Crooks meet their match in Reverse Phone Lookup

Remember the Sex and the City episode where Carrie went to LA and at a party met a hot-shot Hollywood agent played by Vince Vaughn, with whom she spent the night at his multimillion-dollar mansion, only to find out he is a house-sitter for Carrie Fisher? A similar story happened to my sister who lives in LA.

She met a really cute guy and initially reported that “sparks flew”. He was a transplant, of course – old Texas oil money – just about everyone in LA is. A major real estate investor, he drove her around in a new Porsche, showing her really upscale properties that belonged to him, took her to a posh restaurant for dinner – the works. He even called her the very next day and sounded really interested in hooking up again. My sister was thrilled.

She was curious which of the spectacular edifices he showed her was his home, so she reverse-phone-lookup-ed him. You know what I’m talking about, right? It’s all the rage now: on searchdetective.com, just enter the person’s phone number (it was on her caller-id) and city/state and find out everything – name, address, age, marital status, income, criminal history, if any, civil judgments, etc. Was she ever surprised when everything about this guy turned out to be a complete fabrication!

He was from Louisiana, lived in East LA, was completely broke, had numerous DUIs, bankruptcies, and even his name was not what he gave her. Well! My sister decided to drive by the address she got from her Reverse Phone Lookup report, to confront the louse. He wasn’t home, but his landlady was only too happy to tell my sister to steer clear of this soldier of fortune. He was an alcoholic, completely broke, looking for a sugar mama. He’s made a career of that, preying on many other women before her.
My sister couldn’t help but laugh: at that point in her life she wouldn’t have minded a sugar daddy herself. She was in event planning, but was currently in dire straits thanks to the slow economy. Now, one has to know my sister to realize why this crook picked her: regardless of how empty her pockets, my sister always looks and carries herself like royalty.

Oh well, win some, lose some. She was really lucky he wasn’t a dangerous psycho, as is often the case. Nowadays my sister makes a point of investigating every potential date before the fact, just to be on the safe side. I really hope you do, too.