a loving and joyful family life. 

Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I was packing up my things in the house in order to prepare it for a long-term rental. All those precious photos of this idyllic family life brought many tears to my eyes, but I forged ahead, silently burying the sadness among the packing paper, brown boxes, and impenetrable packing tape. By that time I had had some pretty depressing one-time dates and scrolling through the online profiles of men who think taking a selfie pointed at their nose hairs is flattering only made the situation worse. So I laugh a bit and take a break, but the possibility of finding a match lures me back online. 

Now that I am in Mexico, I am fishing in warmer, brighter waters. The water may be different in colour, but it is not clear. These men say all the right things, that I am pretty, that they are excited to meet me, that they can see a future together, but since this is a revolving door of women, hookups, and anonymity, before too long they lose interest and move on to the next catch. That's fine by me because in my mind's eye I gaze at that picture where Misha is looking at me with cherishing eyes, and it reminds me not to settle for the bottom-feeders. My mom is very funny because at first, I wasn't sure I was going to tell her I was online on a dating app, but then I thought, if she can't handle it it's her problem. So when I told her, I was very surprised that she actually took it as juicy news, and she gets a kick out of the posturing some of the suitors lead with. Sometimes over breakfast, she is eagerly waiting for me to continue the saga, and she rubs her hands together in anticipation, asking me what happened, as her eyes expand as if she was watching the most thrilling cliff-hanger ever made. Once I reveal the latest ugly truth, she just says, "Oj my Gad, forrrget eet!" She tells me to throw out Mr. X along with the trash. She also warns me that these Mexicans are all the same, laying it on thick with as much sincerity as a share-condo salesperson. Now that I think of it, these over-enthusiastic share-condo salesmen are probably the polar opposite of what Misha was like. He was humble, quiet, unassuming but genuine and smart enough not to boast. I keep that as a reminder of what virtues to look for in the next Mr. Right. 

You'll understand, therefore, why I was excited to meet a new match online, a Polish gentleman who happened to be in Mexico City when we matched. He had kind eyes and a sincere expression on his face that even gave my mom hope. "This is a man who does not play games," she said when she saw him. It was true, but the other truth was that he looked A LOT like Misha. 

Polish guy from online dating-looks a lot like Misha

Misha at age 58

Anyway this Polish guy, Samuel T. had many nice things to say but also he seemed worldly as he was well travelled. He spoke several languages and so I gave him a chance and trusted him enough to chat through WhatsApp, outside of the dating app. We chatted on WhatsApp in the mornings and I was trying to figure out when I would be back in Mexico City (I was in Cuernavaca 70 km away), so we could physically meet. I started to probe for possible meeting times, and Samuel announced he was out of the country, but would be back in a month. He said, "Like I told you earlier, I am in Yemen." 

"Yemen?" I thought. "What the heck is he doing in Yemen? "

"I'm a medical doctor, working in a camp hospital," he said.

Ohh, how admirable, I thought. I soon learned more, Samuel was 58. He had lost his parents at a young age. He went to medical school in Poland but because he lost his American mom when he was 28, he moved to the US at that age to meet his aunt and work there as a doctor. He had a son who was 16 and in a US boarding school because Samuel had lost his wife 6 years earlier and had been working at a mission hospital in Germany before his 11-month stint in Yemen. 

Picture of Samuel (left) at the camp hospital in Yemen

All this sounded very noble and romantic to me, and I even confided in my widow friends Barb and Pat that I met someone online that I thought showed some promise, especially since Samuel said he would be back in Mexico by the end of November. Apparently, he would be staying for a month. 

Even though I started to get a bit excited, a few details didn't add up and introduced a few red flags that raised my suspicions. First, Samuel had suddenly deleted his account on the dating app, and I had to ask him for photos, which he did produce, to remind me of his different looks. Second, Yemen is in flat-out war, and as far as I knew the UN does not send doctors to war zones. There is no peacekeeping there right now and also Samuel said he would be visiting his son in the US in early December, but if his Mexico visit was really for a month, that timeline would not coincide. The other thing was the spelling errors. His English was OK but not perfect and I was in no position to check his Polish, but his Spanish was OK. Also, I had heard how some women are catfished for months, thinking they are forging a romantic relationship with someone when all the while they are being primed to be asked for money in some urgent situation that relies on a transfer of money to exterminate a life-or-death situation. The final straw for me was that I had asked to hear his voice as so far all our communication had been through text. He said he would call on WhatsApp but he never did. 

I let the red flags lead the way and I relied on my resourcefulness and started to Google how one would know whether a UN doctor/surgeon really is the real deal. Search results revealed the ugly truth. There are no such doctor/surgeons in Yemen or Afghanistan, or anywhere else, but there are lots of Nigerian scammers who prey on unsuspecting lonely women, and they tell them that they too are alone, that they are widowed, that they have a child in boarding school and that they are saving lives in some war-torn area of the world which will soon be cut off from any financial lifeline and which will position you as the saviour of the world so long as you prove your love to them with many dollar bills. Well, I did not let it get that far. In fact, I reverse-Google Image searched his photos, and BAM I was flabbergasted to see the results. The picture was real but it was not Samuel's. It belongs to a poor unsuspecting doctor in Ukraine, who happens to be the Ukraine minister of health. He is everywhere online, so I guess his photos double as a free-for-all for the profile images used by the scammers.

As I told my mom, the whole thing was fake, and she couldn't believe it, but she also was very proud of her sharp daughter for not getting swayed by these things. I abruptly blocked Samuel, and thank goodness I had not given him my real number. My WhatsApp number is not tied to anything else, and by now he is well on his way to some other online ocean.

I had also seen Samuel's fake Facebook profile, using the fake image of the Ukrainian health minister, Borys Tudorov. I screen-captured the fake Facebook profile, the fake Whats App profile, and number and messaged all the friends Samuel was following on Facebook, who coincidentally all were women around my age in Latin America. I also screen-captured the real Borys Tudorov and sent the two screen captures to as many of Samuel's unsuspecting "friends" as I could. And lastly, I sent the two pictures and a message to the real Dr. Tudorov in Ukraine. He has seen the message which gives me some form of relief. 

Samuel T = fake catfisher in Nigeria

Borys Tudorov = real person

In the end, I didn't get anything out of this "relationship" other than the power to potentially help a few dozen unsuspecting victims, and of course, my mom got a very juicy story over breakfast. She was very funny because she doesn't understand the online world at all. In fact, she often sends me a message on WhatsApp but doesn't have any connection to the Internet, so her message doesn't reach me until she is suddenly on some wifi hours later by which time the context of the message is so lost it almost seems like spam. 

"But how did you find out?" she asked? I told her, "Well, I was on my phone and after chatting with him there were some red flags that appeared," I said.

"Red flags? Do I have that on my phone? I don't see flags appear on my phone? Is my phone a smartphone?" 

I think I will take a break from the online dating world and devote more time to showing my mom how to navigate the waters of the Internet and all things digital. After all, it's 11pm now and my WhatsApp just informed me she is waiting for me in the shade at the base of the pyramid we visited 9 hours earlier ;D

 I'll tell you that story next time!