Last year, nearly 70,000 people reported to the Federal Trade Commission that they were caught up in a romance scam, with their swindlers raking in a total of $1.3 billion. A romance scam, or confidence scam, is when someone feigns affection or attraction to someone for financial or material gain. In Oregon, victims of these cons lost over $10 million between January and October of 2022. Freelance journalist Ian Frisch reported on one Portlander’s experience with this type of scam for The Verge. He joins us to discuss the growing trend of romance scams and how one man’s Tinder date turned into a car theft police sting.
Note: This transcript was computer generated and edited by a volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Nearly 70,000 Americans reported that they were caught up in romance scams last year alone. That is according to the Federal Trade Commission, which says that swindlers raked in more than $1.3 billion. Romance scams are a particular kind of con where people fake affection or attraction for financial gain. Freelance journalist Ian Frisch wrote a recent article for The Verge about one Portlander’s unusually dramatic experience with this type of scam. His date started at a Denny’s in the middle of the night, and ended up as an armed robbery. Ian Frisch, welcome.
Ian Frisch: Hey, thanks for having me.
Miller: Thanks for joining us. Let’s start with some definitions here. What’s included in this umbrella term “romance scam”?
Frisch: Well you kind of summarized it pretty well in your opening there. It’s any type of con or scheme where something of value can be extracted from the victim. And the methodology for romance scams is pretty specific. You mentioned that a scammer will feign some sort of attraction to the victim. But what they’re really doing is preying upon this person’s emotional vulnerabilities. A lot of the time you hear about little old ladies who joined Facebook, and next thing they know they’re chatting with a supposed soldier over in Iraq, and they’re sending them money for the canteen or whatever, but it’s really just a scammer trying to get as much cash as possible. It’s anything under the umbrella of, like you said, using someone’s emotional vulnerabilities and thinning affection to get their money.
Miller: The scale of this is pretty breathtaking, $1.3 billion last year. Does the FTC, or do you, have an explanation for why these crimes are on the rise right now?
Frisch: I mean, it’s hard to say. I think that since the pandemic started, certainly people are feeling more isolated, and with isolation comes vulnerability. The amount of money lost to romance scams has gone up over the past few years, and did peak last year. I spoke to Special Agent in charge of the Portland field office Kieran Ramsey, and he told me that Oregon citizens alone last year lost $10 million through romance scams. And I think that you’re gonna see these numbers go up as our lives become more reliant on technology. People are using social media to communicate with people halfway around the world almost every day. And these sorts of little crevices within that are rife for scammers to kind of thread their way into.
Miller: Do we even know how likely these crimes are to be reported? Because I imagine that the victims of these particular crimes could feel various versions of shame or embarrassment at being caught up in them.
Frisch: Of course. Everyone thinks that they’re their own best protector, right? The reason why people get scammed in this way is not because they’re dumb. A lot of the time they get scammed in this way because they are overly confident in how good they are at sussing out other people’s motivations. And to your point, I would assume that hundreds of millions of dollars in romance games don’t get reported because people are embarrassed. Can you imagine turning around and figuring out the person you were talking to was not real and all that money you sent them is gone. You wouldn’t want to tell anyone that, you wouldn’t want your family to know. It kind of goes to the heart of the story that I reported for The Verge in that I think it took a lot of guts for the main character, Mike, to come out and speak publicly about what he experienced with his own scam on his Tinder date.
Miller: I’m gonna turn to him in one second. But before that, can you give us a sense for the regular or likely demographics here? I mean, who commonly falls for these types of scams?
Frisch: It can be anyone. But normally it’s people who are less sophisticated with the nuances of technology, because they don’t really understand the vulnerabilities that being online can produce. We kind of mentioned this in the story, but when you think of someone who falls for a romance scam, it’s like a little old lady doesn’t know how her phone works. But I think that the breadth of who can be a victim is quite broad. And you hear scam and scheme and heist stories and podcasts all over the place, and the victims do range from sophisticated to unsophisticated, and everyone in between.
Miller: So let’s now turn to Mike Vallejo. He is the subject of your recent article, a Portlander and not in your phrase, a little old lady. He is a man, and he is a millennial. What can you tell us about him?
