A few weeks ago there was a documentary doing rounds on Netflix called Tinder Swindler, where a supposed ‘billionaire’ managed to con women of their money. After all the rage on social media, there emerged that there was a Kenyan swindler, but this time on Facebook. Let’s call him the Facebook crook.
The Facebook crook was a charming Luhya man. He seemed to tick all the boxes. Rich, sweet, intelligent, and all in all amazing. It started when he would like all of Joy’s Facebook posts. She knew that whenever she posted a picture, no matter how insecure she was about it, The Facebook crook would like it.
After a while, he sent her a request on Instagram, and of course, she recognised him. She chose to wait it out a little before accepting the request so that she could appear ‘busy.’ With time, he was messaging her from time to time, giving her all the sweet nothings. He told her how beautiful she was, but Joy chose not to give him too much attention.
On Joy’s birthday, he left her a sweet message.
‘Happy birthday darling. Hopefully, this is the year that you accept that I have a serious crush on you.’ He said, and Joy couldn’t help but blush as she texted him thanking him.
‘Call me, sweetie. My number is 0712345678,’ The Facebook crook said.
That’s how it all started, and before long they met up for their first date. They went out on a drive as he claimed that she was the one for him. He said that he had been looking for a wife all along and she was definitely the one.
When I tell you that this man ticked all of Joy’s boxes, I mean it. She had been praying for a God-fearing man and he was just that. In fact, half of his Facebook posts were bible quotes and reflections. He was unafraid to condemn cheating and infidelity.
On Tiktok, he only posted encouragement videos about God. He never drank alcohol, and he professed all this across all his social media platforms. He was also quite the cheesy guy. One of his profiles read ‘Teetotaler who lets his car drink on his behalf as he gets high on adrenaline.’
All this was a lie, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For now, let’s assume that the Facebook crook was kind, rich, God-fearing, and a teetotaler.
The Facebook crook didn’t waste much time. A week after they met, he asked Joy to be his girlfriend. They spent the next month together, almost all weekends and sometimes on weekdays. He was perfect. There was literally no red flag, and maybe that was the red flag.
The next month The Facebook crook started to become suspiciously busy. He claimed to be working until ungodly hours during the night. In the time between he would be dead asleep, and so they hardly talked.
It’s one thing to be busy but it’s another not to communicate at all. The Facebook crook stopped picking up the call and replying to texts. He would sometimes call late at night, they’d speak for hours and then she wouldn’t hear from him again for weeks.
You may be wondering what job this is where people work from 1 am to 5 am. The Facebook crook claimed to be a CEO.
“My company consults for the United Nations. We service their servers, so I spend most of my time supervising the work. The servers are so damaged that I sometimes end up sleeping at night,” he said.
In her naivity, Joy believed every word he said. A whole United Nations with top-notch security, allowing consultants into the compound late at night should have been a red flag but it wasn’t. To add insult to injury he had no gate pass and no job sticker, yet it sounded believable to Joy at the time.
His social media profiles added up. He was actually a CEO with close to 10 employees. That part made sense. So, the red flags continued to be pink and Joy continued to fall for this man.
He continued to be busy, bagging contracts with I&M and other big organisations. After a while, he finally asked Joy if they could meet, and she was over the moon because that was what she had been praying for every day.
Then, on the D-Day, he disappointed her.
“Baby, I’m so exhausted. I’ve slept at the UN Staff Quarters all week,” he said.
Again, Joy believed, that the UN has staff quarters and empty ones where consultants could just walk in and sleep because they had a busy day. The red flags continued to build up before she saw through them all.
Then suddenly The Facebook crook started to ask Joy for money. He said that he was unable to access his money, but that he would refund, it with interest.
Joy didn’t ask any questions. Like the loving and supportive girlfriend that she was, she sent it.
Then he started travelling all over the country claiming that he was working. One time, he spent three weeks in Mombasa, with no communication at all. It was only much later that Joy came to learn he was actually with another one of his girlfriends. At the time, she thought that she was his one and only. Or at least that’s what he had led her to believe.
Joy paid for the Facebook crook’s air ticket to Mombasa. She even went ahead and paid for his long term packing ticket. He had promised that he would marry her and at the time it seemed like all that mattered.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t the physical distance keeping them apart. The teetotaler was back in the city and refusing to see Joy.
The Facebook crook claimed to be moving around in choppers hired by the UN. Joy had been in the aviation industry for years. So in her anger, she called some of her buddies.
“There’s no such thing,” one of the guys said laughing heartily, “No choppers have landed here from the UN today.”
Like the clown Joy was, she chose to give him the benefit of doubt.
Joy still hadn’t gotten her money back, but she decided to play reverse psychology on him.
“I need one hundred thousand shillings, urgently. Please help me out,” she begged.
“Are your enemies after you like the Tinder Swindler?” The Facebook crook said. Look at the pot calling the kettle black!
While her ‘husband-to-be’ was in Mombasa working harder than God, Joy landed on pictures of him with another girl. Guess where they were? Mombasa!
So naturally, she confronted him about it. He swore on his life that he had never played any games his whole life.
That’s when Joy’s eyes were finally opened. The lies started to add up to the fact that he was a crook. She was probably never getting her money back.
Months earlier, he had asked her to go house-hunting so that they would move in together. But every house she found had a problem, for him. There was always something. The floors were too cold, the walls too bright, there was no butler, the kitchen wasn’t modern…
Then Joy posted a picture of her ‘husband-to-be’, AKA The Facebook crook. Ten minutes didn’t pass before the hard worker called her consistently ten times asking her to pull it down.
That night, she got screenshots from another girl claiming that The Facebook crook was also her boyfriend, at that same time. The script, they came to discover, was exactly the same.
Joy scheduled a meeting with him, and he surprisingly showed up.
“I’m here because I want to end things with you. If I’m being honest, I haven’t exactly been loyal. This was my first and last time playing games. I want to go back to church and reconcile with God,” he said.
Joy tried asking for her money again and again but to no avail. Perhaps once he had made amends with God, or managed to con another woman out of her money, he would find it in his heart to pay her back. But even that was a big maybe.
This story is based on a story that we found on Twitter.
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