As a thriller author, I’ve spent numerous hours dissecting the psychology of con artists — their manipulative appeal, weaponized belief and skill to take advantage of vulnerabilities. Crime has fascinated me since childhood, not only for the acts themselves, however for the minds behind them. I spent years finding out these behaviors, satisfied that understanding their ways would defend me and people I really like.
That phantasm crumbled when the individual closest to me — my husband — was conned.
Whereas crafting fictional schemes for my fourth co-written novel, “Belief Points,” I immersed myself in fraudsters’ ways to govern their victims. I assumed I knew their playbook inside and outside. But, whilst I meticulously wove the story of a silver-tongued stepfather who leaves a household shattered, my husband and I unknowingly fell prey to a real-life con.
***
My husband, Brian, ran a profitable linked health firm for a decade. When gyms reopened after the pandemic, his enterprise by no means totally recovered. As he labored tirelessly to maintain issues afloat, he started exploring choices to lift capital for enlargement.
On the similar time, I used to be sidelined with hyperemesis gravidarum throughout my being pregnant with our son. I used to be so sick that simply shifting left me violently unwell, not to mention contributing to the family or working. Every little thing fell on Brian — he cooked, cleaned, managed his struggling enterprise, and made every day journeys for my anti-nausea drugs and to Dairy Queen for Blizzards, the one factor I might hold down for eight months.
It was an ideal storm of exhaustion, uncertainty and relentless stress.
Amid this chaos, the con artist made his transfer, claiming entry to vital funding for small companies. His identify was so generic {that a} fast Google search yielded tens of millions of outcomes — suppose Joe Smith or Mike Jones. But, his LinkedIn profile showcased a powerful resume and a slew of glowing endorsements. For the sake of this essay, I’ll name our villain John Crooks.
At first, my husband was skeptical. One thing about Crooks’ demeanor and pitch felt off, however out of politeness, he agreed to some conferences earlier than deciding to stroll away.
Over a 12 months later, with our toddler son at house, the pressures of working a struggling enterprise whereas adapting to fatherhood weighed closely on Brian. His efforts to lift funds for enlargement have been an uphill battle, fraught with opportunists, bait-and-switch ways, and entrepreneurs in sheep’s clothes. He carried the immense burden of retaining his beloved firm afloat whereas coparenting with a associate navigating postpartum anxiousness.
That’s when John Crooks resurfaced. This time, he struck a a lot deeper chord, sharing heartfelt tales of fatherhood and even directing Brian to his Instagram account, stuffed with pictures of him and his disabled son. He expertly performed the function of a trusted peer and empathetic pal who appeared to grasp the sleepless nights and relentless challenges my husband was going through.
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One of many methods Brian and I differ most is in our worldview on the subject of folks and their intentions. I don’t usually belief folks till I’ve seen a protracted sample of reliable habits. Brian, then again, believes within the good in all folks. As a decades-long boxing coach, inventor and entrepreneur, he maintains everlasting optimism; he sees everybody’s hidden potential and inherent goodness — particularly those that appear to worth household. For him, being a father or mother or prioritizing one’s household are hallmarks of a pure-hearted individual.
Over time, we’ve tempered one another’s views. My husband’s enduring perception in folks’s potential has challenged my inclination towards skepticism, encouraging me to see the nice in others extra usually. On the similar time, working a number of startups and coping with unscrupulous clients, traders and distributors has added nuance to my husband’s view — he definitely isn’t naive anymore. In the meantime, my work in ebook publishing with authors — from true crime writers to psychologists, regulation enforcement and politicians (to not point out just a few hair-raising run-ins within the Manhattan courting scene earlier than assembly Brian) — has bolstered my cautious stance.
Collectively, we’ve discovered a stability — a kind of cautious optimism in regards to the world. Turning into dad and mom has each challenged and bolstered that equilibrium. We wish to imagine in others’ virtues for the sake of our little one, however sure experiences have made it more durable to disregard the realities of deception and manipulation.
Wanting again, it’s clear how calculated John Crooks’ return was. He reached out below the guise of an off-the-cuff catch-up, and Brian — appreciative of the gesture — agreed to attach. Crooks’ timing was impeccable. He sensed my husband’s vulnerability: the pressure of working a struggling enterprise, adapting to fatherhood and the burden of being a supplier.