Frisch: Mike is a tech entrepreneur from Portland, quite successful. He told me that he’s made millions of dollars through entrepreneurship and starting SEO companies, and really being on the pulse of what technology has to offer in the marketplace. And the irony of this story is that technology, and his mastery of it, kind of codified his identity. Part of who he was a guy who knew technology so well that he was able to make a living off of it. So for him to get caught up in this situation kind of had this satirical sort of caperish bent to it.
Miller: What was going on in his life leading up to getting caught up in this scam?
Frisch: Well, this goes back to my point about emotional vulnerability. When people emotionally want something or need something, they are ripe to be taken advantage of. And the same applied to Mike. He had been married to a woman for about four years, and their marriage was kind of on the skids, and they had just separated. And Mike was like “well, I’m single now, and I’m rich, and I have a nice car, why not have some fun?” But underneath that, and he did admit this to me, he was really looking for connection. Unfortunately, when he joined Tinder and went on this first date, he ended up finding the opposite.
Miller: You mentioned he said he was looking for connection. How did he describe his goals when he got on to Tinder?
Frisch: He’s in his early thirties, I think he was just trying to have some fun and enjoy bachelorhood. But I think that the emotional side of him was kind of mourning the relationship that he lost with his wife. So I think he was kind of dealing with this sort of dual motivation, where he wanted to be this freshly single bachelor, but also potentially find true human connection. And I think that when he went out into the dating pool, he brought those two motivations with him, which perhaps combined got him into this sticky situation.
Miller: So what happened when he matched with somebody who called herself Ky?
Frisch: So Mike joins Tinder, he’s a good looking guy for sure. He gets all these matches, one of whom was “Ky” or a woman calling herself Ky. And she seemed pretty cute, maybe a little inscrutable, like some pictures that maybe didn’t necessarily show her face completely, no firm biographical details. But they chatted up, and she seemed really interested in meeting up with him, so he said sure. So he picks her up in his Jaguar, this amazing F-TYPE roadster-
Miller: But before that, can you describe what the chats entailed before that, before they actually met up? There are some, some warning flags before they even get together, just screaming red flags after the fact when you’re just reading your article. So can you just give us a sense for what they’d already talked about before they met?
Frisch: Yeah, okay, red flags. Yeah, there were a lot. They kind of did this sort of flirtatious banter over Tinder direct message. And once they cemented that they wanted to see each other, Ky starts asking him all these random questions, like “well, maybe if we’re coming out here we could get a hotel?” And Mike’s like “yeah, sure.” And she’s like “well, can you pull out cash to pay for the hotel?” And he’s like, “um, okay.” And then she’s like “what kind of car do you drive?” And he’s like, “I drive this fancy Jaguar.” And then she’s asking him “oh, I’ve never driven a Jaguar before. Can I drive it when we meet up?” And Mike’s like “sure.” So then he has this sort of set up already cemented where, in her mind and in the minds of her accomplices, he’s already kind of being molded by the scam, by even being willing to entertain these requests.
Miller: When you talked to him after the fact, how did he explain not seeing these as red flags? Can you bring cash, what kind of car do you have, can I drive it?
Frisch: I don’t know. I pressed him on it, “Mike, we’re the same age, seriously?” And he was just like “I don’t know, man, I guess I was just feeling vulnerable, and I just didn’t think it could happen to me.” I just feel like his confidence as a young successful bachelor outweighed his best judgment. It’s hard to explain in retrospect. If anyone gets scammed and you’re like “how could this have happened?,” there really is no logical explanation because your emotions are playing tricks on you in the moment.
Miller: And I guess I should say that even just in the skepticism of my questions and maybe the tone of my voice is a version of victim blaming, which goes back to the shame and embarrassment I’d mentioned earlier. None of this explains exactly how this happens, but it certainly might explain why somebody would not want to talk about this, something that Mike didn’t have a problem with doing. He went to Instagram after all this happened, which we’ll get into, and he also seemingly happily talked with you.
So let’s move forward with the date, a date that maybe was going to end up in a hotel starts late at night at a Denny’s. How did that happen?
