My Scam Victim/Survivor Family Member Story #73

Debby Montgomery Johnson’s Father’s Story

This is a story that my father, Doctor John Butz, wrote as an account of what happened to me during the Internet scam as he calls it. So, it’s entitled the Internet affair and was written in 2012 “after the reveal.”

I was playing golf at Innisbrook, Florida, with my usual group when I was approached by an assistant pro from the Osprey clubhouse. He called my name, and he told me he had a call for me. I took the phone, not knowing who was calling me on the golf course.

Hi Grampy, it is me, Chris. (My grandson and my daughter, Debby’s oldest son) “Dad, is dead” he said.

“No. How did it happen?” I asked.

His dad was in Hudson, FL, ten miles north of where I lived in Florida, staying in a hotel near where he was having his race car tuned up. I raced home to tell Gwen, and we left immediately for the hotel, which was 10 miles north on Route 19.

When we arrived at the hotel, the woman at the desk gave me the keys to his pickup truck parked outside, which had his briefcase, suitcase and two guns, which Lou had in his truck. The receptionist said that Louis spent the night there, after dropping a trailer that contained his red Dodge Magnum station wagon race car at a local garage nearby.

She described that Lou had come down that morning and was going to have some breakfast. A few minutes later, Lou called her and told her to call 911.

“I’m having a heart attack.”

Since Louis’s father was an MD and he was very knowledgeable about medicine, he sat down in a chair and the ambulance soon arrived from the hospital, which was only a few minutes south on Hwy. 19.

The EMS team arrived in a few short minutes and was able to get him to the Emergency Room. But Lou’s 6-foot-4, 300 plus pound body could not take the strain and he succumbed in less than an hour.

When my wife Gwen arrived at the hospital, there were some emergency folks and some police men. They gave us his personal belongings and asked us to come with them to the ER to identify the body. Louis was on a table, and it was difficult to believe that such a man in his prime of life, with so much going well in his career and a beautiful wife with four loving children, was gone almost in an instant. He was 56 with an intellect that far surpassed anyone I had known before, and a strong body that was jeopardized by his excess weight.

We took care of the necessary procedures at the hospital so that Debby would not have to face that concern. I notified one of their family friends from Florida and he agreed to come in a few days to pick up the truck and trailer that contained Lou’s prize car. This beautiful car had been reconstructed with a new prototype engine and many other advancements that enabled him to hold the speed record for that US model of Dodge Magnum- Hemi. The car could reach speeds of 200 plus and Lou loved to drive – FAST! This would be his last race.

After a few months, the car was sold at a Barrett Jackson auction and thus ended an automotive dream.

Gwen and I were living 4 1/2 hours north of Debby and over the next year tried to visit her as often as she wanted. The children were shocked but strong as she built up her life with their aid. At the time, I was working with Lou and his vitamin supplement company for diabetic neuropathy, and I was able to help Debby with business as I had been retired for 30 years already. This made it easier for her and I to talk almost daily about business and life.

I retired in 1987, and Gwen and I were comfortably situated at a golf course in Florida named Innisbrook Golf Club, and all four of our children were educated and married, and had families of their own. Life was good.

One day I received a call from Deb, which was not an unusual event, but what we discussed would change both of our lives forever and could never have been anticipated.

I had never discussed financial matters with any of my four children unless they wanted to ask for advice. My finances had the usual ups and downs that all investors share, and since Gwen and I were basically successful with real estate over the years, I did not consider myself an expert in other types of ventures.

As we chatted, she said, “Dad, I want to ask you to invest in a financial opportunity that has to be kept quiet and please do not tell anyone.”

This came as an unusual request since Gwen, and I had never kept anything from each other about any subject.

I replied, “What do you have in mind?”

She said, “Do you think that you can get $100,000 to invest with me in a wonderful investment opportunity that will have wonderful returns?”

I said, “Let me think about this, and I will see what I can do.”

