307: What if you fell hard for the scam?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services. I can now connect the trauma to my choices. It's like I was under the table and crumbs were falling and I was settling for the crumbs because I didn't believe I deserved the loaf. From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening.

Episode 307: What if you fell hard for the scam?

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. I was months old when my mom took me to my grandmother and my grandmother raised me for the first 14 years of my life.

My earliest memories, you know, I just remember being very lonely and longing. Those are my most prominent memories. I remember yearning to meet my parents. And I think in my young mind, I didn't know that they knew that I existed. But I do remember that one of the ways that I thought I was connecting with them was praying to their pictures that were hanging on the wall.

I would tell them that I was a good girl. I would tell them that I did my chores. I would tell them that I said my prayers. I would tell them that I did my homework. I would do all of these things, hoping that they thought that I was worthy for them to come for me and take me to live with them.

I also remember writing a letter to my mother when I was five years old and introducing myself and says, hi, my name is Donna. I am your daughter. Not really understanding that she had met me at some point.

My step-grandfather would go to work and my grandmother would go to the market and I would spend countless hours by myself in this big yard with lots of animals, goats, pigs, donkeys. And I remember just talking and singing to those animals for company.

We were very poor. We didn't have indoor plumbing, so there was no running water. So we used an outhouse. We didn't have electricity for most of my years there. I was cared for by my grandparents, but my childhood was certainly marked with this longing and with this sense of loneliness, not belonging anymore.

My older sister, she was living in Kingston, another part of Jamaica. And then ultimately she went to live with my mom in America. And I remember just wanting to be with them. And the message that that sent to me, me not being there, was something is wrong with you. You are not good enough to be with us. I wasn't good enough. And that's why I was left in the country.

I was about seven or eight when she came to visit. I just remember hoping that she would ask me to sit on her lap or she would ask me how I was doing, how I was feeling, and she'd be my mommy for real. But I just remember she was very cold and dismissive. She would bring us things. She would give us shorts and shirts and slippers and whatnot. But I just wanted her attention.

to just hug me. I would have been happy with that. She didn't say goodbye. I'm coming for you again. Nothing. And I remember bawling with such hysteria that I remember my cousin Sherlock saying, don't worry. One day you're going to go to foreign too. That's what we called going abroad. You're going to foreign.

And that memory is forever etched in my mind. And I just remember sitting on the veranda, just looking out. I can see the lush greenery. I could see the animals grazing. And my grandmother came onto the terrace and says, don't worry, one day she's going to send for you and you're going to go to foreign to live with them. She was just trying to comfort me, but it was difficult for me to see beyond her just leaving without a goodbye.

I remember feeling that if your mother doesn't love you, then no one can. Clearly, you're not wanted and you're not worthy. I had a best friend. Her name was Naomi. She was kind of my surrogate sister. I loved being with her and having someone like a sister with whom I could connect. This particular day, we're walking home.

I remember hugging her and saying, okay, I'll see you in church on Sunday. I continued walking straight. And then I heard a crash, a screeching and screams. And I turned to look and Naomi was literally in the air. She had on white sandals. They were literally floating. And then she just crashed on her back against the car. Naomi went into a coma.

And over the next few days, I would go to school and we would all talk about Naomi. How is she? And on this particular day, my grandmother came home and she says, Naomi woke up. Did you do it? Naomi woke up and said that you pushed her. What? I didn't push her. She ran.

Turned out that because my parents were in the States, Naomi's grandmother saw that as an opportunity to extort money from my parents. And so she convinced Naomi to say that I had pushed her in front of the car. And then the Sunday school teacher went to Naomi's bed and told her, if you're lying, you're not going to go to heaven. And that's when Naomi confessed.

Now, deep in the woods of Jamaica, the way bets are settled, the way issues are settled, it is by voodoo or black magic. And in our country, we called it Obia. Her grandmother said that she was going to work a spell on me and I was going to be dead in seven sunsets.

That terrified me because growing up in that culture, I've heard of people just dropping dead or losing their hair or any other sort of physical issues would happen. And people would say it's because someone worked OBIA. I remember being so terrified, A, that I was going to be dead in seven sunsets and B, that my friend would betray me.

In an effort to save my life, what my grandmother thought was saving my life, one morning she woke me up and told me to go to the chicken coop to get a chicken. I had to hold this chicken. She hailed a van. We got in the van. And then we got off the van in this clearing. And we walked and walked and walked. The way children were raised then, you should not ask questions. You should speak when you're spoken to and answer when you're called.

So I wasn't allowed to ask what was going on. I just know I was clutching this chicken. We get to a clearing. I see this woman and she walked towards us. She had like this white turban wrapped around her head and she had like red eyes. She said to me, take off all of your clothes. I looked at my grandmother and my grandmother nodded that I should.