Frisch: Well, right before they were supposed to meet up, Ky informed Mike that she was actually currently in Salem, which is about an hour away from Mike’s house in Portland. And she said “well, why don’t you come down here, we can hang out.” And it was already fairly late at that point, and obviously that late at night a lot of more proper restaurants aren’t open. So they settled on a Denny’s. Mike, as promised, let Ky drive to Denny’s. And it was obvious that she had no idea how to drive a sports car, and didn’t really know where she was going. But Mike looked past this red flag.
And once they get to Denny’s, he sees her in the diner’s lighting, and he’s like “you don’t really look like the girl in the pictures,” kind of catfished in the moment. But Mike still wanted to be polite, he still felt, coming off of a marital separation, that he wanted to do right by the person sitting across from him or do right by people in general in the future. So he paid for her pancakes, he didn’t eat anything. And then the next phase of the date, they leave, and he lets Ky drive again.
Miller: And then what happens?
Frisch: So Ky tells him “oh, I’m actually gonna stay at my friend’s house in Oregon City.” So Mike’s like “ok, cool, we can drop you off there on my way back to Portland.” So they drive over to Oregon City, she pulls up in front of her “friend’s house.” And then they just sit there. And Mike is like “all right, go up and knock on the door.” And she’s like “well, let’s just wait, I’m waiting for her to text me, blah, blah, blah.” So they’re kind of sitting there awkwardly and then, and then she tells him, and I’m quoting the story here, “don’t judge me, but I’m gonna go outside and pee in that bush right now.” And Mike’s like “ok.” She takes the keys with her because she was driving, goes out, she’s gone for a little over five minutes. She gets back in the car, keys in hand, and the next thing Mike knows there’s two men outside of the passenger window, one of whom has a knife, one of whom has a gun, and they’re telling him “get out of the car.”
Miller: And we should say this is where a romance scam turns into something which is very unusual for a romance scam, right? This is not just getting a gift card by lying, this is an armed robbery.
Frisch: Yeah, and that’s what makes Mike’s story so singular underneath the umbrella of romance scams, because it’s so much easier just to steal someone’s money over the internet. Like send me crypto, or like wire me money to a Western Union. And to be to take a romance game, and turn it into an in real life armed robbery is extremely rare, and I think it goes again back to this strange caperish nature of this story. There’s obviously a digital paper trail in terms of the communications, and to do it in person kind of opens you up to being identified later. So the crime to me was a little strange in that regard. But also the violence of it, to do it with a gun and a knife, it was pretty traumatic for Mike.
Miller: They ended up taking his wallet, his watch, his phone, and his car and leaving him there. What did he do next?
Frisch: So after they brought him out of the car and they kind of stripped him down and of his valuables, Ky was still in the front seat of the Jaguar. The two thieves jump in the Jaguar with Ky and they bail, and Mike’s abandoned. So he’s walking through the rain, classic Oregon weather. He finally comes across an all night Subway, still in the Oregon City limits. And he tells the teenager working the graveyard shift, “I just got robbed, I need to use the phone.” He calls the cops, the cops show up, he tells them the story, didn’t lie about anything, told them he was scammed the whole nine yards. and they didn’t believe him because it was that outlandish.
Miller: And then an outlandish story gets really even more confusing. He posts on Instagram everything that happened to him. And then he gets a direct message from someone named Chase. Who is Chase?
Frisch: So this is where this story kind of goes from a little crazy to just like absolutely insane. In Mike’s point of view, Chase DMs him, says “I know where your car is, give me a call.” So Mike calls, and Chase tells him this elaborate story about how he’s a former thief, a former criminal, but he put on the white hat and now he’s a informant for the Polk County sheriff’s office, and acting as this sort of like pseudo Robin Hood, helps desperate Oregon citizens retrieve their stolen merchandise, and how he had helped recover 70 stolen cars. And Mike is like “oh my God, crazy.” So that’s the story about Chase that Mike heard.
Now at the same time that Chase is trying to get Mike to kind of get in with him so they can try to retrieve his car from the thieves who have it, Chase is calling the Polk County Sheriff’s office and telling them “hey, I know Mike, we’re already gonna go get the car because I know where the thieves are. Are you guys gonna help us too?” So Chase, for reasons that still are kind of a mystery to me, inserted himself in this situation, and was fibbing to both Mike and the Polk County Sheriff’s office about each other’s involvement, so all three parties could come together and collaborate on Chase’s cockamamie scheme to set up this sting, and try to retrieve Mike’s Jaguar from the thieves and the fences who were hoping to sell it after it was stolen.