I did not ask too much about the opportunity because I know my children, and after all, Deb was experienced in Air Force Intelligence, public banking, and law, and is not a pushover in financial affairs at this time.

Most of my investments were in the form of real estate, most of which had been successful. I had some good stock positions, but only worth $100,000. I talked to my banker about a home equity line on my home that was debt-free and valued at $300,000 to $400,000, For a reason not known to me, but was fateful my banker would not go along with the larger figure.

I was unhappy with him at the time, but things have a reason for happening. So, I called my broker and sold most of the good stocks I had for $100,000 investment that seemed a sure thing.

Over the next year, Deb and I, with Gwen, followed the most unbelievable adventures of Deb’s financial partner that spread internationally, with contacts reaching from England to India, We are introduced to this investor by computer and even learned about his sister in London, who was taking care of his son since she was a widow and he was a widower.

The fantastic series of events over the next year would astound anyone. I almost went with Deb to fly to India to meet Eric, (his name?) and to help him solve some of the business situations that were impeding the progress of this financial bonus situation.

Deb just kept us informed on a regular basis. As she described all of the events that were proving roadblocks to our deal, which included the purchasing and relocation of massive amounts of exotic timber, we had learned of many dangerous events that involved Eric and his friend, a lawyer from England.

It was a frightening series of events and situations that had us all on the edge of our chairs. We were now involved in Eric’s predicament and health problems, that we soon forgot about the finances. We hoped it would all work and knew that Deb was quite emotionally involved with this gentleman.

It all seemed so real, and never did it occur to us that it could be a fraud, although a few members of our family expressed doubt about the legitimacy of the whole deal.

Gwen and I could easily visualize the problems that Eric was having with his business enterprise. We knew that we had to help Debby and Eric. He even reported that he had been ill and that his lawyer friend from England had been assaulted.

How could all of this be happening to him and us at the same time? By now, we were completely entrapped in this situation and only wanted to help Eric get out of his predicament. Fraud and deceit were not even a consideration at this point. No one could make all of this up, so we thought!

We kept encouraging and supporting Deb as we worked through this problem together. It would all be over soon, but not with the anticipated result.

We would soon meet Eric, and his ordeal would finally be over. Deb would have a new friend that might develop into a relationship, and we would have made a sizeable profit on our investment. What could be better?

At the time, we lived 4 1/2 hours from Deb in Florida, but since I worked for Debby and her business, we were in touch daily by phone. She would fill me in on each new episode of intrigue, and I would pass it on to Gwen. We could all envision this person and the situations that were conjured up by him almost daily. The whole scenario was believable yet bordered on being fantasy.

When a person wants to have something good happen, then they let down their barriers a little and become more vulnerable. In this case, we were all cheering for Eric to be able to overcome all the incredible roadblocks that kept appearing out of nowhere to interfere with his progress.

He was being oppressed by the tax authorities demanding excessive penalties, requiring new fees. His lawyer friend from England was accosted and robbed in a city where he was to counsel and assist Eric.

His son in London was affected by a serious disease that his sister was having difficulty in handling.

Over a period of many months there was always something that occurred to Eric and required him to ask for more financial assistance that would of course be repaid with the massive lumber deal that was completed with substantial profits for all concerned.

These unfortunate events came along over a lengthy time period so as not to create much suspicion and were well thought out.

We kept thinking, how can all these really weird situations keep popping up, but by now we felt so scared for Eric that we just prayed for everything to clear up so we would soon meet him.

There was a time that Debby wanted to fly overseas to meet Eric and his lawyer friend, and I intended to accompany her for safety’s sake. We almost reserved airline tickets when another communication suggested that this was no longer necessary, as he had resolved his latest predicament. So, we wait to hear what the next setback would be so that we would be requested to assist him. We had been at this for so long that we believed that it would all be over soon and Debby, Eric and Gwen and I would all be together at last, and even better, there would be a considerable amount of money to be shared from our tedious hard work resulting from our generous financial outlay.