I remember just shaking. And I then took off my clothes, everything. And she bent down and she took the chicken out of my arms. And then she lobbed off its head and then just poured the blood all over me, literally like a teapot. And she said, this will save you from being dead in seven sunsets.

The icky part about that is that I had to keep it on my body in the hot heat for 24 hours for the spell to work. I remember feeling the hot, crusty blood on me, going to sleep that night with it still on me until 24 hours had passed. And then my grandmother washed my hair and gave me a bath and I put on clean clothes and I remember feeling so refreshed.

but feeling this immense sense of betrayal that I had to go through that because of Naomi's lie. When I was 12 years old, I came to America for the first time. My mom finally invited me just to visit, not to live. I was so excited to be in America. Here I was with all these amenities.

I had a shower as opposed to a big giant basin sitting in the middle of the yard. We had the color television and we would go outside and the city was bustling and there were these lights and there was fast food. I'd never had fast food. It was just this amazing, amazing world. It was so new and so interesting. So when I went back to Jamaica after that summer,

It was a big deal to pass what was called the common entrance exam. And I passed it and I won a scholarship and I went to a very prestigious girls' school. And I think my feeling of not belonging became very evident because the girls in my mind were prettier and their parents were coming to see them on a regular basis. And I remember feeling really alone.

When I was 14, my grandmother told me that I was going to live with my mother for good. I was not going back to Westwood. I was going to live in America. I remember squealing and jumping up and down with such excitement and hope.

But when I arrived, something was different. She was withdrawn and she was thin and glassy-eyed. And she was never really warm and fuzzy, but now she was ice cold. She seemed to find comfort and solace in the church. And this church became the main focus of our lives. And it was incredibly restrictive.

We weren't allowed to watch television. We weren't allowed to go to parties. We weren't allowed to listen to secular music. We weren't allowed to wear pants or go to our prom. We weren't allowed to do anything. We had to comply. And I think that's when I call it brainwashing began.

I was already fragile. And then I started going to school here, which was very different from school in Jamaica. As a young teenager, as a poor young teenager, I was bullied for the four years that I was there. I remember there were five girls, I could still name their names, who tortured me and tormented me. And here I was again, unworthy. I did well in high school. I remember just wanting it to be over.

And I would seek out anything that had to do with singing or acting. I felt that was kind of my release. That was kind of my escape. And I could hide and kind of be this other person. So at the age of 19, there was an audition for a church play and I got the lead. And I remember just feeling just on top of the world.

At the end of each night when we would take our final bows and everyone's standing and clapping, I just felt I was at home on the stage. But underneath, it was still brewing, this feeling of hopelessness, worthlessness, just the pain of my childhood and all the things that I've experienced up to that point.

On closing night of this play, the last scene, I'm supposed to have this moment, this emotional moment where I'm weeping at Jesus's feet. I did my scene and I went backstage and I couldn't turn it off. I couldn't turn the weeping off. There backstage was the guy who was working on the lights. And he was someone I'd seen around the church before. Very handsome. But we weren't allowed to date.

So here I am now, 19 years old, never been on a date, never held someone's hand, never even hugged someone of the opposite sex. So I'm in the back and I'm weeping, I'm crying, and I heard a voice say, are you okay? And I remember jumping and I was like, no, I'm okay. And I remember immediately feeling really nervous as if I was doing something wrong by being back there with a boy.

He came up to me and he hugged me. It was a short hug, but it was a hug. And I remember it feeling so foreign yet so amazing that someone cared enough to hug me and say, "You all right?" I remember just standing there like, "Wow." We started talking, but you know, it was against God. So this is how relationships worked in that church. You could only marry, you couldn't date.

So if you saw someone that you want to get to know, the only way to get to know that person is to marry that person. And the way you marry that person, you have to go to the pastor and the pastor goes to God and ask God if you could marry this person. And God says yes or no, and then tell you and you get married or you don't get married. We decided to see each other compliantly, no kissing or no funny business because, you know, we'd go to hell for that.

But he paid attention to me and he made me feel important and he made me feel loved. We would sneak away to see each other. I would lie and say I'm going to school on Saturdays, but I was really going to his apartment that he shared with his dad. He came to meet me after one of my classes in college and he says, I want to marry you. And I remember in that moment thinking, I don't even know what it is to date. I don't even know how to be anybody's wife.

But I also knew that I could get out of that house. Being somebody's wife, he represented an escape. That Friday night, I waited until she was going out the door. And I said, Mom, Michael gave me a ring. And I remember she looked at me and she said, Oh, yeah. And she slammed the door. And I remember thinking, well, that can't be good.

