Gil From London | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

you know he told me he was a widower that he had lost his wife and his daughter in a car accident which had happened 10
years ago and then i shared that i was a widow as well and that i had lost kevin
almost three years ago this is karen miller she's 68 years old retired and living in simi valley
california and i had a deep amount of empathy for him thinking that he lost a wife and a
child i i couldn't even imagine that and so i was very very sympathetic empathetic
because that's how i am that's how i am with everybody as karen mentioned she lost her husband
kevin a few years ago and she's still grieving the last few years have been hard for
her and she says she certainly wasn't in the market for a new boyfriend when a stranger named gil harper sent her a
friend request on facebook what what did he look like in his profile picture nice looking man
he had said he was 63 and so he looked like a 63 year old man you know so we started just
chatting talking with one another he said he'd stumbled across her profile while searching for an old friend he
thought she had a nice smile and that's why he sent the friend request at first they talked about simple things
they both like country music they both like to travel and then the conversations became more
personal each of them describing how hard it was to lose a spouse and be alone they were chatting on facebook every
single day karen began to look forward to it i was flirtatious with him because it was fun
to think that there was this person over there in another country who found me attractive and
it was kind of intriguing to me that wow i wonder if i could find love again and wouldn't that be nice
because they were in different time zones gil would write karen long romantic messages before he went to bed
at night and she would read them when she woke up in the morning after about three weeks of this daily
chatting gill asked if he could come visit karen in california to see whether they got along as well in real life as
they did online you know he said how about i come to where you are and i said for a visit
you know that would be fine if you want to come here for a visit before gill showed up in la karen
figured she better tell her three sons what was going on she sent the same text message to all of
them it said i met someone i wrote back wow wow mom this is karen's son chris onderdonk he's
42. he remembers he was at work when he got his mother's text he's a clinical social worker she had replied back i'll
tell you all about it this weekend and that was on tuesday and i was thinking to myself i'm not
going to be able to wait till the weekend to hear about this i want to hear about it right away
secretly i was hoping that boy i've met him through a friend of a friend and he's a wonderful guy and that's kind of
what i really wanted to hear and so when she said i met him on facebook i was immediately feeling some concern
did you tell her that not immediately i'm being sensitive to how how serious it seemed because i figured
if she's telling me about it it's something she's invested in so i just more just asked her more questions about
how did how did she meet him what's he like what does he do what's his story here's what he learned
gil harper was self-employed as a contractor he negotiated deals buying and selling copper and he attended the
university of london chris went to facebook to see what gill looked like so what it looks like is an
older gentleman on vacation he's standing in front of the roman coliseum and he looks really happy
and normal right very normal uh clean cut so i was like yeah that's a good looking
guy but there was only that one photo no others and very little other information
on the profile something didn't feel right to chris and he was on a deadline gill told karen that he would be in
india for a three-day business trip and from there he'd be flying to los angeles
to meet her so chris only had a couple of days trying to figure out whether someone is
who they say they are matching a name to a face to a voice to a backstory turned
out to be a lot harder than chris could have imagined he ended up on a wild goose chase and we
wound up on one of our own i'm phoebe judge this is criminal [Music] i would say it was sparse
compared to other facebook profiles that i'm used to seeing because normally even if you don't know somebody if
you're not friends with them you can usually maybe look at their friends and i did see that he had one friend
and it was my mom karen are you laughing yes it's true he had one friend me i was thinking well his profile is
sparse because he just started it he found me and he's zeroing in on me chris told his mother to ask gil for
more photos so karen asked gill and gil did send more photos which only made karen more confident but chris was still
feeling funny it didn't make you resentful or angry that he was being skeptical he does have a tendency to scold
so to school yeah because i felt like a bad little girl who was being scolded by her son
then my oldest son scott you know gets involved and so now i'm being slammed by these two young men
chris and his brothers didn't let up they wanted to know why gil would fly all the way to california to meet a
woman he'd never even spoken to on the phone karen did you ever think it was did you
ever ask to have a phone call with gil or say yes actually i was always asking to talk to
him on the phone and then he would just come back with all kinds of flowery type things you
know oh he would uh always refer to me as honey and i would get caught up in that and then i wouldn't
push it any further now with her sons breathing down her neck karen insisted on a phone call with
gill so finally gill provided a phone number where he could be reached on his business trip to india
the number had an indian country code so it did seem that gil was where he said he was
again gill's willingness to comply with karen's request even if it took a while made her happy
it was proof that gil had nothing to hide and nothing her son said was gonna shake her resolve
she sounded like someone that was in love it was like someone that was intoxicated
with love so i started googling i think something along the lines of you know scamming love scams something like
