Editor’s note: Sociopaths can fool anyone — even former fraud investigators. Here’s what a Lovefraud reader says about his experience.
I am a banking attorney, now in the private sector, but formerly conducting criminal bank fraud investigations when I worked for the government. A friend of mine who is a psychiatrist says I am one of the few people he’s ever met who can size up a person accurately within 10 seconds.
However, I am here to tell you from an experience I’ve been going through the last week or so that no matter how intuitive or streetsmart a person is, sociopaths can fool anyone. They are a breed unto themselves.
I am a gay man and was introduced to my sociopath back in February through my accountant who thought we had a lot in common. The sociopath is an interior designer by trade, but told me about a real estate deal he was trying to put together, to the tune of 40 million plus, to restore one of the legendary estates in the US and reconfigure it into high-end condos. I have to admit I was intrigued by his passion for the project.
We could talk for hours about everything—I tend to be pretty guarded by nature, but I found myself opening up around him. The sexual chemistry was amazing. I also found that he evoked feelings in me that surprised me—I was actually starting to envision a “white picket fence” future with this man and felt incredibly protective of him.
Inconsistencies in the story
Then this past weekend, while he was out, I noticed his wallet on the kitchen table. There were already a few inconsistencies in his story that were nagging at me — and we had only been seriously dating for six weeks. Anyhow, I found a Medicare card, which I found really unusual since he is 41 and I thought you had to be 65 to receive Medicare benefits.
To make a long story short, by the time I finished my investigation I discovered that he had at least 30 unsastisfied judgments against him, going back to 1991, well in excess of $200,000.
Read more: Fraud and other white-collar crimes — big and getting bigger
He had also told me that his landlord was trying to buy out his lease. No wonder, since the judgment searches revealed that in 2004 the landlord tried to force his way into the apartment and eject him. So, he probably hasn’t paid a penny in rent in years.
When I spoke to the attorneys on the last judgment entered against him in 2005 for $50,000, they told me he not only hadn’t any assets, but he also told them, at the time the lawsuit was filed in 1998, that he was dying of leukemia.
During a rant this weekend, he also mentioned how angry he was at a friend of his who recommended a certain design firm to another friend and how dare she do that when she knew the firm had fired him during the week his mother had died. I asked a friend who is a designer to get the story for me.
It seems he was head of the firm’s designers, but intercepting customer orders as they came in and selling the goods through someone he knew, then stalling the clients. When he was out that week, the firm finally did an inventory check and reviewed customer invoices and figured out what was going on. They didn’t press charges because they didn’t want the bad PR.
Fortunate escape
Of course, I had let myself get sucked into his vision of redoing this grand estate by this time. I thankfully didn’t open up my wallet, or let him move in. But I did ask a few friends who were bankers to take a look at the project. Once I conducted my investigation, I grabbed the phone, told them what I learned and to spike the project.
All the classic signs. Fortunately, I got out financially intact and with my reputation intact.
My friend who is a psychiatrist told me I should be proud of myself in that I figured him out within six weeks— even trained psychiatrists can get conned by these people longer than that. I have to admit I’m still sorting through all my conflicting feelings.
While I realize intellectually that what feelings he had for me are probably pure surface, it still hurts. My friend the psychiatrist told me that this guy probably actually liked me on some level, but also realized that with my background I was going to figure out his game ultimately, and then the jig would be up. I guess that’s a nicer way for me to think about it than to simply think that I was a means to an end.
Psychic sociopaths
I’ve come to the conclusion that sociopaths are psychic. Ever since I made my discoveries earlier this week, the last few days he has been bombarding me with phone calls and emails wanting to know if I am okay, etc. and proposing we get together. Mind you, I haven’t brought up any of what I’ve learned with him, since my psychiatrist friend and a police officer friend told me that he could turn violent on me.
Getting these people out of your life definitely poses a challenge. Both suggested that if he doesn’t vanish on his own once he discovers that I’ve outlived my usefulness by not being able to get the banks I sent his business proposal to to come through with the loans, that I tell him that an ex-boyfriend has re-entered the picture and that he is (a) a detective with the NYC Frauds Unit or (b) an FBI agent, the theory being that either will send the sociopath scurrying for the hills.
Anyhow, your webpage serves a real purpose. Keep up the good work. Tell your readers to trust their guts— sociopaths can fool anyone. If something is nagging at them, there’s probably a real reason for it.
I’ve spoken to a few friends this week, and I learned that there’s a real growing trend out there — after a first date, if you like someone and want to see them again, it’s becoming common to run a background check of them through Intellisearch or US Search. I’m now joining that club. If I had known about his chaotic financial history, I would have run for the hills before I ever got involved with him.