The next day, which was a Saturday, she said to me, the pastor wants to see you. So the next morning I got dressed in my choir uniform and I went to the pastor's study and he said, how dare you disrespect your mother's house? And I said, I'm sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. I've never disrespected any house. He says, well, you're never to see him again.

And I remember in that moment thinking, if I didn't do something, my one chance of happiness would probably be forever gone. As I left his office, there were two ways. I could either go left and go and sit on the choir stand waiting for service to begin, or I could go right and go downstairs to the basement where I know he was waiting for me to tell him what the pastor had to say. And I went right and he says, what do you want to do? And I said, let's run.

And we didn't have any money. So we got on a bus and went to my mom's house. And I packed up. And I think six days later, I married him.

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I was so innocent and so naive. There was this new world I was now in. I was a wife. I could listen to music. I think he took me to the movies and I was in awe of that because I decided I wasn't going back to the church. And I was really, really happy. I felt madly, madly in love with this man. And he represented my savior from all things. The first year is Wedded Bliss.

It's this life that I didn't know existed or could exist. And all of my life and all of my energy was in this one person. Really, the first person in my life I felt at that time that truly, truly, truly loved me. But keep in mind, he also knew that I was naive and innocent. I didn't know what the hell was going on. And I relied on him heavily to kind of show me the world.

So a year into it, I remember I was working as a temp and I left early that day. So I go to the apartment and I'm walking towards the bedroom and there's this woman sitting on my bed. Keep in mind that at that time, we were really poor as well. We only had a bed. We didn't have a couch.

So I remember when I walked into the room and I saw her, I remember saying, oh, who are you? And I remember him saying, oh, hi, whatever her name was. This is my wife, Donna. And then he said, well, we work at the same job. She had to drop off some papers for me. I'm like, well, why is she sitting on the bed? And he said, well, we don't have a couch. We don't have a chair. And in that moment, it felt plausible, but something felt off, but I couldn't articulate it. And that's when who he really was became evident.

After that, he would stay out night after night, night after night. I was still in school. I was still going to college. He lost his job and we lost the apartment. We moved into his father's apartment in the Bronx, which was in a semi-abandoned building. We got married in 1983. So in 1985, I found out that I was pregnant again.

And that's the last thing I needed to bring a baby into this life. But my daughter was born in 86. The newness of her kept him home for a couple of months. But then the novelty wore off and he continued to be very distant. And he would stay out night after night after night. One night he came home. He says, I'm very confused about my marriage. I'm going to go and stay with a friend of mine. And I'm begging him, please don't leave me.

And he says, well, I'm going to be honest with you. You gained a lot of weight. I just didn't want to be here because you gained a lot. I said, yeah, but I was in bed for nine months. I couldn't do anything. So of course I'm going to gain weight. Anyway, he left. Three weeks passed.

And I called his friend where he was staying. And I asked his friend, I says, you know, is he there? I need some money for formula and pampers, whatnot. And he says, why would he be here? And I says, well, he told me that that's where he's staying. He says, it's none of my business, but he lives with his girlfriend. I just remember feeling just familiar feelings of dismay. And I'm thinking about my life, what my life has become.

I don't know anything about life, but I know I can't go on this way. The next morning, don't ask me where this came from. I just woke up and said, this is the day I'm leaving. I had a Chevy Chevette, a little broken down car that I had purchased for $350. So I grabbed everything as much as I could. Then I grabbed my daughter. I tucked her in and in the back, put on the seatbelt. It was a month before her second birthday.

And I turned. It wouldn't turn. It wouldn't start. Turns. Then finally the car started. Miraculously, you know. I'm terrified of driving. Plus I was sheltered my whole life. So I don't know where I am. Wherever we would go, he would take me. But I went out. I said, I got to get out of here. I don't know where I'm going. And I had a $50 bill. That is all that I had to my name was a $50 bill.

I'm like hysterical at this point. And I heard my daughter say, Daddy. And I looked across the street and he was there. Where he was coming from or why he was there at that moment, I have no idea. But he started walking towards the car. As he's walking towards me, the car dies. And I'm begging God, please, please, please let this car start. Finally, as he got within inches of the car, the car started. And then I just started driving.

Then I smelled something and the car was leaking of antifreeze. There was antifreeze everywhere on the whole road. And then the car sputtered and then it died right at the exit. Everything was kind of beaten out of me. I'd kind of given up like whatever. I took my daughter out of the car. I had one cheese sandwich left. We sat on the park bench. I gave it to her and I'm holding her.

And I'm just thinking, you know, what's the point of all of this? What is the point of all of this? I called my friend and I said, I'm trying to get away from him. The car just broke down. Can you ask your mom if I can come and stay with her? And I called a taxi and I went and I stayed with them. And then I found my own apartment about three weeks later.

