“If you’re like me you’re afraid of abandonment…these scammers leech off that.”
One Stranger Things fan had her life turned *upside down* (heh, get it?) when she was catfished by a scammer pretending to be actor Dacre Montgomery, who plays Billy Hargrove on Stranger Things.
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McKayla, a single mom from Kentucky, shared her story on the Catfished YouTube series. She says she met the scammer in an online forum for artists, and he told her he was Dacre Montgomery. (Dacre happens to be one of McKayla’s favorite actors.) She was skeptical of his identity at first, saying, “Me and him just really hit it off, but of course, I’m suspicious from the get-go until he starts doing things that make me believe that he is who he is.”
After he expressly instructed her to watch Stranger Things season 4, episode 4 before to the season premiere, she gradually came to the conclusion that it was Dacre. (That one, you know. Its title is “Dear Billy,” and it includes the character’s comeback.)
“And he showed up in that episode,” McKayla said. “I was like, well, who else would know that?” She also said the scammer would send her poems that matched Dacre’s writing style from his 2020 poetry book.
According to McKayla, “Dacre” told her during their conversation that he was experiencing problems with “his” girlfriend, model Liv Pollock, since she was domineering. McKayla admitted to him that she and her ex-husband were basically in the same predicament, and this experience made her more sympathetic to the con artist.
Although they had never met in person, “Dacre” proposed to McKayla after a year of online communication. Since “he” was still dating, he pleaded with her to keep their relationship a secret.
Eventually, the catfish gave McKayla an ultimatum: She had to choose between him or her husband. And McKayla didn’t choose her husband.
“Listen, it’s not working out. You’re not letting me be me, you’re not letting me be free, I said I need you to leave,” she said to her now-ex.
Not only did McKayla leave her husband for a liar, but she also sent “Dacre” about $10,000 after he said his girlfriend was also in control of his bank accounts, tricking her into funding his life for a year.
The series Catfished found out that McKayla was dealing with an imposter after they did a reverse image search on a check and found several other fake checks with the same signature online. They helped determine McKayla was being scammed by a “Romance Scammer,” someone who starts a fake relationship with a vulnerable person online to eventually steal from them.
Ultimately, McKayla chose to share her story in full despite what mean commenters might say so that other people don’t fall victim to the same kind of scam she did.
“If you’re someone like me, you’re afraid of abandonment, and you’re a real big people please, and you’re very co-dependent,” she said. “These scammers, they just kind of come in, and they leech off that.”