Learn more: How to report your abuser’s crimes so the police take you seriously
Lovefraud originally posted this article on July 1, 2007.
Why falling for a sociopath doesn’t mean you’re stupid
The sociopath I dated was also married claiming to be separated. I had never dated a married man, but he was so convincing that the marriage was over and the divorce papers were soon to be filed as soon as some legal army stuff was settled. He eventually told me the divorced papers had been filed. I was ecstatic. I all turned out to be lies. He lives with his wife and there is no divorce. Who knows how many other women he was playing at the same time as me.
Cookie,
Obviously, if you can google his name and get some evidence, this would be the best. But don’t be surprised if your friend doesn’t get defensive at your attempts to warn her. Sociopaths can be very seductive and she could be under his spell. If this is the case, you can be a supportive friend for as long as it doesn’t bring you down too. It has to be her choice to leave, though. Hopefully, if he’s really a bad person, she’ll come around eventually.
You know what sucks? I don’t even know his last name! That’s how out of touch we’ve become. I never thought to ask and she never mentioned it. Now I can’t think of a good reason for asking 🙁
I’ve tried to google words and phrases related to him, to see if anything comes up, but nothing so far.
Is there anything I can or should say to my friend? I do see her occasionally, and I’m shocked at how different she is. She seems so unhappy and bitter, and she doesn’t care about her appearance like she used to. It’s sad.
There’s really a fine line between offering support and sharing concerns/opinions and interfering in a friend’s choices. She has chosen to live with a married man and conceivably she knows what he his doing with his wife, etc. If you have an uneasy feeling, I would definitely tell her. But with the current information, it’s hard to know what his motives are. One way you could try and get his last name is to mention to her that he looks ethnic (Scandinavian, Slavic, etc.), and say “what is his name again?”). Might work. Good luck.
Dear Cookie,
Unfortunately, I hate to say it, but I agree with Stargazer, the friend has made her “choice” and many times by the time even they realize “something is rotten in Denmark” they are so hooked they make excuses for it.
I think you are RIGHT ON and that he is a SCAM ARTIST and I am glad that YOU at least see through the FOREST OF RED FLAGS. Your friend has chosen though to over look these red flags. In the past, most of US have chosen to overlook red flags because we were in DENIAL about them, we didn’t want to see them.
Googling their names in general won’t turn up much, but you can get a private investigator to check his back ground on their private commercial search engines and get a criminal record etc. I did that and it only cost me $225 for a really good background check, but you have to know date of birth, social security number if possible, name, and former place of residence if possible. I got a good record on the guy, including most of his life in prison for 3 (three) sexual assaults on children under 14, and robbery etc. but the person I got it for WOULD NOT BELIEVE ME, called me a liar and said I made it all up on the computer….It proved right and the guy went to jail later (again) but still, you can’t always “win” even with good information.
Plus, he might not be using his correct name even (Look at that guy who called himself a Rockefeller for 14 yrs)
I suggest that you just be there for your friend if and when she does “get it” about him. There’s no guarentee that she will, but if she does she will need you very much. Your friend is not stupid, she is just a victim, and believe me, these folks are GOOD at what they do, conning vulnerable people. People a whole lot smarter than the “average person” are conned every day. It is no shame to be conned, it usually just means you are a good, caring and loving person. I’m glad she has you for a friend. ((((hugs)))))
Cookie77: I would scream to the heavens to your friend your concerns about who she is with. I would not give up even if she ends your friendship. Be the biggest pest to her … tell her what you know, what you feel … shake her/wake her … don’t give up!
Keep screaming until she here’s you… because it depends, some people just might hear you and look for RED flags themselves … just plant that seed of DANGER in her psyche.
Peace.
Cookie77: Here’s another red flag. He’s cut her off from her friend. My ex did the same thing. He cut me off from friends and family. But she may not listen to you. I didn’t listen to my friend. He basically told me to choose between my friend and him. I thought I was in love and so I cut off contact with my friend. I wish I hadn’t done that. Can you send her a text message? Just a short note telling her you are worried about her and want her to call you just to make sure she’s ok? That may open the door for you to talk to her. I would try.
Thank you all for your advice!
Update – I figured out his last name online by using information I knew about him, entering things into google. Then, using his last name, I spent a couple hours searching different things. I also went back to the early emails my friend sent me when she first met this guy, and compared info. Well, a lot of things don’t add up, as you may imagine!
–He told her he went to UCLA and played on the baseball team. It appears he went to a non-prestigious college around here and never lived in California.