that and that's when the term uh i was introduced to the term romance scam and then i started reading about the
romance scams and then noticing then um all of the sort of you know widowed oftentimes they pose as
widowed self-employed independently wealthy can go anywhere in the world usually operating on a
business trip and that's when i realized this this was definitely a scam [Music]
there's a piece of advice you see across these scam warning websites don't scam the scammer don't contact
them don't mess with them chris did not take that advice the only way chris could think of to
figure out who gil was and what he wanted was to call him on the phone and ask he called the number with the india
country code but he didn't call and introduce himself as karen's son chris chris called gil and pretended to be
karen a 40 year old man impersonating his mother basically my whole life people mistake me on the phone for a
woman my entire life that's happened to me as f as long as i can remember and so they say like thank you ma'am
yes they say karen is true yeah it's true okay this weekend i was looking i was you know i was on the phone this weekend
uh play you know having a trouble with customer service and the person's like listen ma'am
and i'm looking around at everyone and i say you see what i mean so actually in my
i just thought well people think i'm a woman on the phone so here's my golden opportunity to
really kind of put this to the test so i decided i'm gonna call this guy and pretend to be my mom and i thought
you know i know this is crazy but i thought well if maybe this is gonna be him i didn't really believe that but i
thought at least then if you know it sounds like it's for real maybe we can go that direction but what
i really thought was if this guy answers the phone which i really didn't think he would
then maybe i'll have some proof to show my mom what's really going on any answers
he answers and immediately i just jump into character maybe tomorrow come over tomorrow
oh yeah tomorrow i know it's going to be before your birthday can i meet you at do i meet you at the
airport yeah you come and pick me on the airport what airline were you thinking of flying
uh i don't know about that right now it's not forgetting a flight stick i'm going to lay
yeah i i have to say my my family is very worried and very concerned that maybe you aren't who you say you are
oh so he's he's actually buying this voice and you what are you thinking when you
realize he's buying it i'm thinking i've got him that i just said to myself i got him
when will you let's do skype right i'm kind of now right now i told you i'm going to do my business right now i
can't call i can't talk on skype right now well you seem to be getting angry don't get angry with me
this is our first time being able to talk right now this is the first time i was getting to
talk and you're already getting angry i don't know [Music] karen what was it like when chris came to and
said i spoke with gil well he he called me and um he asked me what kind of accent was i expecting
from him and i said well english of course and then he you know he's he just kept saying i am
so sorry mom i'm so sorry mom and and it was so sincere i mean and so chris he ended up emailing it to me so that i
was able on my email to actually play it and hear for myself what was that like sitting there alone
listening to it i was mad i was very angry very angry that this had happened to me
because i'd like to think i'm smarter than that yeah you kind of feel like a fool huh
right yeah i felt like a fool so gill or the man calling himself gil wasn't an older british man he lied
about that he didn't seem to be in love with karen or really know all that much about her
so maybe a romance scam but he never asked karen for any money or anything like it
so what did he want we decided to call him and ask hello hello i'm looking for gill
that way hi hi i'm calling from a from a podcast called kremlin and i'm calling about
karen and i'm looking for gill is okay what kind of question is that oh is it am i speaking with with gil right now
i'm not stronger dutch oh nothing's wrong with it i just wanted to ask gil a couple of questions about
their relationship okay what kind of question is that gil said that if i didn't believe he was
who he said he was then why didn't i skype with him we could video chat he said to call him back with our skype
name so lauren who makes the show with me set up a skype account and called gil and
told him the username and then nothing she sent a few follow-up texts no response
so we thought this is the part where gil finally disappears hours later gil texted lauren with a
skype name gillharper2 she downloaded a program that would let her record the video chat
and dialed hello what she saw on the screen was a static image of an older white man shirtless
reclined on a couch at first she thought it was a photograph another one of gil's fake outs
but then the image moved it wasn't a photograph the screen had just been frozen for a minute
there was a real man there on the other end of the video chat there was no sound but skype has a chat
function so she typed to him there's no sound gil responded in the chat box he said
there must be a poor connection tell me what you want me to do she kept typing that she could not hear
him eventually she got too creeped out and hung up [Music] this really threw us for a loop
we emailed the video to chris hi chris how are you i'm in shock i'm i'm really disoriented right now
very disoriented i i feel this like battle between my rational mind and my emotional mind
right now like my my emotional mind is like just having this reaction of like oh no
he's for real and we've messed everything up my mom was in love and i've messed everything up and then my
rational brain goes there is no way this guy is who he says he is there is no way
i'm barb slopic i'm the founder and owner of romancegames.org and i live just outside of branson
missouri romance scams basically was started by accident the accident was that barb was a victim
of a romance scam herself when i was working from home and we used yahoo instant messenger to communicate back
