moneygarden Thread

Met a guy online, probably 8 years ago, go out, have a great time. He is in from out of town so we wind up going back to his room, which is out of character for me, but he is great and we continue to have a great time. Really hit it off, great conversation and our chemistry is hot, stay up all night and things are going awesome. Go back to his room again the next night, before he is headed home to the UK, the good times continue and things are escalating. We continue to talk, he tells me about his family and his daughter. And how he has his daughter because his ex GF got pregnant and was going to have an abortion without telling him. He found out and talked her into keeping it and she left immediately after she was born, but he openly has serious issue with abortion because his daughter is the most amazing thing in his life... Ok, I think, well that's the noble and responsible thing. It seems like a pretty high moral horse for a guy who is hooking up with chicks from the internet, but whatever, he is seeming really great, so I think nothing else more about it.

Then, a couple days in, he sends me a link to a CL Missed Connection for the receptionist at my job who has a similar general description and says "Looks like I'm not your only admirer!" Ha ha, so flattering, I respond, that's our receptionist, she's beautiful, but thanks for the compliment. Couple of minutes later I realize I hadn't told him where I work or even what kind of work I do. So I reply again and say, how did you know I work there? I had no facebook or social media accounts at that time. And after much back and forth about how I must have told him, blah blah he eventually claims that for his job (executive that deals with US government security contracts), he has to report everyone he has contact with and he then had access to my "file". Now I'm pissed. Even if that is true (which seems a little fantastical), why did he read it? What the hell else does he know that he couldn't have just asked me and he tells me that he looked because he was really falling for me and that I seemed too good to be true and he had dated a lot of lousy women didn't want to make another mistake.

By this point, the trusty bullshitometer starts to go off and I start pressing him. What else does he know? I had given this guy my first name, my cell number and a seemingly anonymous email address I used for junk mail via which we are chatting on IM. He eventually spills that he knows my full name, address, the car I drive (including the color), my parents' names, where they live and what they do for work, my credit score, my salary, what I paid for rent, how much I had in the bank, that I had some retirement money saved, everywhere I had lived before, that I hadn't finished college... Stuff that was fairly far from the surface of a google search. By this point, I should have been more scared, but I was mostly pissed off - what an invasion! I say, well congrats, was it worth it? Did you find out anything that was a surprise? And he says, well, I know you had an outpatient procedure a couple months ago, did you have an abortion? Yeah, I said, I aborted my fucking TONSILS asshole. Seriously, how the fuck does one get information like that about a person??

I told him to leave me alone and that I never wanted to see him again and to stay the hell away from my life and luckily(weirdly) he did, but it still was awful not knowing how this guy really got my information. I still google myself every few months and remove my name from databases that I come up on with Google searches because of that guy.