–He told her he was a Green Beret. I could verify that by sending in a form as detailed on this site, but for now it looks like he was in the Air Force. That’s military, but it’s a far cry from Green Beret.
–He is supposed to have been separated for over 4 years, but he bought a big house with his wife 3 1/2 years ago. Seems odd.
–My friend is always going on about how this guy makes “a lot of money,” but I’m looking at his title on LinkedIn and we have people at my company who do the same thing, and I am pretty sure he doesn’t make any fabulous salary, just a comfortable amount. And if you’re supporting a stay-at-home wife and 3 kids (1 his, 2 hers from a deadbeat dad) and paying a large mortgage, no one’s living a fabulous lifestyle. (My friend is really bitter about the fact that the guy makes so much money but his psycho wife spends it all on jewelry and furniture.)
It also does not look like he has lived on his own since “moving out” from his house with his wife. There’s no address listed in NH, where my friend originally told me he lived. If he had a mailing address since the one he shared with his wife, it should have shown up. All of my mailing addresses since I moved out of my parents’ house were on this site.
Here’s the worst part though, and maybe I shouldn’t have done this, but I did… I called the house to see what was on their answering machine. His wife picked up and I casually asked for the guy by name. She said “he’s not here right now,” but verified that it is, indeed, his address. I should have asked “when do you expect him back?” If she said, tonight, that would have been extremely fishy.
Anyway, after doing this research, I don’t think the guy is dangerous, just a liar and kind of a jerk. And the more I think about it, the more I think my friend already knows a lot of this, and that’s why she’s so reluctant to hang out with her friends and talk about her relationship, and why she seems so bitter and different.
Dear Cookie,
I got a PI to investigaate the Trojan HOrse P who was at that time my mother’s “live in caregiver” and who was “borrowing” money frm her. I got a rap sheet amile long of CONVICTIONS and parole revocations and 3 sexual offenses with CHILDREN, and tried to get my mother to read it, but she would not even look at it and accused me of lying and making it all up. It was someone else with the “same name” (and same SS# too I guess!) so your friend may not be willing to listen toyou, and in fact, may become very angry with you when you present this evidence to her (if you are going to do so) That’s the thing, I have been “warned” and filed to listen to the warnings.
There is always the option of calling the man’s wife and telling him what you know, but I really don’t think that is a good idea. I doubt that your friend would appreciate it (even if it did get him away from her) so you are probably going to lose the friendship no matter what you do. It’s one of those situations I think where there is NO “good” answer on what to do as far as you are concerned. And, truly, even though she is your friend, you can’t save her from herself if she doesn’t want to be saved.
I was tagged to this web site, LF, years ago, when someone posted a comment to my DDHG profile about my ex, who I think was another Spath.
I’ve only today decided to post to the LF blog, for the first time up here, and responding first and specifically to OxDrover’s message to Hen (on the LF blog under headings “How did he really feel?” and “What did he want from me?”), and first responded, earlier today to the blog entries, “Henry, those little turds just think they’re cute—they will just go on to be the next generation of ’Mikes’ and ’Jodies’ and can’t remember what Matt’s X was called—FAKE is a good enough term. Doesn’t matter if they are straight or gay or in between they are TRASH!”
Also agree to one_step_at_a_time’s message, “hens ”“ hi sweetie. young queens are f***ing turds. always have been. always will be. narcissistic little turds.”
My ex, a Spath with whom I lived for nearly a decade, was on the DL. One of his wives prior to me confirmed it for me, ..said that during her relationship with him, her gay male friends (more than one) told her they’d had sex with him. She also told me that he wanted to sex role switch with her, which in long, painful hindsight, I now suspect was what he was trying to have me do, as well.
It has been almost 10 years since ending our relationship. He left without reimbursing me half the security deposit (I paid the whole first extra month of rent, when we rented the house; we both signed the lease), so he left me holding the bag, hanging on to a house, not long after my last unemployment check ran out, he left after I’d helped mentor (if not raise) his daughter for that long, and left not long after she was no longer a minor. I was unable to have children of my own.
He drained me emotionally and financially for years..wasn’t like the ordinary break up (hey, I’d handled those in my 20s and 30s quite well..was able to move on like water off a duck’s back, and I always knew when to break it off with someone, early on, when I knew they were not right for me.) Profiles I’ve posted about him show him wearing the expensive clothes that I bought for him. He “fed” off my family’s good graces for years, attending my father’s 80th B-day celeb, at the beach, where I’d also invited his daughter (she ate well, too, that night!), taking advantage of my father’s V-day present to us as a couple: a weekend resort, with a hot tub, breakfasts served; dinners my father paid for my own B-day celebs, at fine restaurants, where he was also invited..for years.