and forth and one day a gentleman popped on to my messenger i wasn't on a dating site he
said he had just seen my yahoo profile after three weeks of chatting online the man asked if he could call barb he had
told barb that he was from the uk when he called i recognized immediately that his accent was not english it was
nigerian and i got very quiet and i asked him why he lied to me and he said he didn't lie
that he had gotten this accent from living there for a couple months barb met another woman who had had a
similar experience and she went online to try and find out more about these types of scams but couldn't find
anything so she started a small yahoo group with four other women who had dealt with the
same thing that was in two thousand five as of today seventy thousand people have
come to that group with their stories asking for help on our website romancescams.org
you can submit the photograph your scammer sent you so that other women don't fall for it she's got more than 10
000 pictures there even though gill never asked karen for money you don't think that that means that it
wasn't a scam right i mean what what are the red flags i've done this for 10 years i've never
found one that wasn't a scam the only reason he hasn't asked her for money is he hasn't asked her yet let's put it
that way he would have lost his passport there would have been an accident on the
way to the airport the details vary but the formula is basically the same the victims are mostly women over 50
often divorced widowed elderly or disabled who believe they are in a real relationship
once the victim appears to be in love some crisis happens a terrible accident requiring money for emergency surgery a
death in the family something horrible that will first elicit empathy and then cash
how could a few thousand dollars be worth all this effort in scamming oh my god it's not just a few thousand dollars
there's millions and millions of dollars that are lost to these scams the fbi tallied 82 million dollars in
the last six months of 2014 alone [Music] as for the skype conversation the man lauren saw in the video
barb thinks that what she saw was actually a video she says these scammers will record the
skype calls and then play them back so it looks like a live video but it's a recording
the man we saw was likely a victim himself who got on skype to chat with the person he was supposedly in love
with which barb says means that lauren's end of the skype call may also have been
recorded and can be played as proof for some other future romance scam victim she said a scammer can create a whole
profile using pictures of lauren he finds online and then the skype video as proof so that's scary
lauren's still cooling down from that one but still why we asked barb was he so very
reachable and willing to talk to us even though he knew we were journalists he's leaving the lines of communication
open he doesn't want to disappear because he's hoping that somehow he is going to reconnect with her and
finish the scam scammers don't give up real easy that's one of the reasons we tell people
don't confront the scammer just disappear karen hasn't disappeared her facebook profile is still up but gill's facebook
profile is gone right before he shut it down karen got a message from him saying that
well i just don't think i can be with someone who doesn't trust me and so i did i slammed him i let him
have it what did you say and well i told him he should go get a gun and blow his his effing brains out
i did i mean i he got to see the other side of karen miller got to see my dark side good for you i
would have done the same thing and what about for you chris i mean when your mother
said okay yes this is were you kind of thinking yourself okay i didn't have to be a jerk and i
didn't have to be scolding for no reason like it was true and i and i helped i was proud of myself
period because i have no idea how in the world that happened it was because i it just
it was almost like an out of body type of experience karen how long was your entire
correspondence with gil um just shy of a month and um and that's scary that's scary
because he really did get a hold of me psychologically even when um my intellect would come out
and i would say to him you know i really want to talk to you on the phone i would get
pulled back in by him so the manipulation and the psychological aspect of it is it's scary it's very scary like a spell
like a spell absolutely [Music] criminal is produced by lauren spore and me eric menno helped with sound julianne
alexander does our episode art some of the music in this episode is by elephant micah you can find out more
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is criminal radio tokyo you

Karen Miller met a man named Gil Harper on Facebook and that's when the flirtation started. Eventually, the flirtation grew more serious and they planned to meet in real life. Gil was ready to travel from London to meet Karen for her birthday. A few days before Gil's arrival, Karen’s son stumbled upon Gil's identity and it turned out to be a whole lot more confusing and dangerous than Chris imagined.

Thanks to Elephant Micah for allowing us to use their music. http://www.elephantmicah.com/

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. https://link.chtbl.com/n33u0HsA

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Episode transcripts are posted on our website https://thisiscriminal.com/.

Episode [#] originally published [DATE] [link to the specific episode on thisiscriminal.com]

Brief Summary

Karen Miller's online romance with Gil Harper reveals a potential scam, prompting her son to investigate his true identity.

Key points

Karen's Journey of Love and Loss. Karen, a widow, finds unexpected connection with Gil, but is it real?
The Discovery of a Romance Scam. Chris investigates Gil's identity, leading to shocking revelations about his mother’s new love.
The Psychological Manipulation of Scams. Karen reflects on how deeply she was affected by Gil's manipulation.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I wonder if I could find love again.

Karen contemplates the possibility of love after loss.

2:06WatchNov 1, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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