by Maggie Voysest

The con artists, or who can one sue when paying to meet these men?

Now up until now, Gigi has shared the hilarity from her crazy mismatched dates, and a few experiences that ended up as one night stands. She has told you of her past boyfriends and her marriage. She did meet some men who were not truly honest about their intentions, but Gigi couldn’t find it in her heart to hate these men. She saw them as confused about what they wanted, and was too soft hearted to think that they purposely lied to her just to get dessert. She even talked to most of them once they came back into contact with her, although her girlfriends thought she was a fool for doing so. Yet that is Gigi to the core: forgiving and understanding. You would think all of her experiences would have turned her into a bitter, vengeful woman, but Gigi had learned one very important lesson from her Daddy. He once told her that if something was out of your control, you just had to accept it and move on, and not let it drive you crazy. He told her that you had to just laugh at life and keep going and to always be true to yourself. So when life got ugly, Gigi would think of her Daddy, and would laugh at the fate that God threw her way, and she would tell herself that her prince was out there, somewhere, among the many frogs, and trolls, and rats, and snakes, oh my.

But oh the con artists, and liars and cheats! Those were the really and truly unforgivable men, and they should be hunted down and branded very painfully, and strung up by their very unmentionables, till they’d think twice about ever deceiving a woman again. Gigi could get quite ferocious thinking about people who purposely deceived others, since she was almost always quite honest, and only ever lied about her weight. Ok, and about how much she spent on clothes and shoes, but if one ever told men the truth about this, they would take away our credit cards: a woman’s only true friend. (Apart from girlfriends of course). She didn’t even ever lie about her age. But back to the evil deceivers… these were:

• The con artists who stalked lonely women online, the ones you read about. The ones who prey upon and marry lonely divorcées, widows, and spinsters and deprive them of their money, or even maybe (gasp) kill them!
• The liars: those who courted women, making them feel something, lying about loving them and then leaving without ever being heard from again… those who had deep, dark secrets in their pasts.
• The cheats that ended not so divorced after all!

These men were ones who smoothly lied and declared undying love, all with a sinister purpose, either to get into their bed or to get their money. They do exist, and thankfully Gigi never fell for any of the con artists after her money. However, sadly she did fall for the lies of undying love. She might have been fooled into allowing them into her bedroom, thinking they would lead into a serious relationship, but thank God she never gave her hard earned money away.

Once again, we must remember that Gigi was rather naïve and trusting of men. When she read a profile or saw a photo, she believed it was true. After all, her profile was true, as was her photo. She didn’t use her “skinny” photos of when she got into shape thanks to her military-like aerobics instructor. No, she used her current photos, that showed she was now more, let’s call it curvaceous and voluptuous, rather than skinny. So when she saw a photo of a gorgeous, blond man from Utah, she believed that’s what he looked like and where he was from. So she began to talk to Peter from Utah because his profile was so beautifully written, and spoke volumes to her. So what if he was thousands of miles away? She’d had a long distance relationship with Daniel for almost 7 years, hadn’t she?

Peter was stunningly beautiful, almost looking like a California beach boy. At first they emailed back and forth, long beautifully written emails on his part, on how he was looking for his true love, his soul mate, and that he was single and willing to relocate anywhere in the world if necessary. He told Gigi that he was an engineer, and that he traveled a lot, and in fact, at that moment in time he was in Africa building a bridge. And if you believe that, I have some ocean front property in Arizona that I’d like to sell you. But why disbelieve him? If he said he was an engineer from Utah working in Africa, Gigi was willing to believe. After all, Africa DOES have bridges, right? And someone MUST be building them, so why not Peter?

The emails went back and forth and soon Peter asked Gigi to add him to her msn messenger. And that was his fatal mistake. Peter should have chosen someone other than Gigi to try and fool. Her profile listed that she was an ESL teacher, teaching English to foreign business men. Once Peter and Gigi began to type instantaneous short messages back and forth, Gigi quickly realized something. If Peter was a white American male from Utah, then she was the Pope. The one currently in the Vatican. For as soon as Peter began to answer her questions, Gigi realized he was no more American than Arnold Schwarzenegger, no matter that he is governor of California. She asked Peter where he was from again, to double check, to make sure she hadn’t confused Peter with Carlo from Italy, or Luis from Mexico. But no, Peter insisted that he was born and bred in Utah.