Crooks skillfully commiserated with Brian, empathizing over sleepless nights, the stress of the startup world, and the fixed pressures of balancing household and ambition. He introduced himself as a kindred spirit who really understood Brian’s challenges, thereby constructing a real bond. Like all expert con, he tapped into Brian’s deepest pressures and values with unsettling precision.
Crooks promised tens of millions however demanded an pressing funding bundle by the top of This autumn. The upfront cash he requested was small in comparison with his guarantees, so the chance appeared affordable. This tactic is a trademark of many cons: making the preliminary ask seem so modest that it feels silly to not take the prospect. Brian paid the nominal upfront charge, rationalizing it as a calculated danger for the potential reward. The contract even included a clause promising a full refund if the funding purpose wasn’t met. It sounded logical sufficient, whilst I immersed myself in writing my novel and crafting the chaos left within the wake of a fictional con artist’s schemes.
Then, simply as all the things neared a essential level, Crooks disappeared.
We debated whether or not the radio silence was a official delay or the hallmark of a scammer: disappearing the second their mark begins to suspect the reality. Drawing from my analysis, I defined to Brian why this tactic was so efficient.
“If he’s a con artist, he’ll ship out some type of missive quickly—claiming a household emergency or hospitalization. It’s a basic transfer,” I defined. “They go darkish simply lengthy sufficient so that you can panic, then reappear with a sob story designed to elucidate their absence and elicit sympathy. It stalls you from contacting authorities or canceling funds, whereas reinforcing their trustworthiness.”
Certain sufficient, like clockwork, an e-mail arrived. It was a mass BCC message claiming he was within the hospital with a life-threatening bacterial an infection, unable to reply and on the verge of demise. To make the story much more convincing, he hooked up a ugly photograph of his cellulitis-ravaged face.
I meticulously cross-referenced the photograph along with his Instagram account, analyzing for inconsistencies. The facial an infection within the e-mail appeared extreme, however a faint scar in the identical area of his mouth and cheek in a photograph taken weeks earlier instructed the picture he was utilizing as “proof” had been taken a lot earlier. Who is aware of how usually he’d recycled this photograph as a getaway tactic?
I began googling each variation of Crooks’ identify paired with synonyms for “scammer.” I subscribed to a background test service and uncovered quite a few aliases and stories of passing dangerous checks and defective enterprise practices. In the meantime, Brian took a distinct method. He paused, taking deep breaths as he mirrored on what Crooks had claimed within the e-mail.
“If that is true,” he mentioned, “then this individual goes by way of one thing unimaginable. He’s struggling.” He didn’t wish to assume the worst.
I remained unconvinced and saved digging by way of the digital path. Then, buried on the tenth web page of Google, I discovered it: JOHNCROOKSISACONMAN.com.
The conclusion was simple — we’d been conned.
One other of Crooks’ victims, somebody who had “invested” 10 occasions what Brian had, created the positioning. It featured pictures, screenshots of correspondence and dozens of feedback from others who had additionally fallen prey to him. His whole playbook was laid naked, repeated in painful particulars of their tales. And the accusations didn’t finish with fraud. They revealed a far darker image: drug abuse, home violence and little one neglect.
At first, Brian was silent. Lastly, he exhaled a shaky breath and muttered, “I ought to’ve recognized.”
The disgrace adopted shortly. I attempted to reassure him, however nothing I mentioned might quiet the storm inside. Then got here the grief. The imaginative and prescient of saving and increasing his firm was gone, and the hope he’d carried for months disappeared.
“It’s not simply the cash,” Brian mentioned, staring on the ceiling. “It’s all the things — the time, the power, the idea that I used to be lastly getting someplace.”
He was proper. Con artists don’t simply steal cash; they steal confidence, belief, and hope.
With a sleepless toddler, the timing of the con couldn’t have been worse. Parenthood was already all-consuming, and this added stress examined us in methods we hadn’t anticipated. But, it additionally pressured us to lean on one another, speaking extra brazenly as we navigated the chaos of elevating a tiny human. One other monumental parental duty added to the pile: How will we elevate our son to be the type of one that would by no means deliberately hurt another person?
***
As we uncovered the complete scope of Crooks’ deception, we turned to platforms like LinkedIn for accountability, solely to find how deeply flawed the system is for victims searching for justice.
