Fascinating or Fraud? – Part II

~ MaryG

Fascinating or Fraud? – Part I

As we walked back through the first floor of The Red Lion Inn to the elevator, I finally could speak to my friend Gail openly. “Do we believe this lady or what?” I should have known that a 251-year old hotel has only one elevator and that our new friend was headed to the exact same place we were. Although she had taken a slightly different route, she ended up right behind us. Hopefully she didn’t hear me say that!

She got into the elevator with us and we all smiled broadly and said how much we’d enjoyed our time together on the porch. The elevator stopped on the second floor and we said goodnight again as she got out. Gail and I rode up to the third floor and opened our antique door with the old key.

Before we were even inside our double room, we began plotting our Google searches. We figured it would take us about 60 seconds (2 minutes tops) to figure out if this woman was truly fascinating or full of shit. You see, Gail and I are advanced sleuths. She has a Master’s Degree in Journalism and I spent 30+ years in fundraising. Figuring out who people are, who they know, and how much money they have was all part of the job. (Private trusts and family foundations were my specialty.)

We jumped into our side-by-side beds and began checking her out. This was going to be fun! Well, two minutes went by and we hadn’t made much progress. We found one woman who looked a bit like her on Instagram and Gail sent a friend request.

We finally found the antique store owning daughter. She looked just like her mom in the photo. There was a bio of the daughter that said she’d been raised in western Massachusetts and Belgium by a British mother and German father. So all that was true!

We still couldn’t find anything on our new friend herself. What the heck? Were we spelling her last name wrong? It was a common-sounding last name, but spelled “the German way” she had said. (Neither of us studied German.) Finally, I found the daughter on Facebook. She had her maiden name in parentheses. A HA! We had been missing an S.

Then we found her. LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. There were videos of her on the land where she’s building her solar farm, on the Miami condo balcony, on her recent trip to Lake Como. It was all checking out. I even found the 990 (tax return) of her pediatric cancer foundation. It’s a legitimate charity.

Her bio on her Instagram profile says, “Entrepreneur, Life Coach, Neuroencoding Specialist, Sport Fanatik 🏀🔥🏈, Cruising 🛳️ addicted, Childhood Cancer Advocate 🎗️” and includes links to her foundation and her life coaching website.

So, it was all true. What a fascinating woman!

One mystery remained. The out-of-the-picture German engineer husband. Who was he and what happened to him? The next day Gail figured out his name and I learned that he had died four years ago. He was clearly older than her and a very big deal in plastics. One LinkedIn commenter described him as the “alpha one” of the industry. So…that explains where the money comes from, although we think they split up before he died.

We both followed our new friend on Instagram and Gail sent her a private message to which she responded, “It was such wonderful surprise and highlight of my trip meeting you and Mary too!! I hope we get to meet again!!”

So maybe we’ll see her again someday. Who knows? Life is short and fascinating people are hard to come by.

Famous quote from the 1967 film The Graduate

Watch the scene: One Word: Plastics

Related posts:

Fascinating or Fraud? – Part I

From Stockbridge to Boston

Bucket List Progress: Tanglewood

14 thoughts on “Fascinating or Fraud? – Part II”

  1. What can I say? Life is strange at times. I’m surprised it all checked out to be true.

    So, maybe we shouldn’t judge too quickly. I guess, most of us are not really used or “trained” to meet such fascinating people. Although in my days as a journalist I met a lot different people through the whole human spectrum. From billionaire to homeless people.

    Great posts, by the way Mary 👍

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. With the world so full of scammers, it’s hard to trust! It seems like skepticism is needed for survival these days. We literally get “fraud alerts” on our phones multiple times per week. I think you’re right Chris: we shouldn’t rush to judge, but need to protect ourselves too. Thank goodness for Google!
      Thanks for your nice comment Chris 😀

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. You’re welcome Mary. True about scammers. I get one specific scam mail on a regular basis from France. Says, I allegedly did some illegal research and contacts via a Chat (which I never did in my entire life), and if I don’t explain myself at a french police station, they would get an Interpol arrest warrant.

        And inform everyone about my online behaviour. It looked very realistic with official stamps and signatures. Kind of scary. They arrested scammers in France last year for this specific scam, which was in the news. That’s when I learned that some of the victims had killed themselves out of fear of being exposed.

        These scammers are just sick, playing with people’s lives. Unfortunately, after the arrest a new group started the same scam again. Now I delete these mails immediately.

        My advice, always look at the sender email. It’s almost every time an obscure mail provider and address. Delete without checking further.

        Take care 🙏

        Liked by 1 person

  3. Well, I’m an old cynic so had my doubts……. Pleased to hear the tales rang true:)
    On the hand, I do find that people gravitate to like minded people. There’s a message in this meeting for you. You may not discern it yet, but will come a time when something comes from it: an idea, a concept, something very small, but still a spark to enhance your life.

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