Yet his English came across as slightly odd. Not odd as in the shortened text talk that we all have reverted to, but awkward English as that spoken by foreigners who have learned English as adults. When Gigi asked him if he had always lived in Utah because his English seemed a little strange, his story began to change. He now told her that he had moved to South Africa when he was young. Still Gigi wondered if this could possibly be true, because didn’t they speak English there? She asked him what nationality his parents were, and I kid you not, his exact words were: “My father is America, my mother is Africa”, using the noun form and not the adjective form. She asked him if he had grown up speaking English or if they had spoken a language other than English at home (knowing South Africans also speak Afrikaans). Now the sob story came out. He told her that his parents had died when he was young and that his mother’s best friend had, and again I quote directly “tooked” him to England. TOOKED!! At this point Gigi lost it.

“Listen, you lying, no good, deceiving, sorry excuse for a man, not even a toddler would say “tooked” if raised by English speaking parents or guardians! I don’t know who you are or what nationality or race you are, but you are definitely not white, you are not American, and you didn’t grow up in South Africa or England! No one who did would ever say “tooked” or not know that people are “American” and “African“, not “America” or “Africa” “Those are continents you fool, not people!”

Peter then told her to f*&# off rather rudely and she never heard from him again.

Gigi was actually approached by three other men such as him. Men who claimed to be American, but whose written English failed to ring true, and all of them claimed to be from some nearby American state, but would then tell her that they were in Africa at the moment working. How stupid did these men think Gigi was? Or was it them who were stupid to think their con would actually work? Did it actually EVER work? Gigi would love to find out if any naïve woman had ever believed this con, and had fallen in love with them and had actually sent them money. And could one then FINALLY sue the dating sites?

Gigi learned that these were similar to those African money scams, where people try to get you to believe that they have thousands of dollars that they cannot touch and need your help to get, if you will only send them some money. It was kind of funny because a few months later she was chatting with a man online and then all night on the phone, and at first he thought she was scamming him. He made her prove that she was from Michigan by naming some restaurants in a town near to where she lived, and he told her that he’d been approached by Russian women, who pretended to be from Michigan but were now stuck in Russia and needed money to get back home. Honestly! Gigi wrote an email to match.com telling them about the scam that Peter had tried to pull, and would you believe that she never heard from them?

Another scam that she encountered was that there were profiles that could not possibly be true profiles of real honest to God living men. She thought that maybe they were placed there by the sites themselves to entice women to sign on, because why would one man pay for three separate accounts, and then use the exact same information on the profiles, changing only the name and age? Gigi had a very good memory, and one day she found and read three profiles that were practically word for word identical, and all were of widowed men from St. Clair Shores who loved Europe! Once again she informed the dating site, but was never to hear back from them. She also thought that maybe the sites paid people to talk to members, with no intentions of ever meeting them, and that is why so many men (and maybe women? Not that Gigi would know since no matter how many times she was let down, becoming a lesbian was never a choice for her. She loved men too much) just simply disappeared. Funnily enough these dashing men would start talking to you when your membership was just about to expire, and so you’d happily sign up for a few more months just to continue talking to them, only to have them disappear very soon after you repaid… Fancy that!

The next con artist touched Gigi’s impressionable heart, though she never fell for his con, and they remain friends to this day. Sweet Abraham from Africa. He really WAS African, and she actually DID meet him in person. She even dated him for about two months, until he began to pull his scam, ever so sweetly on her. He was quite young, 23 only, but he was scrumptiously beautiful. He had such a beautiful, sweet smile, and perfect white teeth that shone brilliantly against his dark, ebony skin. The night they met, he was wearing a red jacket and black shirt and pants, such stylish and elegant clothes, making him look so debonair and so much older than he actually was. He was like a black Cary Grant, smooth and suave. He slung that read jacket over his shoulder, tipped his sunglasses up, called Gigi “cheri” and she was lost. So completely and utterly lost, that she was dazed as she walked back to her car, and forgot to look at the scratch mark made when she was fooled once before by a seemingly gentleman-like date.