We were all so engaged by this seemingly endless series of unusual financial crises that there was really no thought given to the possibility that this was not really happening, because of its complexity.

We only kept thinking, “What else can we do to help this poor guy who is going through these travails to help us all have a better life?”

There is no doubt that the thought of a profit motive was there, but only as a secondary result to the joy and happiness that would come to our deserving daughter. She had suffered enough with the loss of her husband and, unknown to us, the unbelievable amount of cash already invested in the projects that we could only envision a happy, prosperous ending to this fairy tale.

Deb has asked me not to mention this investment project to anyone in the family, and she has not confided in her children. She would tell them after everything was happily exposed as a great, complicated, successful financial success and a love story. Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Unforeseen to me, Debby and her meticulous fashion had, for years, written a daily diary detailing all of the events and conversations that had occurred. How many people would even think about that!

She would be able to use these written documents to start to write a book about the sordid affair and help other people to be able to prevent a similar problem from happening to them.

This type of fraud is found all over the world it is growing daily.  In most cases, even the FBI has no answers to this dilemma, so we must educate the public about the depths of this criminal activity and help prevent the terrible effects that this crime wave is having on so many innocent folks worldwide.

We will never really know how many individuals around the globe have been victims of this crime, nearly 100% of whom will never recover any lost funds.

The perpetrators of these crimes have no conscience and couldn’t care less about the devastating effects that their actions have created. They are extremely intelligent and diligent as they go about their evil deeds. Most of them could probably be successful in honest, important vocations because of their skills, but that will never happen.

When my wife and I received the news from Debby that her long-time Internet affair was a complete fraud and there was never a real person named Eric, this could not be happening to us because we were intelligent, well-educated, folks with a vast amount of experience in many fields.

“What went wrong? And what can we do about it?” were the first questions that we asked ourselves.

How did we let anyone extract large sums of money from us under these pretenses?

It must be a dream that will soon pass, and we shall return to our normal world of peaceful existence.

But this was not to be, and we had to face the fact that we were not as smart as we had thought, and this was going to be a hard financial pill to swallow.

For a while I went to sleep thinking of a way to get the money or at least capture or injure this miserable scum that has so easily separated us from hard earned funds.

I knew that some of my friends and even family members had connections that might make it possible to find and punish this guy. I had no idea how difficult it would be to bring this unknown criminal to justice. But I would like to try. Then the reality of the situation set in, and I soon realized that it would be nearly impossible and would only add more expense to our already large loss of funds.

Another of life’s experiences that help us grow, or at least that is what I told myself.

If I felt bad about my losses, I could hardly know how Debby would recuperate after this devastating mental loss, as well as the financial burden it placed on her. I know that time will heal both losses, but maybe we can help prevent a similar fate from occurring to anyone else. But how do we do that?

We now know that maybe there is a way to help prevent this type of behavior from claiming innocent victims. A movie? A book?

Debby’s Postscript:

My father was in his at the time he wrote that, and that $100,000 was for me, the worst part of this Internet financial fraud. I paid Mom and Dad back many, many times over the years. But the hurt is emotionally still very close to my heart. As my mom has passed this past year and my dad’s ninety-five ½ years old,  getting older and slowing down and wishing he were with mom, I wish in so many ways this hadn’t happened to them financially. But it drew us closer in a way that could never have happened if this hadn’t happened.

So, Pollyanna here looking for the positive and, in all things, I have to express my gratitude for my mother and father for helping me survive this, get through it, and become an advocate and a stronger person. Because we will make a difference one person at a time, we may not be able to stop this, but we can sure slow it down so mom and Dad thanks so much. And for all the mothers and fathers out there who have gotten involved in this type of activity. I thank you for you from your daughters, your sons, and together we will make a difference. Godspeed.

By Debby Montgomery Johnson