In my local online paper, I came across a story about some crook who took a foreign student for all he could, convincing her he had been kidnapped while he was actually blowing her cash in Vegas, telling her he was being hunted down by the CIA, etc. The man, named Matthew Clark, has a history of this, having ripped off a guy in 2007 by fraudulently selling a BMW his mother was leasing for thirty grand.
In the case concerning the foreign student, it appears that Clark began a romantic relationship with the woman shortly after she arrived in the US from Korea, ultimately convincing her that he should move in with her, whereupon he stole money her parents sent and blamed it on the landlord. Then, he convinced her to rent a luxury apartment in Bellevue, a well-to-do Seattle suburb, where he took over the woman’s finances and started stealing her mail.
He took it far enough to convince the woman he was going to marry her, and then stole $18,000 her parents sent for the wedding. Through a series of convoluted lies and tricks, he managed to give her the impression that she was legally his chattel, and eventually, as his stories started falling apart, that he was a secret agent of some sort, wanted by the FBI and CIA.
Finally, when the woman failed to register for classes, her father called Seattle police, who contacted Clark’s mother to find him. Clark was subsequently found with the woman at the Seattle Sheraton Hotel and arrested.
Guys like this are obviously scum. They are opportunistic thieves who ought to be identified and locked up for a while. However, in most cons there is a degree of culpability on the side of the victim as well. Often, people go along with cons out of greed. Sometimes they do so out of altruism, but that is probably the least common con. In this case, something compelled this woman to blindly believe Clark’s scams.
What was it? It was what women call love. That is, this slimy liar excited her immensely. I once lived with a small time, white trash crook when I was 20 for a few months. I was sharing a house with him, a woman and another, ordinary guy. The woman was a friend of mine from high school, and had convinced me to move in with them to share rent. At one point, the woman’s TV disappeared from the house, and all of the sudden the crook had a whole lot of weed and some good food (not normal for this guy).
Somehow, the TV had disappeared while he was there, but nobody else was. We asked him what had happened. He said some people had come around asking for me, and he’d told them I wasn’t there, then went and took a nap. When he woke up, the TV was gone.
In retrospect, it’s obvious that he was trying to implicate me in a crime he committed, but I didn’t even consider that at first. I actually thought some people may have had it in for me and stole the TV, thinking it was mine. Of course, I changed my mind pretty quickly, but I initially believed him because my female friend was so adamant that he couldn’t have had anything to do with this petty theft. His attempt at blame didn’t work; I’ve never been known as a liar or thief, but even so his hold on the woman’s heart was strong enough that she wouldn’t even consider that he may have done it, even after I pointed out his sudden acquisition of dope and expensive food.
So, in the case of this young Korean woman, she had obviously fallen deeply in love with a lying con-artist, which is far from rare. In fact, women seem to have a thing for con-artists, perhaps because they are better able to relate to women than your typical, straightforward, objective thinker of a man. To women, the feeling is more important than the truth, and that is what scammers exploit to make a living.
However, what is truly odd about this case is that the Clark is being charged with domestic violence for lying to this woman and taking her money. To me, that is very odd, and if it was feminist-inspired it’s sure to backfire, because I’d bet good money that more men are conned by their girlfriends or wives than the other way around. Stories of women cleaning out their husbands’ credit cards and bank accounts and houses and then disappearing with a lover abound. They are probably even more common than we know, because so many men are ashamed to have been so thoroughly duped and simply refuse to speak of it.
So although it’s outrageous that “domestic violence” now encompasses crimes of deception rather than true violence, perhaps men should now make some effort to turn this around on women. Every time you catch a woman in a lie, tell her you’ll have her charged with domestic violence. Did she charge your card for a new pair of shoes and lie about it? DV. Did she spend money on a weekend at some hotel with Julio instead of going on that business trip she’d told you about? Spousal abuse for sure. If charging liars and cons with DV becomes common practice, courts around the Anglosphere will be filled with wailing, perjuring women, digging themselves deeper with every new lie they make up to get themselves out of trouble.