At this point, I'm paying rent and I'm working as a job as a receptionist. I make little to nothing. And so we didn't really have any food. And I was in a really, really dark place. One day, I am walking my daughter to the babysitter. I walk into the babysitter's yard and there is a guy there who is reading the Con Edison meter.

And he says, hey, how are you? And I said, hey, how are you? He says, you know, I see you every month. And I wonder if I could take you out to dinner. But now I kind of not hate men, but I'm so beaten down. You know, I don't even know what to think. And I said, no, I'm not interested. And now keep in mind, it had been about two years since I left my husband. He gave me his number and says, why don't you give me a call? I said, well, I don't think so, but OK.

I went on to work and I dropped it in the bottom of my bag. Weeks went by. I woke up one Saturday morning and all I had was enough money to maybe do a load of laundry. Didn't have any food. And so I called him. He took me to the movies. Then we went out to dinner. My initial thought was, he's probably married because they all lie. But he says he lives with his aunt.

One day he was taking stuff out of the trunk of his car. And then I noticed in his trunk, there are lots of toys. And he says, oh, that's my niece and my nephew's toys. My aunt that I live with, these are her kids. Sometimes I take them places and they just left. And I just said, huh, something's not right here.

Back then, Newsday newspaper, they would call houses and ask for the demographics of the household. They would do all these marketing calls. And so I decided to employ one of my friends, one of my coworkers, I was working as a receptionist then, to call his aunt's house because I was too chicken to do it myself.

And got this woman on the phone and says, oh, I'm calling from New Zealand. I just want to get the makeup of your household. Who lives with you? And she says, my husband, myself, my son, and my daughter. When she hung up the phone, we both just stared at each other. And I'm like, this is not happening.

He comes to pick me up from the train that evening and I get in the car. So how was your day? I said, forget about my day. Are you married? He says, what are you talking about? I said, yes or no. Are you married? And he says, well, yes, I'm married. I said, do you live with your aunt or do you live with your wife? He says, I live with my wife. But and he went on to explain he got her pregnant when she was young. Her family were Jehovah's Witnesses and they forced him to marry her.

But the marriage is over. He sleeps on the couch. I said, yeah, but she's not your aunt. You have two young babies. Don't you think when I told you the truth about my situation that you owed me that I say I'm not talking to you anymore. And I completely stopped talking to him. He would call and call and call. I would just take the phone off the hook. Months later, it was like two in the morning. I'm in the basement apartment and the doorbell rings.

I look through the peephole and he's standing there and it's clear that he's crying. And because I'm me, I said, what's wrong? He said, she threw him out. I don't have anywhere to go. Now, this Donna would probably now say, well, go to your mother's, go to a shelter, go crawl in a hole. But back then, I wasn't this person. I opened the door and I said, what happened?

And I made him tea and he says, can I just sleep here for the night and I'll figure out where to go. And he never left. I met his kids and his kids became a part of our lives. I went and I met his mom and his mom corroborated the story and said that they were going to put him in jail if he didn't marry her.

My son is a good person and he had a wonderful fight to him where he was very caring and very sweet and very doting. And I gravitate towards just the crumbs of those for him caring for me because I've never really had it. But what was apparent to me is that he had a terrible temper. He would break things and slam things and scare us. And I was like really, truly terrified of him.

So we were together for seven years and then I decided to marry him. And there was a part of me that felt it's the righteous, the God-like thing to do. So I married him. And as I was walking down that aisle, knowing that this is a man that has kicked me in the subway. This is a man that has slapped me, that we have fought physically. This is the man that has been terrorizing me. But yet I'm walking down the aisle to marry him.

If you ask him why I stayed in it, I was scared he was going to kill me because he would say, if I can't have you, no one else can.

Even while all of this was going on, I was studying. I had left my receptionist job, finished college. I was growing. I started working for Prudential Securities as an equity research analyst. Then I got my broker's license. Then from there, I got another job at Talman Smith Barney as an assistant vice president. And by then I had bought a house only in my name.

I moved to another company where I just left actually April of this year. I was there for 25 years and moved from assistant vice president to vice president to director to managing director. I suggested to him as a last ditch effort, let's go to therapy.

He would say how he felt emasculated as a man because I was so successful. It made him feel like less of a man. And I would say, but I haven't asked you for all I've asked you for is to do your part. So we're going to therapy and it's just opening up all these wounds and it's clear nothing's going to happen here.

I just wanted to kind of show him or try to show to myself that in God's eyes, I did everything that I could to save this marriage. When my daughter went away to college in, I think, 2004, I decided to say that I am being transferred to the L.A. office. I drafted an offer letter, a fake offer letter that detailed the terms and conditions of my new job in L.A.,

I couldn't just leave him because I have the house. Had I left him, he would have burnt it down. So I had to come up with a way where he felt that I was still in the picture because all I was to him was his gravy train. He lived in a nice house, drove nice cars. He says, well, maybe I'll just go with you to L.A. And I said, sure, because he had never been on a plane. He's so terrified of the plane. He has never been on a plane. So I know he wasn't going to follow me to L.A.

