How I Helped Toronto Police Catch a Criminal

A good friend of mine told me that my previous post came to him to exude too much security, protection, and emphasis on me driving people who would like to but don’t yet know me away by me building a fortress around me where I was describing the wherewithalls of condo living downtown Toronto these days.  Naturally, that was not the point of my previous post, but since my friend represents a group of people who will have similar thoughts, I highly value his opinion and mention it here thinking of him and the group of thinkers he represents in thinking how he [and they] will react after THIS post!   But hey, here it is – for him, them, and anyone who is interested to read on.

I’ve always educated people who I know and especially those who I don’t yet know that their total anonymity won’t get past me.  Withheld numbers don’t cut the mustard in my world and nor do false names and all other b.s. that people have up their sleeves in order to protect their identities from me [and other women in roles similar or dodgier than mine].  Albeit I fully understand and totally empathize with people’s intentions to protect their identities when they haven’t yet dealt with me and thus don’t know who they’re signing themselves up for, my philosophy on this has always been straightforward: if you can see details about my identity on my site down to my breast size, then me having your full [REAL, that is] name, phone number I’ll be able to reach you on in cases of absolute necessity, and email address for discreet communication must surely be the minimal requirement.  After all, in the States high end women are well known to want their prospects’ home addresses, work details, and all down to their drivers’ licences and even passport numbers!  [God bless America!]   The bottom line of me telling you all this is that I’ve always had a naturally inquisitive mind which can never help bringing out the detective in me.  Well, this time the tec struck gold – and is proud of it to say the least!

Here’s how: One day in May I received an email from a junior banker working for one of the big 5 Canadian banks downtown TO instructing me to call his work number before 5:30 p.m. because “his mother was a bitch” and after 5:30 “his mother would be on his ass”.   Albeit I smelt something suspicious right away, I called that number anyway just to be sure my intuition was not misleading me.  I asked to speak to the guy and was told I was speaking to him, and told him that I was calling as per instruction in his email.   When he denied knowing anything about the email, I read him the email and he again denied having sent it.

A day later our correspondence continued and the writer started pouring out a lot of emotional baggage, mentioning his exgirlfriend, complete with her apartment number and address [in a building where my friend lives, so I knew the address was real] having dug his gold and how she pissed him off etc.  I just rode along with it and albeit remained suspicious, treated it like real with a cool head.  After a further few exchanges of emails the writer suggested that we met for a coffee downtown, which I said would be nice [because I wanted to find out what the writer's next reaction would be].  Then the conversation went quiet for a few days and when the suggested date of the coffee meeting approached, I mailed him to ask where and what time we could meet.  I received no response, so left it at that and life went on.

After a few days the writer wrote that he was sorry, but was sent on a business trip to New York across the [Canadian] long weekend, because his boss knew he was single…  so that was why he didn’t contact me.  At this point he again asked me to call his work number which I did, and when I spoke to the guy, again, the guy denied having sent any of that correspondence.   When I then suggested that he must’ve been set up and added the suggestion that he think through his networks of friends and enemies, he thanked me for being helpful and asked me to forward any correspondence I had to him adding that he’d forward it on to the bank’s corporate security team.  At this point I asked how I’d know whether any correspondence would come from the real him or his impersonator and we agreed on a sign of acknowledgement.  He acknowledged receipt of my forwarding of the correspondence and that was the last time I had contact with the real guy.

As if by magic, the emails stopped.  However, after a week or more, I received an invitation to connect on LinkedIn… Guess who the invitation was from?  Yes, our guy.  So I deliberately accepted and observed his profile, complete with his connections, etc.  It all looked immensely real – his work details, his connections were all professionals in the financial world, even his resume, education, the lot!  Seriously, the gullible would have fallen for this without question – his impersonator must have known him well!  However, there were a few clues that would make the more detective minds suspicious, so I was 95% convinced that I was connecting to the impersonator and not to the real guy.   Nonetheless, I went with it and after my acceptance of his invitation, the correspondence had moved to LinkedIn.   Here I adopted a more confrontational strategy – my first question to him after accepting the invitation was whether he was the real guy.  He said he was and then, a few messages later, my question to him was why his profile photo was blurred.  Since I noticed that he changed his photo several times while we were connected, AND that his photos were always blurred, that alone shouted suspicion, so I went straight into it.  To this the writer responded that he didn’t have his photo blurred, which was obviously a recognition of the fact that I was too observant for his liking.  Next it came to the writer telling me how nice a woman [characterwise, he meant] I was and encouraging me to call him on the work number for a chat.  So this time I decided to go bold and back him into a corner by suggesting that he calls me [which I had long predicted that would never happen.]

This suggestion indeed killed it and all correspondence stopped in a whisk, plus, the phone call, of course, never came.  However, a phone call did come – 2 months later – from Toronto police telling me that they’ve caught a female impersonator of this poor guy, and thanking me for the important part I had played in catching her!  I was very happy to meet with a constable who brought me all the email correspondence printed for me to put together a statement for the courts, which I duly did and all was wrapped up by the end of July!

So the moral of the story is: reread and respect the second paragraph of this post!  End of this story.