Peggy

Peggy is one of the women I met from Skype and the only one I continued to talk with after the week I tried to make sense out of the bombardment of chat requests there so we finally moved over to Google Chat.

Peggy was sweet, funny, and very entertaining. She was not overly aggressive about a relationship and liked to just chat about our days. I found her completely realistic and genuine. She shared a dozen or more photos of her days, claiming she was an exercise personal trainer at a nearby gym. We talked a lot about my efforts to improve my health and fitness. We hit it off and enjoyed chats with each other more and more and it eventually led to a few phone calls. I thought I had finally met a sweetheart, though she was more than a day's drive from me. We ended up "promising" each other to stay faithful and date each other exclusively, in a goal to eventually get together and bond.

Then came the twist... she needed money to make the deposit on a MBA program she was going to start in the fall. She promised to pay me back within a couple of months but it couldn't wait if she wanted to start classes in the fall. Of course, I was a bit suspicious but she was the first person I think I trusted even after weeks of chatting. I sent her $1000. 

But in my typical fashion, after I had sent the money I became concerned that I fell for another scammer. So I spent a few days trying to research her and found no trace of her name in several databases. I even tried a search at socialcatfish.com. That's when I first started doing reverse image searching and facial recognition searches and discovered that her photos weren't real. She was sending me photos of a semi-famous personal trainer who lived on the east coast named Alexandra Esk. When I confronted Peggy about this, she first tried to tell me she was a twin sister and they had been separated for over 10 years and don't talk anymore. So, what's a guy to do but write the real Alexandra on Facebook and ask her? And guess what... Peggy lied.

So I went through the process of blocking her, but she still got a message though to me telling me she was sorry and would come clean. She would pay back the money when she was able, she promised. She sent me real photos of her (supposedly) and told me a story of how she left her abusive husband a few years earlier and was trying to figure out how to take care of her young son while living with her grandma. At least this sounded like a reasonable explanation for why someone would lie and take this route, right?

We continued to talk and still do. She will send me a selfie anytime I ask right from her phone, even if she looks like crap in an effort to prove she is real. I really like this woman but I am still highly suspicious of her after the huge lie she told me for over a month. She still talks to me like a real person and expresses her regrets, her fears, her loves, and her concerns for us, so I really don't know what to think. How can people form relationships if they always have to worry that their online connection is fake? I'm beginning to think this online dating thing is ridiculous.

Obviously, there will be an update, but I am a bit more than slightly skeptical.