I had already secured an apartment. I just had to figure out how to leave. The morning I decided to do it, he drove me to the bus stop. I got on the bus. I watched the car pull away. I went into the city to the first stop. Then I got off the bus and head back home because I'd already scheduled for the movers to meet me at 9 a.m.

I told my sister, I need you to meet me because what if he doesn't go to work that day? What if he comes back and there are movers in the house? Had he returned that morning, I probably wouldn't be having this conversation with you. We pack everything. And then I moved and I called him that day and I said, I left.

He says, what do you mean you left? I thought you were going to wait for the date for your company to transfer you. I say, I got the date. The date is today. I didn't want to tell you because I didn't want any drama. And he says, but I want my marriage. I love you. I want my marriage. And I'm snickering. I say, oh, now you want your marriage. And I says, look, I'm going to LA. I have a flight. I say, I'm going to send you a certain amount of money so that you can have a place to live.

The house was on the market. I made a call to a divorce attorney and I made a call to Verizon and changed my number. I take eight years and I call this my time of just coming to terms with all that I had been through. I go into therapy. I'd get a massage every two weeks. I completed New York City Marathon, 26.2 miles. I did that for me.

I was doing really well. My daughter was off and had graduated from college, was living on the West Coast. My career was soaring. I was promoted again to managing director, which is one of the highest titles you can have on Wall Street.

So during those eight years, I'm living in the most beautiful apartment. I joined in 92nd Street Y and I entered the cabaret community and I started singing and performing at venues like Don't Tell Mama or the Laurie Beachman Theater or the Metropolitan Room. And I would do shows and my shows would be sold out. I was living my best life.

But, you know, when you take off the gowns or the false eyelashes after the shows, when you come home after work, there was just this solitude that I felt. I just felt this isolation, even though I lived in this beautiful place and I loved it and I was having a good life. I was lonely. You know, it had been 54 years and I had two traumatizing relationships and I just wanted to find someone.

I would go out with friends and I would be the odd person. Everyone was paired up, you know, and as I'm getting closer to retirement, I wanted to have my person. I've always wanted to have my person. I've always yearned to have that person. The year is now 2016. So someone suggested try online dating. So I tried it.

Oh my God, it was a deluge of men. Like, oh my God, you're so beautiful and this and that. Can I get to know you? And that's how I met this guy whose pseudonym will be Javier de Leon. He reached out to me on the website.

told me a little about himself. He has two kids, told me that he was divorced. He was a chauffeur to the stars. So he showed me pictures with some stars sitting in the back of his car and he's taking pictures with them, what have you. So he gave me his number. I gave him my number.

We agreed to meet on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for dinner. He walked in, he was wearing blue jeans, a black leather jacket, and very handsome. And he asked me about me, and he just seemed so genuinely interested in me. We talked a lot about my life and kind of what I've been through. We talked about what he'd been through. And before you knew it, two hours had passed.

And I really liked him. I thought he was a really nice person. He'd been through some crap, but who hasn't? And feeling, wow, I like this guy. Something about him. I like him. Two weeks passed. My daughter at the time was working at a background investigative service in California. So I gave her his name, his date of birth, which I had, his address, which he had shared with me.

She called me back and she said, mommy, about 30 years ago, this man was convicted of bank robbery and served seven years in jail. And I says, no, not him. It's not him. She's a mom. It's too coincidental. Same date of birth, same address, same name.

So I called him up and I said, when you were younger, were you arrested? Did you go to jail? She goes, he goes, no, no, no, I've never been to jail. What are you talking about? He said, you did a background check on me. I said, I absolutely did. And I told him and he says, you know how many people are sitting in prison right now because of false accusation? It's not me. And I says, no, it's you. It's too coincidental. It's you. I said, look, I'm not here to judge you, but you can't lie to me. He said, can I come to see you?

So the next day we met, I said, I just want to know the truth. And that's when he told me this story about being young and his parents were addicted to drugs. His sisters, many nights would be hungry and how poor they were. They were so poor. And I know what it's like to be poor. And I know what it's like to be hungry. And that part of me said, no,

Okay. All right. That was a terrible thing you did. He says, but I never hurt anybody. We made sure nobody was hurt. I was just desperate and I got arrested and I went to jail and I served my time and I came out and I got married and I have a beautiful son. I have two sons and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And I said, but you still lied to me. I says the lying. I just can't deal with the lying. I said that, that bothers me more than anything. And he says, when I tell people, they just discard me like garbage and I'm not.