Abi had the sexiest accent when he spoke in English. It just made Gigi’s skin tingle. He also spoke French, so can you really blame Gigi? He should have come with a large warning label on his forehead. He is actually an experience that Gigi will never regret, and one she will remember with pleasure for as long as she lives. Gigi and Abi would speak to each other in French, which made “everything” even that more amazing. Dessert always sounds better in a foreign language, does it not? He was a student, studying to be a lawyer, although she was never able to figure out if that part was true or not. In the two months that she knew him, he moved three times, changed jobs four times, and had two different cars. He was a real sweetheart to her though, and soon Gigi was taking him to her salsa club, and introducing him to her friends. He treated her as though she were his (white) African queen, telling her he would take her home one day, and worship at her feet. He’d wipe the snow off of her car AND her friends’ cars, and he waited ever so patiently till she trusted him enough to bring him home. Ok, let’s be honest, she didn’t wait very long. Would you have? In fact, now that I recall better, it happened one night on the carpet of his new, as yet unfurnished home, and Gigi was soon lost in the experience of not just a younger man, but a black, younger man. He told her that he loved her, in French. Ooh la la, was that something else… She might even have married him if he hadn’t pulled his scam on her, and made her lose her trust in him.

It all started with him losing his job, and beginning to need money for gas to come and see her. She did lend him money once, but after that she arranged to go to his place. Next was the illness of his poor mother, who was actually and strangely enough YOUNGER than Gigi. Oh my goodness, did that make Gigi feel strange, and almost made her reconsider being with him, until Abi (as she called him), looked at her, said her name “Gigi” with that sexy African accent, touched her, and she totally lost that trend of thought. So what if his mother was younger, they’d just be that much closer as friends, right? Wrong. One sad day, Abi told her that his mother was seriously ill, and needed to be flown from Africa to Paris to have an operation, or else she would die. He actually asked Gigi for a few hundred dollars, but she told him that first of all she didn’t have much money to spare, and second of all, she no longer lent money to her boyfriends since her Canadian ex still owed her several thousand dollars that she’d never see again.

Abi sighed bravely and told her that he’d manage to find the money somehow. A few days later his mother died. Yup. She was diagnosed with a fatal illness, was flown to Paris, operated on, and died, all within just days. And may God forgive Gigi if that story was actually true, but she just couldn’t quite believe it. Maybe because he wasn’t ravaged enough by sadness, or because it just didn’t ring true. But now he needed money to send his mother back to Africa to be buried next to his father, or else she’d be thrown into some nameless French grave. Again he asked Gigi for money and again she told him she couldn’t. So this time he told her that he would not be able to see her for a very long time, because a) he’d be working double shifts b) he’d be giving up his apartment and sleeping at work and c) he wouldn’t have money for gas. And he looked sadly at Gigi, waiting for her to throw herself and her money into his hands. But Gigi had grown a few more cynical layers around her heart, and just didn’t quite believe in men so easily anymore. So that was the end of Abi. He later told her that he had joined the marines and had to move away to boot camp. She refused to believe that until she actually saw many photos of him in uniform (Oh God, young, black, gorgeous AND in a uniform? What had she ever done to deserve to be so tortured like this?) with other American marines. And what if his mother dying had been real? It couldn’t be, could it? Unfortunately, we’ll never know for sure.

Gigi ended up remembering so many stories about con artists that she soon realized the liars and cheats would need their own chapter!! Is anyone amazed yet that Gigi could actually function sanely in this world after all her experiences? And doesn’t she deserve to make a mint of money out of sharing her memoirs so that she can retire to some Caribbean island where she can pay for some Taye Diggs look-alike to bring her tropical drinks and take care of all her needs. Ok, or maybe bring sweet Abi back from the marines (in his uniform of course, and with handcuffs… a girl can dream right?)

To read Helen’s Part VII, see Helen’s Horrors of Dating – Part VII