When Brian reported Crooks’ profile, he obtained a canned response: For the reason that rip-off hadn’t been perpetrated straight on their platform, they weren’t liable and noticed no trigger to take away Crooks’ account. His profile stays lively to this present day, a reminder of the irritating gaps within the safeguards in opposition to fraud.
That lack of belief grew to become much more pronounced once we realized how staggeringly troublesome it’s for victims of economic scams to hunt justice. Federal organizations just like the FBI or SEC not often pursue instances until the quantities stolen attain tens of millions or contain high-profile Ponzi schemes. For smaller-scale scams, like ours, victims are left grappling with emotional fallout and systemic failures concurrently.
The web has solely made this downside worse. Scammers can function from wherever on the earth, making them almost not possible to trace, not to mention prosecute. Platforms that scammers exploit to construct credibility and join with victims supply little recourse when the crimes happen exterior their specific jurisdiction.
This leaves victims grappling not solely with the emotional weight of betrayal but additionally with systemic boundaries to accountability. It’s a sobering actuality: The programs meant to guard us are ill-equipped to handle the dimensions and class of recent cons. Legislation enforcement is commonly unable to behave when perpetrators disappear with no hint, leaving victims with no recourse however to fend for themselves.
In “Belief Points,” the characters face a strikingly comparable dilemma. When the con man vanishes, the household has no alternative however to take issues into their very own fingers, piecing collectively the lies he left behind to pursue their very own type of justice. Writing these scenes, I imagined the frustration and helplessness of individuals deserted by the programs meant to guard them, however experiencing it firsthand added a visceral layer to that understanding. The parallels grew to become unavoidable: the seek for accountability, the anger at a justice system that always lets the worst offenders slip by way of the cracks and the laborious fact that generally the one method ahead is to behave independently. Life, like fiction, not often wraps issues up neatly.
***
After some processing time, Brian confronted Crooks in a single final e-mail — not with anger, however with one thing sudden: grace. It wasn’t phrases of forgiveness, but it surely carried a quiet dignity that stunned me. Whereas I used to be nonetheless simmering with anger, plotting methods to take this man down for what he’d accomplished to us — and to the numerous others now sharing their very own tales of being deceived — my husband had discovered a strategy to transfer ahead with out letting the con outline him.
Brian’s e-mail was met with silence. The final message he’d obtained from Crooks was the mass e-mail claiming he was close to demise. Nevertheless, Brian knew Crooks was alive and effectively. One in all Crooks’ subsequent potential marks had seen Brian’s LinkedIn publish and reached out to share her personal expertise. She was actively corresponding with Crooks on the time however, after listening to Brian’s story and connecting with others who had fallen sufferer to the scheme, she minimize ties with him earlier than it was too late.
***
In fiction, cons observe a tidy narrative arc that neatly builds to a satisfying climax. In actuality, betrayal is messy and disorienting and infrequently presents such decision. Dwelling by way of a con taught me what analysis couldn’t: Betrayal leaves deep scars and an unpredictable path to therapeutic. It’s not simply in regards to the cash or property misplaced — it’s about shedding belief in your self, others and even the programs meant to guard you.
But even within the aftermath, there’s resilience — the capability to rebuild, prolong grace and slowly regain belief. Fragile as it could be, belief stays the inspiration of hope, and hope is the place therapeutic begins.
After Brian shared his expertise, dozens of entrepreneurs reached out with their tales of being scammed. Their assist and shared experiences impressed him to channel his ache into objective: He’s now exploring methods to create a platform that connects small-business house owners and combats fraudsters.
Whereas I spin fictional tales of revenge on fraudsters, my husband develops real-world options to cease them.
Collectively, we’ve cast a method ahead, balancing hope with hard-earned warning — a shared understanding born from navigating belief points, each on the earth round us and within the fantastically messy journey of marriage and parenthood.
Elizabeth McCullough Keenan is one half of an internationally bestselling writing duo with Greg Wands. Collectively, they’re internationally acclaimed novelists whose work has been featured in Leisure Weekly, BuzzFeed, PopSugar and quite a few different retailers. They’re additionally the cocreators and cohosts of “Imposter Hour with Liz and Greg,” a podcast that delves into the imposter syndrome creatives face and its affect on their lives and work. A publishing veteran with over twenty years of expertise, Elizabeth lives in Pennsylvania along with her husband and son. For extra on “Belief Points,” head here.
This text initially appeared on HuffPost in February 2025.
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