Heller and Shannon: Catfished

Heller’s phone started ringing at 1:36 in the morning. That is never a good thing.

Shannon woke up more quickly than Heller. His bedroom was still “not home”. It had different sounds and different smells. She slept more lightly because of it.

Heller wasn’t far behind Shannon in waking up. He reached out and answered the call.

“Mmm, yup. Hello?” he addressed the caller, the sleep in his eyes making it difficult to read the caller-id.

The effect on what he heard was galvanizing. “Rusty was in an accident?” he asked for confirmation.

“Which hospital?” he asked.

Shannon could hear “Sparrow” from the distraught woman speaking with Heller.

After a half-minute of listening to the woman, Heller said, “I will be there as soon as I can” and then hung up.

“Damn, damn and double-damn!” Heller exclaimed as he turned on the light and started pulling on clothes.

“What happened?” Shannon asked.

“Rusty is one of the guys I work with. In fact, I went to school with him. Known him since sixth-grade. We played ball together” Heller said.

“He hit the big oak tree at the Welfare-Charlotte-Cutoff and his mom said that he isn’t expected to survive. The doctor said they will probably ask her to pull-the-plug in the morning.”

“She wants one other person there. Another set of ears. A shoulder to cry on” Heller said.

“That sucks” Shannon said sympathetically, but wondering why Heller sounded so ...angry.

“Seems odd that he would be driving this late at night on a Tuesday, though?” Shannon said.

“It wasn’t an accident” Heller said with certainty.

“How can you know that?’ Shannon asked.

“ ‘cause about ten years ago we were driving around and drinking a few beers when we drove around that bend and Rusty said ‘If I ever have to end-it-all, its gonna be that tree right there” Heller said.

“But why would would Rusty want to commit suicide?” Shannon asked, horrified.

“Because Rusty got sucked in by a “Catfisher”. We tried to warn him. She was too good to be true. But Rusty couldn’t hear it” Heller said.

“What is a “Catfisher”” Shannon wanted to know.

“It is somebody who pretends to be somebody they are not on the internet. Usually to scam money from some lonely guy” Heller informed her.

Shannon, in many ways, was very naive.

“So...did that happen to Rusty? About the money, I mean?” Shannon asked.

“He took out a mortgage on his house. Financed it to the hilt and sent it to her. Hell, I don’t even know if it is a “her”. Rusty said she was a war-widow in the Ukraine and needed the money to bribe Russian guards and buy a plane ticket” Heller said, despair in his voice.

“And he believed her?” Shannon said with disbelief.

“Hook, line and sinker” Heller said. “We tried to talk him out of it but he WANTED to believe her” Heller said.

“I am guessing that the love of his life just evaporated and left him owing a mountain of money and feeling like a total fool” Heller said.

*

Heller was not home by the time Shannon had to leave for work.

She was mostly going through the motions at work, which was fine because it was a slow day and Shannon was good enough at her job that she could run at 40% and it was plenty good-enough.

In the middle of the morning she asked her new boss “Mr. Barker, do you know anything about “Catfishing” and scams?”

Her boss said “You can call me ‘Fred’ when there are no customers around. But yes, as a matter of fact I know quite a bit about ‘Catfishing’. It is something we try to protect our customers from.”

“What do you want to know?” Fred asked.

“Well, how does it work? Why would anybody fall for it?” Shannon asked.

“Do you know anything about Pavlov’s Dogs?” Fred asked.

Shannon nodded. She had gone to college and taken the usual psychology classes. As a dog-lover she had paid close attention to Pavlov’s experiments.

“Then you know that neurons that fire together, wire together. Catfishers know that by pushing certain buttons in a certain order, some lonely men will become so immersed in a fantasy that they will be incapable of seeing the reality that the rest of us see” Fred told her.

“Most Catfishers play the Knight in Shining armor gambit. The let the target rescue them in little ways at first but then they keep reinforcing the behavior by asking for ever-bigger “favors” “ Fred said.

“Seems like what they are doing would be super-obvious” Shannon observed.

“It would, but they mix it up. They keep revealing little bits of information that seem intimate. They mix up the timing of how often they ask for a favor. A good Catfisher is very, very patient” Fred told her.

“I still don’t get it” Shanon said.

“Let me tell you about hunting for turkey” Fred said, warming up to one of his passions.

“No mortal human can sneak up on a wild turkey in the woods. But if you set-up a blind where turkeys feed and you are good at working a hen-turkey call, you can get the biggest tom-turkey in the woods to come to you” Fred said. “You just need to figure out how hen-turkeys sweet-talk when they want a little romance.”

“But how many lonely guys are actually out there?” Shannon said, still dubious.

“More than you think” Fred said. “But Catfishers scam lots of men who aren’t lonely, too. It is that wired-together thing. If the Catfisher pushes the right buttons then the target, called “the mark” in the trade, stops thinking with his brain and starts thinking with his emotions. He might not be very successful in real life but he can be a hero to his new romance-interest.”

“Why are you asking?” Fred wanted to know.

“One of my boy-friend’s best friends got scammed by a Catfisher” Shannon said.

“That is too bad. Unfortunately the police don’t have a very good record at being able to recover those funds” Fred informed her.

“In this case, it wouldn’t matter” Shannon said. “I got a text a half-hour ago that his buddy had successfully committed suicide.”