They say reality is stranger than fiction; and nowhere does that seem to ring truer than when it comes to matters of the heart. Not everything is what it seems when it comes to relationships sometimes; and if you are unlucky, nothing is what it seems.
What appears to be a perfect relationship can turn out to be what could pass for a horror film.
Alice knows all too well what it feels like to be a victim of love fraud. She had been in a string of failed relationships and had almost given up on love until Michael happened. They met by “coincidence” through a church group. Michael, the son of a diplomat, was new in Nairobi from Uganda and looking for a church to worship at when he stumbled upon one near his house in Karen.
He joined a Bible study group where he met Alice and they kicked it off almost immediately. Alice’s father had passed on a month earlier and she was still grieving. Her father was a multi-millionaire businessman who had left his empire to her and her mother.
It seemed like Michael came into her life at the perfect time. He was sweet, understood her, they liked to do the same things: long drives out of the city, hiking, playing chess, you name it.
It didn't hurt that he came from a 'good' family, spoke well and was educated. They started spending more time together and Alice opened up about her struggles adjusting to life after her father. Michael was there for her every time she needed him. He would come over to her house and keep her company until late. Michael started helping out in the family businesses and before long, he had also won the heart of Alice’s mother. “What a helpful young man he is,” she would say. A year later, they were engaged.
“Since he was practically already family, we made him a signatory to the family business accounts,” Alice said.
A month later, Michael disappeared, without a trace.
“I tried calling him but his phone was off. I thought to myself, has he been kidnapped? I went to report it to the police but they said I had to wait at least 48 hours before anything could be done. We tried to think of someone to call to find out about his whereabouts but realised we didn’t have any of his friends or family’s contacts,” Alice said.
It suddenly started to dawn on Alice that she could have been a victim of a conman.
She immediately called her bank and it turned out Sh5 million had been withdrawn.
Alice hired a private investigator to track 'Michael' down and what came out of the investigations was horrifying.
Serial conman
Turns out the guy was a serial conman who preys on vulnerable, rich, young women. He had reputation for hanging out at clubs for the well-heeled and scavenging for information about rich damsels in distress, then going to play the role of knight in shining armour before disappearing with their wealth.
Michael would visit clubs and seek out the girls driving German machines, the ones buying the expensive liquor and find out more about them. They say a bartender knows everything about his patrons – so he befriended bartenders in most high-end clubs and always had a good enough tip for them to make them spill all they knew about their patrons. He would then try to fish out more about them on the Internet.
Michael would have half his work done if he found his person of interest had a public Instagram page and accessible Facebook page. He would then study the posts the girls made and pick their hobbies and preferred hangout locations and then begin 'work'.
In Alice’s case, she had put pictures on Facebook of her church meetings in a Karen Church, pictures of her hiking and going on road trips to Naivasha – and that made Michael’s work oh so easy. He pretended to be new in town, looking for a place to praise the Lord and landed at the Karen Church, in Alice’s study group, and then charmingly struck a conversation with her and pretended to be a hiker and person who loved road trips. His women prey never got to meet his friends because he was "new in town” and his friends were back in Uganda, but in reality he was Kenyan.
Ugandan 'ssebo'
He had mastered a Ugandan accent and acted like a true Ugandan gentleman. He would even talk to his 'relatives' in Luganda on the phone and now Alice was thinking the man had learned the language from some friends, lived in Uganda for a while, or maybe he wasn’t even speaking Luganda!
Alice said: “The guy used to call me nyabo all the time and say things like mwagala nyo (I love you very much) and I fell for it. Now that I think about it, who can’t pretend to know Luganda by dropping a few common words. Who can’t fake a foreign accent? I feel so foolish.”
Alice was visibly embarrassed by how she had been conned and although she wanted to have 'Michael' (real name Joseph) prosecuted, she didn’t want to have to make the embarrassing fact that she had been conned public.
The Rockefeller fraud
Then there is the story of the immigrant who made a Harvard educated woman believe he was royalty, a member of the Rockefeller family. His cover was only blown when he “kidnapped” his daughter.
Flashback to how this man started his con racket. Christian Gerhartsreiter was a German immigrant who started his con games in his teens. He adopted many aliases as he moved from city to city in the US, conning unsuspecting people. He pretended to be an English aristocrat, high-profile business executive, art collector among other things. He was able to charm his way into the heart of a successful Harvard graduate using the name Clark Rockefeller and had a daughter with her. He lived off her money and she got dissatisfied with their union and sought a divorce. The woman had custody of their child and he had restricted visits with his daughter three times a year. On one of the visits, he kidnapped the girl and that unwrapped the crazy web that was the imposter. He was arrested six days after abducting his daughter. The police had been searching for him for 10 years for the disappearance of a couple.
Gerhartsreiter first moved from Bavaria to California and stayed with a couple, pretending to be an exchange student from a very wealthy German family. He would do nothing and was rude, his excuse being he was from a very rich family and menial chores were above him. They finally chased him away for his callousness.
He then changed his name to Chris Gerhart and went on to pursue a career in acting. He married a US citizen at 22 to obtain a green card then dumped her soon after.
After a brief stint living in a guest house in San Marino, where the host’s son and daughter-in-law disappeared and he is suspected to have killed them, he moved away and married the second woman, the Harvard graduate working for McKinsey. Although she earned all the money, Clark Rockefeller, as he now called himself, controlled all their finances. He was able to gain access to exclusive groups and people pretending he was a high net worth individual.
After being caught kidnapping his daughter, he went to trial and he was diagnosed with delusional disorder and narcissistic personality disorder.
He went to jail for the murder of the couple that disappeared and custodial kidnapping.
Heartless?
How do people heartlessly take advantage of people and feel no remorse? Are they monsters? Do they have mothers?
Psychologists have associated frauds with mental conditions such as narcissistic personality disorder and sometimes Machiavellianism.
Love frauds (and all other cons) have self-centred behaviours that aim to get what they want at any cost.
How to spot someone with Machiavellian traits
1. They have narcissistic behaviours: Does the person you are dating think very highly of themselves? There is a difference between confidence and exaggerated grandiose. Are they always talking about themselves?
2. They had a ‘by any means necessary’ attitude: Is your partner so determined to get to a certain goal that they are willing to do anything to achieve it? If they want to become rich, are they ready to rob the bank to make sure that happens and engage in other unethical activities?
3. Dodgy behaviour: Have you been dating someone for some time but you cannot confidently say you know the person? You know little, if anything about their family and friends?
What you need to do to avoid love cons
1. Consult ‘Dr’ Google. In this day and age, you need to be able to find some tangible information about people
2. Don’t ignore gut feelings. If something doesn’t add up or doesn’t feel right, it’s probably not right.
3. Do not reveal too much about yourself too soon to a new love interest.