Listen, 2020 wasn’t my best year. I spent a lot of time in my bathtub – actually, a large clear storage tub in the bottom of my shower – eating bread I certainly didn’t make, and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Clear plastic, I discovered to my horror, is a material that fares best when it doesn’t have your flesh pressed right up against it. So I made a healthy decision to buy some workout equipment online and slowly wean myself off bathtime.
Looking on Facebook Marketplace, I found a pilates reformer, a sort of bed on rails, a lie-down trampoline, with resistance straps for your arms and legs. They are usually very expensive – at least A$2,000 (£1,560) – but this one was listed for A$500. Absolute bargain! The seller was a man named Jacob (not his real name) in Adelaide, thousands of kilometres away from me in Melbourne, and certainly beyond the 5km radius the lockdown allowed us to travel. No matter – he would courier it. Legend!
Jacob looked like the kind of guy you’d warn your friend not to date. His profile revealed lots of pictures of him partying with his mates, trips to Bali, nights out at the casino with the lads, lads, lads! He sold me the pilates reformer and he used his own profile with his real name. This was a public profile that was 10 years old – 10 years’ worth of data – so I felt confident in transferring him the cash despite only having seen the merchandise online. Before I clicked “go” on the purchase, I already had his friends’ and parents’ names, his football club, gym and workplace. I knew that he summered on the Gold Coast, went to a private school and enjoyed the movie Step Brothers.
I transferred Jacob A$500. It isn’t millions, but I work in the arts so it’s quite a big chunk of cash for me. In fact, I’ve never had a spare A$500 before and this story will probably serve as evidence as to why I probably won’t again.
The day after I sent Jacob the money, I sent him a message: “Hey Jake, just wondering if I can grab the shipping info.”
“Hi Michelle, the guy’s been delayed, but I will send it through on Monday!”
Guess what happened on Monday? Nada.
On Tuesday, I gently nudged him.
“Hey Jake, just looking for an update on the reformer – sorry to hassle you.”
Sorry to hassle you? Why are women?
“So sorry, Michelle, he’s been delayed again, he will pick it up on Thursday along with some other equipment I’m sending through to Melbourne.”
Thursday came and went. As the days crept by, Jacob made excuse after excuse as to why the reformer hadn’t arrived yet, and it started to dawn on me that maybe this was too good to be true. Maybe I was being scammed.
I knew I should probably go to the police. And I threatened to do it, too.
“Listen, mate, I don’t know what is going on in your life, but it’s becoming clear to me that you’re trying to scam me out of my money. You’ve used your real profile to scam me – you must know how easy it is for me to report you. So what I’m really interested in is how you got to such a difficult place in your life that you were willing to be so reckless? You don’t have to tell me what’s going on, but you do have to give me my money back within the next three days or I’m going to the cops. And if you do want to tell me what’s going on, we’re in lockdown over here in Melbourne – I’ve got nothing but time.”
He told me the past few months had been a scary time, mental health wise, and I felt a pang of guilt, which is ridiculous, but I still felt it. He hinted that he was feeling like he might want to opt out of this life, and I felt worried for him. I felt responsible.
Jacob FaceTimed me after I messaged him. I was surprised to see such a vulnerable and sad man on the other end of the call, and he was very surprised to see “the girl one” from his favourite Australian sketch comedy group, Aunty Donna. Not only was I being scammed by a very sad man, this was the kind of person who watches the TV shows I’m in. This was my audience. Great.
Jacob begged me for more time, said he needed just two more weeks, but after that he would send me a refund. He refused to admit out loud that he had scammed me, but it was this sort of unspoken thing between us. He made excuses like, “The courier is just really busy” – excuses he knew I didn’t believe. I just wanted my refund, and in return I wouldn’t go to the police. He sent me a picture of his ID to hold on to as collateral and asked me to make a video saying hello to his mate who loves my comedy. I didn’t make the video.
Two weeks came and went, and guess what? No cash. But something else happened in those two weeks – we had started sort of joking with each other via Facebook Messenger, checking in to see how lockdown was treating me (not well, Jake – it’s week 11 of lockdown two) and how life was treating him. And now that it was clear that he had indeed tried to scam me using his actual Facebook profile, like an amateur, I wanted to ask him questions. Why did he think he could get away with this when he was so easy to find?
But that’s the thing: it wasn’t that he thought he could get away with it, he just didn’t think at all. It wasn’t about the long-term for him, it was desperation. It was about survival. He slowly told me his history of gambling, drinking and drug abuse. He was never specific about what happened, he would just say sweeping things like: “My missus left me when I went out and blew 40 grand in one night.” But when I asked him how you can lose that much money so quickly, he would just shrug it off. I suppose he didn’t know how. Maybe if he did, he wouldn’t be in this position. He struck me as more of a toddler than a grown man.