He denied everything to the bitter end, said there was no other woman, etc. There WAS another woman, a woman who had, for a couple of years, pretended to be my friend. She was married, for the second time, when she met us, through mutual friends of hers and mine. So he USED me and my networks to meet and seduce his Ms. Next, his next victim.
Less than one year after he bolted, I was crime victimized. So..first I was sexually/emotionally/psychologically abused by one Spath, for years, then I was physically assaulted, by another Spath, a felon, at my place of work. Healing was slower, with two “crimes” happening back to back, from two different Spaths, one “crime” from who I THOUGHT I knew, another from a stranger and felon. The combination of the two things left me feeling as though I’d been raped.
Recovery has been slow, but I’m determined to “out” the Spath with whom I lived for so long, once and for all.
On one web site, I posted photos of him from his teens through his 50s, asking any gay guys or guy who’s sexed him to please come forward to say when or where that happened to please comment under any profiles on him. He had two failed marriages before living with me, and I suspect is working on a third that will probably fail (he interfered with her 2nd marriage, and seduced her away from her husband, meanwhile he’d advertised himself as bi on a swingers site.)
It wasn’t his first time trying to destroy someone else’s marriage. His first wife told me he (and by his own admission to her) had seduced their neighbor’s wife. He himself admitted to me, when we began dating, that he’d come on to a married woman while married to his 2nd wife, but she told him she didn’t want his problems to become hers. Wish I had done the same thing. That was my RED FLAG and I ignored it. Took a long time for me to forgive myself for having anything to do with the Spath.
Sometimes, the only relief I get from the residual grief (though much less than it was 9 years ago, and certainly minimal, since it didn’t take me long to meet my next partner, with whom I still live, and who I deeply love) is to try to help other women on those profiling sites. But when I post my standard paragraph, I also keep hoping that those gay guys will respond”“you know”“the gay guys who his first wife said had sexed him while he and she were married.
Is this “normal” to want this kind of final closure, or “obsessive”? I just think the next woman is putting herself at HUGE risk of possibly contracting AIDS. I care not for HER (female with whom he had an affair while living with me and who he left me for) feelings or HER safety anymore, but care about OTHER women who he might con, after her.
I think he also keeps stalking me by directing SPAM e-mail to my addy, and also suspect that it was he who has vandalized my car four times, within the last 9 years. But I refuse to be intimidated to take down my profiles about him on the net, that warn other women.
My car was, again, vandalized, when parked in front of my home, about week ago, and I suspect, again, that it was him doing it. And that SPAM email? Well, that continues, too. Got one just last night. Sent at 9 P.M. (His current “squeeze” should pay attention to what he does on his computer, at that hour, but she refused to listen to the warnings of her former husband’s former girlfriend who remained his friend, who was the sister-in-law of my ex’s first wife.) I ignore the emails. I just delete them. My neighbors and their teen children (who study into the morning hours) are on heightened Neighborhood Watch, because of the vandalism to my car. I REFUSE to be intimidated to remove my posts on DDHG or anywhere else, because of him or his actions. Somehow, I just know that his family members, or at least several of them, KNOW he’s a Spath, but they’ve managed, I think, to enable him and his behavior.
So, yes, I think the vindictiveness of Spaths, described in LF’s page about Spath characteristics, is right on the mark.
I think you LF bloggers might, by now, know who I am, or at least who my Spath was, especially if you read womansavers.com or DDHG profiles, as I do daily (like others read the daily obits in their newspapers.) I come to this blog, finally, because, what the Spath did to me was diminish my friendship circles (he FED ON THEM, to find his next victim!), to leave me feeling very isolated, and it has been a long haul for me, out of the hole of depression.
I’m not a homophobe (as he accused me of being in his last, vulgar e-mail to me.) In fact, I am trusting and putting my faith in my Higher Power, that some KIND gay guy (or guys), that is, who HAVE A CONCSCIENCE or consciences, come forward to help expose him for the DL Spath/fraud he was, is, or has been for years, ..hope that the gay community (at least those gays who believe in monogamy) will help me finally..to expose him, so I can have complete closure.
He refused to get an AIDS/HIV test, when I asked him to, after he decided it was “over.” Though I am cleared (had to wait six months between each test), I am very concerned about other victims of his, after the fact. He had a huge hemorrhoid in his anal area, which very well could be a HUGE red flag, that he might be a “bottom” (or a “versatile”, someone who is both a top and bottom.) He had a gay male porn addiction while living with me.)
Spaths on the DOWN-LOW are the worst!