I'm a human being. There were adverse situations in my life when I was younger. I paid my dues. I'm a decent human being. I said, well, I need you to leave now because I just need to think about it. As I seem to always do, I decided to give him a chance.

I met his sister. I met his niece. I met his cousin. I FaceTimed with his mom. I FaceTimed with his son. He FaceTimed with my daughter every Sunday. I watched him spend hours helping his son with his homework. He was this doting father and he had another son who was special needs. And I would talk to him or see, you know, see pictures of him. And I was happy.

He wasn't volatile. He was sweet. He was caring, but consistently so. And by then he had tattooed my initials in large black letters across his chest. He had asked me to marry him. He was practically living with me. So I believed and wanted to believe that this was my person.

I decided that I wanted to buy property as investment property before I retire because back then I was heading into retirement age.

Ever since meeting him and meeting this cousin, he would talk about this house. There is this house in Waterbury, Connecticut. He says, my cousin owns the property. He purchased it about 10 years ago. He hasn't done much with it, but it has a lot of potential versus you spending money to buy a house in Manhattan. You're going to love this.

And I remember our first anniversary, we were at a restaurant, a very nice restaurant here in Manhattan. And we were eating dinner and he said, are you going to go look at the house? I promise you, just look at it. I think it would be a great investment for you and I can manage it. You won't have to do anything. So I decided to go and look at the house and it was everything that he said.

And I put him on video. I don't know why I started videotaping him telling me about the finished roof and how the siding and this and that and the other and the other. And I started imagining, you know, once I retire living in this place, it was a house that needed a lot of TLC, but I can see all of the work and I decided that I would buy the property.

Once I decided I would invest in the property, I told him, look, I don't know much about renovations. And he said the contractor said that he would do it for much cheaper if I paid him in cash. Don't think twice about it because that sounds completely plausible. I got the money from my pension. I took out a loan and I got money from my bank account and I would give it to him in pieces and bits.

He would call me from time to time and he would say, today we put in the jacuzzi because I wanted a jacuzzi. And we did the siding and we're painting and we're doing this. Or today I had a huge argument with the workers because they were taking too long on their lunch hour. And they really pissed me off. I'm putting in a garden. I know how you love your grandmother's garden. And I used to sing to her flowers and he knew this.

After I gave him the money, he would give me this play by play of all of the renovations that were taking place. And I would say to him, send me a picture. I want to see it. And he said, trust me, Chica, it's so beautiful. You saw it unfinished. I want to be there when you see it finished. It is so beautiful. You're going to love it. But I'd rather not send you a picture because it doesn't do it justice. I want you to see it with your eyes. Can you do that for me?

And so I didn't press the issue. So I gave him the last bit of money to finish the renovations and everything would be done on a Monday morning. We drove to the bank and I remember him saying that his mom was not doing well. And I knew his mom to be ill because I'd spoken with his mom and she told me that she was she was sick and what have you.

So that morning after I gave him the last bit of money, I got back in the car and he drove me to my office as he has done many times. He gave me a kiss and he says, okay, I'm heading up to Connecticut now and I will talk to you later. Later that night, he doesn't call. He texts me. He says, my throat's bothering me. I feel like I'm coming out with something I really can't talk. And by now we're into Wednesday. He's even more distant. I can't get him to have any conversations with me.

Thursday morning, he writes me a text and says, Donna, my mother passed away. Oh, my God. Because I know how close he was to his mom, how much he loved his mom, how much he cared for his mom. And I'm sorry for him. I'm aching for just the pain that I know he must be feeling. I'm feeling it for him. But as I try to pull closer to him, the more he would pull back.

He's falling apart. He's so sad. His sisters are falling apart. He's trying to be strong for them, but he can't be strong for them because everyone's having a tough time. But he doesn't invite me to the funeral.

When I asked about that, he says, well, it's this really terrible neighborhood. We don't have a lot of money for good resources, really rinky dinky funeral home. I feel so badly. I don't even want you to be here. This neighborhood is really bad. You wouldn't be comfortable. And I'm not comfortable in bad neighborhoods. But nevertheless, I would have gone. I would have made the sacrifice to go be there for him. But he said that and I didn't press the issue.

Shortly thereafter, I had foot surgery and he was supposed to pick me up from the hospital. He didn't show up. I had to find a friend to pick me up. And then I can't get in touch with him. Something's just not right. He's just disappeared from my life.

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Now, keep in mind, I've spent on both one hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars. I said, what is going on here? Where is my money? I didn't get to go see the house right now. I mean, I'm on crutches. I can't walk. Where's my money? And then he sends me a text and I'm paraphrasing here something along the lines of what money you gave me that is a gift and stop being selfish. I'm trying to grieve the loss of my mother.