Miller: What have you been able to verify about who Chase actually was, or what he had actually done up to this point?
Frisch: It’s funny because directly after Mike was robbed, like a week later, that’s when I first spoke to Mike about this story. And he was like “hit up Chase, Chase was really open with me and obviously is still using social media, here’s his phone number.” I can’t get in touch with him. Turns out, he stole a vehicle a week after he helped Mike and was in jail. So I go back in his court records, and it turns out that he had a laundry list of convictions related to theft and charges of forgery and driving with a suspended license, a really long rap sheet.
So I’m calling around the people who might know him, and one source who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity was like “this guy Chase, he’s a pathological liar and obviously a criminal.” Which, after I pieced all the puzzles together, after speaking with Mike, then calling Polk County and being like “what happened with this sting and this guy Chase?”, they’re like “he was not an informant for us. We didn’t know anything about this guy until he called us about Mike’s car and how it was being stored in Polk County.” So like I said, for reasons unknown, Chase inserted himself in this wild caper, lied about who he was to both sides so this whole crazy sting could be set up. And according to court records, he definitely has a rap sheet of convictions mainly relating to theft.
Miller: Nevertheless, the Polk County sheriff’s office did, within 24 hours, go along with Chase’s plan, and they did try to retrieve the car. And then as you note, it ended up in a high speed chase, ended up in a crash. The Jaguar was recovered, but it had been totaled, which brings us more or less to the end of that part of the story. Where do things stand right now?
Frisch: So I just wanna kind of go back and give credit to the Polk County Sheriff’s office, just because the reason why they collaborated in this thing, which turned into a disaster as you just mentioned, is because based on what Chase told them, they didn’t want Mike to be in any danger. They wanted to make sure everyone was safe, and that basically two civilians were going to go out there and try to do this themselves. But again, the sting turned into a disaster. Mike’s Jaguar was totaled, it flipped over in the woods, the whole nine yards.
But after the crash, they had found evidence inside the car, and the car and all the evidence that was found was transferred to Oregon City where the original robbery happened. And a detective with the Oregon City Police Department who was leading the investigation used those found materials to figure out who did it. And the Oregon City Police Department made three arrests in the case, one of whom was Ky, her real name is Kylie Keim, and her two accomplices. They were charged for the robbery of Mike’s car and his watch, et cetera. Their case is still working its way through the courts.
Mike thankfully worked with his insurance company to get a replacement car. He did not get a new Jaguar, but he did get a 2020 Corvette, which based on his Instagram post that I’ve been following over the past couple of weeks, he loves very much.
Miller: I’m happy to hear that. What has he said he’s learned, if anything, from this whole experience?
Frisch: It’s hard to say. It’s hard to say. I asked him “what’s up with Tinder now?” And he’s like “oh, I’ve still been using it. I was just in LA, and I turned it on when I was down there to see what was up in the city.” And I’m just laughing on the phone to him, like “Mike, have you learned anything about this situation?” And I think that his major takeaway really centers on the fact that he might be more gullible than he once thought, and that maybe he has to keep his guard up, especially when he’s searching for love.
Miller: Why do you think he wanted to talk to you and have this story be even more public than just his Instagram story?
Frisch: It’s hard to say. I think that Mike really felt betrayed by maybe a more philosophical premise about what it means to be vulnerable with another person, even if they are a stranger. I think that the betrayal that he felt maybe not necessarily was just centered on getting his car stolen, but [was] about someone who he was potentially gonna open his heart, turning around and stabbing him in the back. And I think by being able to share this story, even though maybe it’s slightly embarrassing for him, I think that the bigger picture about what romance scams can do to people could be shared not only locally in Portland, but nationally as well.
Miller: Ian Frisch, thanks very much.
Frisch: Thanks so much.
Miller: Ian Frisch is a freelance journalist. He wrote about this Portland-based or Oregon-based story for The Verge.
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