From what I can piece together, Jacob would scam someone and then sort it out when it caught up with him by gambling or begging from his family. He would start new fires in an attempt to put out others. I was interested in how a person ends up like this – more interested than I was in going to the police and getting my money back. I asked him how his family were: did they still speak to him? Had he had a relapse? What was he looking forward to? Anything to keep him talking and, if I’m honest, to keep him alive.
As Jacob stalled on giving me my money back, he answered my questions more and more freely – offering vulnerability in place of payment. He owed all his friends, family and co-workers money. He had talked his way out of plenty of “failed investments” and “forgotten” repayments. We spoke regularly, and suddenly we were becoming something else, something like friends. Just two people who every now and then would message each other normal things like, “I hope you’re getting the help you need”, “I’m running out of second chances, I have to go to the police soon” and “Yeah, my friend Luke bought a jetski so we’ve been getting around on that, which is pretty sick, distracting me from my menty-b”.
***
I didn’t trust him, I didn’t even like him, but I was curious about him. I like to dress it up as altruism, but it’s possible that I was just slowing down to drive past a car crash and have a sticky-beak. A peak behind the curtain. This poor little rich boy from a fancy school who got it all so wrong. It felt like empathy, but also like perversion. His friends and family ran out of patience. I soon became the only person left in Jacob’s life still talking to him. And when he wound up in the hospital due to his declining mental health, he asked me to be his emergency contact. His next of kin. My partner at this point was furious. He begged me to just call the police, but I couldn’t. I was deep in a story and I didn’t have a good ending yet. Also, I wanted to know if he really was in the hospital, or if this was a tactic to stall me.
Agreeing to be Jacob’s emergency contact seemed absurd at the time and more absurd now; a dare I accepted out of shock at such a bold and vulnerable request. And he was vulnerable – more than I’d realised. When Jacob first made an attempt on his own life, he had been cut off by his family and friends. His parents had remortgaged their home trying to keep up with paying back his many victims, his gambling debts, court fines and credit card bills. They carried the most shame. He had done them so much damage, in the way we only do to those we love the most.
They were right to take a step back from him, and that’s maybe what made me feel that I, a complete stranger with nothing but A$500 to lose, was right to step in where they couldn’t, to relieve them of their duties for a bit. Strangers can afford each other a kindness that is lighter and easier to accept than the kindness of those who love us unconditionally. There is no shame attached to the kindness of a stranger.
Or strangers. Almost a year later, I’d started telling the story – using a fake name for him – on podcasts and the radio. People started getting in touch with me from all over Australia. Some of his friends contacted me – they recognised the scenario and told me about his many other victims. And then a girl named Emily sent me a message. Emily had also tried to buy one of the pilates reformers. She had been patient and kind to him. She was someone who had shared my experience. I wonder how many of us there were.
Emily and I connected up all the dates he had told us he was in hospital. We worked out that he was telling us the same story, regardless of whether or not it was true – and we’ll never really know. I don’t really care; I’m grateful for the shared experience. We wore him down, putting in the hard work until he eventually paid Emily back all but A$25 and me all but A$60. I don’t know how he got that money. Emily and I decided it was better not to ask. We were both glad we had helped him, even if only some or none of the things he told us were true. Because assuming an arsehole has had a bad day or a hard life makes you feel better than letting yourself feel taken for a fool. I don’t want to know what lies he told me. I’m more interested in what I learned about myself.
I should probably say: don’t do what I did. It wasn’t smart and it wasn’t necessarily safe. But it was a wild ride, and now I’ve made a show about what happened as a cautionary tale, or as an argument for radical empathy. Jacob very nearly played himself, too – until I decided it might be better to keep a physical distance between us. You can only go so far with people you don’t really know before you’re taking silly risks.
Jacob is now studying for a qualification to work in drug and alcohol addiction. He attends Alcoholics Anonymous and Gamblers Anonymous. He is reaching out to all those he has wronged and slowly paying back his parents. He thanks me for showing him kindness, for showing him there are people in the world who will offer you a safe place to land, even when you don’t deserve it. He is, for absolutely no want of a better word, reformed. When I did the show telling this story in Australia, I sold out, moved to a larger venue and made enough money to buy myself a brand new pilates reformer. So really, in the end, I sometimes wonder: who scammed who?
I still talk to Jacob sometimes. I think he’s about to go to prison, but I don’t know what for. He is always telling me half stories, and I pick up bits and pieces from his friends, but there are lots of answers I’ll never get. Whatever happens to him, I hope he gets help and not just punishment. I am in equal parts proud and ashamed of how I acted. I am happy with the wrap-up, where Jacob and I landed, and I am glad that I was there for him. I talked this arguably terrible man down off a ledge many times. I don’t know if the world is better with him in it. But my world is better for at least having tried.
• Michelle Brasier: Reform is at the Edinburgh festival fringe in the Gilded Balloon Teviot Dining Room until 27 August at 7pm.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