My initial thought was he's having some sort of breakdown from the death of his mom. What the hell are you talking about? We've been working on this house now for going on five, six months. This is now a legal matter. I called my friend. She put me in touch with a lawyer who was in Connecticut. And I'm telling this lawyer the story. And I said, I need you to go and check on the house. I don't know what's happening with him right now. And the lawyer said, well, the house is really not far from my office. I'll drive down.

I waited for him to call. He called and he says, Donna, the house is there, but there's no remodeling. And I remember saying to him, oh, no, no, I'm sure you went to the wrong house. Just go to this address. He said, I am at the address. I said, but that's not possible. He told me, gave me a play by play for the past four months. So he sent me pictures and it was just the house as I remembered it.

And that's when it dawned on me. This whole time, I was just a mark. I didn't want to believe that. So I grabbed my laptop and I logged into the website where we met. And lo and behold, there he was with a different profile name, claiming to be an accountant. He even had a picture of his son in his profile picture.

In one of the pictures, he was wearing one of my running shirts and some of the pictures were taken in my apartment building that he used in this new profile. When you think of a typical scam, you think of someone that is hiding behind a computer screen pretending to be someone who they're not. This person finds someone that is vulnerable that's been through some stuff

That is hurting. That needs love. That wants love. That's desperate for love. That wants someone in their life. That's getting older. Whatever the case may be. But you may never see that person. Right? That's what you think of. Not someone that actually immersed themselves in your life. And you get to meet their family. And they get to meet yours. So I relaxed.

When I met them, I relaxed when we made it to a year and I was still in love with him and he was in love with me and he would send me these amazing messages of how much he loves me and how I mean the world to him, how proud he is of me and things of that nature. I never doubted that he really, really loved me. I didn't think I was being scammed. I didn't think I was a mark. I was a senior HR professional. People knew me for my squeaky clean persona. Yet, you know, I found myself in a situation that was so shocking.

Like, how did this person who I knew, who knew what I had been through, how could this person choose to add to the hurt and the pain that I've already suffered in my life? But I can now connect the trauma to my choices. It's like I was under the table and crumbs were falling and I was settled for the crumbs because I didn't believe I deserved the loaf.

The hard truth is I needed love in my life. I craved it. I needed someone to hug me. I needed someone to tell me that, you know, I mattered. And my whole life, the opposite was coming through, that I didn't matter. If someone just showed me love for a second, I was drawn to that person.

I would get in these relationships with these men who at the outset appeared to care for me, but they all had this hidden agenda. And here I was a third time trying. It was disheartening. It was like someone kicked me in my belly. It was, I can't even explain the pain when I realized that I was being used all along. He was just patiently waiting for the money. You know, I don't gravitate towards chaos and confrontation.

Because I've always been that speak when you're spoken to and answer when you call type of person. I always gave everybody else more power over me because that was just my conditioning. So he thought that once he did this, I would just go away quietly. But something clicked with this one. I immediately hired a lawyer to send a letter to him and his cousin.

He called my lawyer when he received the letter. I dare you to prove that she gave me a dime. I called the FBI. I went to the district attorney. I went to the FTC. I went to the IRS. I went to social services. Anywhere that I thought that he had an account and I reported him and I filed a lawsuit against him and his cousin.

And when I filed a lawsuit and the process server went to serve him at his apartment, his mother answered the door. I didn't know she wasn't dead. He did not show up, surprise, surprise, for the hearing. And so I was awarded a default judgment against him for all of the money increasing by 9%. So right now it's probably up to close to $300,000.

Lots of enforcement companies started reaching out to me to hire them to go after him to get the money back. And my response was, he's not working anywhere. He's probably on to his next victim. It's not worth it. Until one day I decided, why not? Go for it. It's the worst that could happen. We make his life miserable.

So I retained one of them and they found him living upstate in Rockland County with his girlfriend, who has been his girlfriend all along. And they found an account with about $21,000 in it. They immediately froze it and was in the process of diverting it to me. He realized that his bank account was frozen. He called them.

And he asked them if they would ask me to not take the whole thing, to just take a half and that he would make weekly payments of $180. Of course, I said, F no. And they took all of it. So where the vindication comes in this is that he cannot get a job. All of his wages will forever be garnished. He cannot purchase a car in his name. He cannot purchase a home in his name.

He's a scam artist and appropriate action was taken. Shortly after it happened, I went to Jamaica for the first time in 41 years. It was almost like going back in time because on my way to the resort, I had to drive past the house where I grew up, drive past the cemetery where mom and dada was buried. There was the persona of the little girl.

who was walking through the yard day after day after day, feeling unworthy as she does not belong. I went back there and I climbed the waterfalls and I imagined just all of the stuff being washed away. And it was just such a necessary thing for me to do just to come to terms with what had happened. In the aftermath, you know, there's an element of shame, but it's just money. You can make more, he can't.

