Con Men and Hit Men

For a project, I’ve been researching romance fraud, where people are bilked of a lot of money (sometimes all of their money) by someone who is purporting to be a new love interest with a desperate need for cash. I’m less interested in the figure of the confidence man than in the women who fall for him.

The Tinder Swindler series was not bad; in this instance, he ran what amounted to a romantic pyramid scheme, where one woman was wined and dined on the proceedings of money “borrowed” or extorted from another. Online dating has many perils, it would appear. (Although a handful of my friends are in enduring partnerships initiated on now-defunct or moribund platforms.)

It’s a truism of domestic suspense thrillers that you can never really know anyone, not even your own (secretly murderous or bigamous) husband. Shades of Bluebeard. Or Jane Eyre’s Rochester.

But what’s especially dismaying about these contemporary romance schemes is how they exploit loneliness, compassion, empathy, and a desire to care: the vulnerable selves we bring to new relationships, with our passionate longing to connect deeply.

Romance schemes exploit these through a mix of flattery and luxurious seduction (fancy dinners! first-class airline tickets!) or, in more banal circumstances, just some garden-variety love bombing.

There was a sad instance in Ontario, recently, where a man appears to have been juggling romance scams and business ones simultaneously. That must be exhausting.

Just before Valentine’s, the CBC website published a cautionary article: “A recent high profile example of a romance scam in France relied heavily on AI-generated images and videos of actor Brad Pitt, convincing a woman in her 50s they were in a relationship.  She was ultimately conned out of more than €830,000, about $1.25 million Canadian dollars.”

Why would Brad Pitt need your money?

I have spent money on people who have dubious claims on my purse, but they’re mostly clustered outside grocery stores and asking for food. Or impecunious old friends in need of cheering up, or money for utility bills.

I do need to be more careful, though. I was brought up to be generous to the point of self-sacrifice, and that’s a dangerous thing. It was founded in religious beliefs, in part, about the obligation to tithe, and the moral virtue of poverty, and that makes it hard for me to say no or sustain better boundaries with folks who are all need. But I’m working on it.

So I don’t feel superior to women who fall for romance scams, because we are all susceptible to wanting to feel necessary and valued.

In a world of AI and cryptocurrency, however, that makes engaging with strangers online exceptionally dangerous. Money, once given, can’t be traced, much less recovered.

But what about our intimates? Fiction and fact remind us that the most dangerous people are the ones we already know.

A news item yesterday caught my eye: a woman attempted to hire a hit man who turned out to be an undercover policeman. “Till death do us part,” she assured him, about her husband. On the same day that she posted a loving tribute to said spouse, marking their 18th anniversary, she offered $5000 for his murder.

Well. Social media can be deceptive, too.

My favourite film of 2024 was the wonderfully entertaining and only intermittently very violent Hit Man, about a psychology/philosophy professor at a community college who becomes a faux hit man for hire; he helps law enforcement entrap those seeking to dispose of their loved ones.

The film has a fun portrayal of how the professor improves the effectiveness of his teaching through his undercover police work: he changes his wardrobe, grows in charisma and confidence, and starts taking his classes outside to converse under the trees of the bucolic campus. “When did our prof get so hot?”, one female student murmurs to another. Or something to that effect. It’s an academic glow-up.

But the point of the film is that hit men are nearly all fictional: the people seeking to hire them have preconceptions based on tv and film tropes.

Even in the CBC reporting of the recent trial, this was evident. The woman told the undercover officer that she spoke to that she was familiar with hiring a hit man from media portrayals.

Murderous spouses, however, while fictionally prolific, are also very real.

And in a short story I’m working on, based on the real-life murder of JoAnn Wilson, an adult child who has been convinced by her father that his murder conviction was erroneous finds a telling piece of evidence and has to decide whether to turn it over to the police or take matters into her own hands. Her father is the consummate con man: a smooth-talking ex-politician and lawyer. But she’s no slouch.

I’m having a lot of fun with this, but the real-life case is appallingly sad.

As I finish up True Crime week with my Creative Nonfiction students, I’m thinking about the role of murder stories in our lives and culture, and our ethical obligations to both the dead and the living.