Take comfort in the fact that someone who's a criminal did not murder you to hide his crime. Because there were many times when he could have. Just take the lessons from the wreckage and just keep it moving because you still have your life, you still have your light, and you could still move on. When I looked back at these experiences and this last experience,

I think the most difficult part for me was coming to terms with why I was showing up the way I showed up. You know, I could stand in a boardroom and make presentations to hundreds of people. It doesn't faze me one bit. I could stand on a stage and play the most difficult of characters or sing some of the most challenging songs.

I could wear all these different masks and be all these different people. But it was just so painful to be me. With me, I always felt no one stayed. My mom, she left. The first husband left for the woman. You know, everyone was leaving me. And it was affecting me because I didn't think I was enough to be by myself as I am. So it bothered me that they were leaving because I needed them to complete me. I needed them to make me feel whole as a person.

So a part of it became transactional. As I look back over when I bought the house, when I bought the cars, I was buying all of these things and doing all of these things to make these people happy because I felt that they were all going to leave. And why is it a problem if they leave? Because if they leave, then I'm just with me. And I didn't think that me was enough.

And I decided that I needed to peel back the layers and really look at the little girl that was walking around with this mask of insecurity, feeling unworthy and not enough. And I had to actually take care of her because she's me and I am her. And that's how I was able to find healing. The cloak of shame in a situation like this does not belong to the wronged, but it should only be worn by the person who did the wrong.

I won't be ashamed. I didn't do anything to be ashamed of. He did. I read something once where they say the shame is not in what happened to you. It is in allowing it to take control of your life. I had to let it go. I had to forgive and forgive is not for him, right? Forgive is for me. I didn't want to stew about it. The longer I stew about it, the longer he hangs around in my consciousness, stinking up my mind.

So I had to kind of let it go and say, this happened, nothing I can do about it. It happened. Now, what can I use to my benefit and to benefit of others? In 2018, I got my certification through ICF, International Coach Federation, which is like the gold standard of coaching. And I started a practice, Distinguished Coaching, where I coach women and help them to shed victimhood.

And just the love that I felt and the support that I have felt from people saying this happened to me as well. You don't know what your story has meant to me and how it has helped me to see the forest as opposed to just the trees, but see the big picture of what's going on in my relationship.

And I use that as a blessing. I say, well, yeah, this thing happened, but now I have this amazing platform and an opportunity to help and to share and to make a difference. So not happy that it happened because it was painful. It was all painful. Nevertheless, it happened and I own it. And now I show up completely differently. I'm not a selfish person. I've never been a selfish person. I never will be. But I make sure that I'm cared for, that my needs are met.

before I worry about the needs of others. In 2019, I met someone. Of course, I did his background check and I asked for everything except his blood type. He's a retired police officer. We've been together for five years and he doesn't need anything from me. He has his own. He has his own car. He has an apartment. He just loves me for me.

And I'm in a fantastic place in my life right now. I finally feel seen and heard and cared for. But first I see myself. First I hear myself. First I care for myself. And anything else is just gravy. I think an element of not feeling worthy or struggling will rear its ugly head from time to time. But I've been strong enough to persevere and to push through.

And I realized I am just fine. I'm enough. I've always been enough. I just needed to believe it. Today's episode featured Donna Hayes. Donna has written a memoir that includes further details about her incredible journey called These Broken Roads, which you can find on Amazon. You can also find out more about her on her website, donna-hayes.com.

and learn about her coaching practice at distinguishedcoaching.com. You can find her on social media on Instagram at IamDonna underscore Hayes. If you'd like to reach out to her directly, you can email her at Donna at distinguishedcoaching.com. ♪♪♪

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I'm your host, Witt Misseldein. Today's episode was co-produced by me, Jason Blaylock, and Andrew Waits, with special thanks to the This Is Actually Happening team, including Ellen Westberg. The intro music features the song Illabi by Tipper. You can join the community on the This Is Actually Happening discussion group on Facebook, or follow us on Instagram at ActuallyHappening.

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Hey, it's Guy Raz here, host of How I Built This, a podcast that gives you a front row seat to how some of the best known companies in the world were built.

In a new weekly series we've launched called Advice Line, I'm joined by some legendary founders and together we talk to entrepreneurs in every industry to help tackle their roadblocks in real time. Everybody buys on feeling, Guy, like everybody. So if you don't give them the feeling that they're looking for, they're not going to buy. A lot of times founders will go outside of themselves to build a story. And

And you can't replicate heart. You know, I think we all have a little bit of imposter syndrome, which isn't the worst thing in the world because it doesn't allow you to get overconfident and think that you're invincible. Check out the advice line by following How I Built This on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to How I Built This early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus.