So, I Was Catfished…

Gary Tanguay filled in on NightSide:

Do you ever think to yourself, “Oh, I’m too smart to be catfished” or “I would pick up on all the signs of being catfished”? Well, Joan Mellon is a successful professor and accomplished author, yet she was catfished! Joan Mellon joined Gary to share her story and warn others about the dangers of being catfished.
 
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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
It's Nightside with Dan Ray on WBZBoston's News video six what seven two thirty.
Thank you Dan, We appreciate it. Garriy Taguay And for Dan,
as you just heard Dan saying,boy, that's confusing. Happy July third.
Everybody be safe out there. We'recruising into the holiday right and hopefully

(00:22):
you're not stuck in traffic somewhere.But our next guest is Joan Mellon,
and she has quite a story totell. She has a tale. She
is a professor and an author.She is the author of the book Sherlock
Being Catfished. Now, this isa smart woman, This is an educated
woman. It's still she was fooledin a catfishing scheme, which, if

(00:45):
you don't know what a catfishing schemeis, someone else on the internet pretends
to be another person with images,with information and impersonates this individual to another
individual like Joan online. This stuffthe Internet's is the hell out of me.
Anyways, You're right, you shouldnever be on there. I mean,
it's crazy. And Joan is shortingus here. That is the voice

(01:07):
of Joan Mellen. I mean,Joan, I have such a fear of
this. I am neurotic. Idrive my family crazy. I mean,
if anything looks suspicious that comes tomy email or comes to my text,
I mean I'm out. I meanit could be somebody I know, maybe
they're trying to tee I go toobad. Tough luck. So now,

(01:30):
the first time I learned about catfishing, there was a movie out about being
catfished. It's extremely scary as hell. But the one thing I want to
know, Joan, I don't knowif you know this. Why did they
come up with the name and whydid they call it catfish? Well I
do know that, and that isthat I believe it or not. When

(01:51):
fish were being shimpted China, regularfish that you codfish that you need,
they were dying on the en route, and in order to keep them away
alive, they put catfish in withthe regular codfish, and the catfish would
nip at their fins and hurt them, and then they would stay awake.
So therefore the catfish arrived in Chinain good shape, ready to be eaten

(02:13):
by the Chinese whomember. So that'sit seems ridiculous, but that's what it
is. And then they got thename catfish because it's somebody just trying to
hurt somebody else for profit. Yeahthat's it now, and yeah go ahead,
no no, no, no,go ahead, you have something to
say, go for it now.What I wanted to say also, is

(02:34):
that most likely or often the catfish, the one that's trying to fit fake
and hurt somebody else, is adifferent gender. You think a woman is
thinking she's talking to a man,but surely she's talking to another woman.
And then when you find out it, it's too late. Of course,
once you find out if you've giventhem money, then you feel so angry.

(02:54):
But I was very smart, Ithink I have to say, at
least in one way, I didn'tgive them the money at the last minute.
I have an assistant works for mein my writing, in my research,
and she's young, and she knowsall about cat fishing. The kids
know all about it, and sheknew what it was, and she blocked
my Internet so that I couldn't thatpeople couldn't reach me anymore, and I

(03:17):
was saved. Otherwise, I don'thave to take I can't take credit for
that because she her name is Audrey, and I dedicated the book to her
because I thought, thank you.I just couldn't manage without someone from the
younger generation. Well, let's goback to the beginning and let's tell your
story. First of all, howdid you get the name Sherlock, because
that is the title of ah.I got the name Sherlock from a police

(03:39):
officer in New Orleans who was laughingat me because I asked him to help
me in my investigation of the Kennedyassassination. And he had been a part
of New Orleans Police, New OrleansPolice intelligence and also the US government investigation
in the seventies into the Kennedy assassination. And I was asking him for help,

(04:00):
and so he was sort of thinkingI was cute in a way because
what did I know about investigation iscompared to him nothing, And so he
would call me as a nickname,Sherlock, and that would be how he
would address his emails to me,Dear Sherlock. He was the real Sherlock.
He was the real investigator, butvery modest, very kind. His
name was Bob Burris. And that'show so I'm using that in the book.

(04:21):
I wanted to write a memoir aboutmyself called Dear Sherlock, but that's
not what I did. I wrotea book about being catfished, and using
the name Sherlock for myself because asa joke ironic, I'm no Sherlock,
and if I really were Sherlock,this never would have happened to me.
And I want to say that Ireally fell in love with this guy.

(04:42):
His name was He called himself MichaelDevlin, and he was charming and lovely
and physical everything and devoted. Hewrote three or four emails a day,
and I said, this is thebest thing that ever happened to me.
An, let's start at the beginninghere, Joe, So how did how
did the journey for you start withthis guy? Well, the thing is

(05:05):
that I was well known as beingan investigator of the Kennedy assassination, and
so on Facebook, people wrote mea lot of emails would you be on
my podcast? Would you be inmy documentary film talk about Jim Garrison,
about whom I'd written a big bookabout Garrison, called A Farewell to Justice.
And so I just never answered anyof these letters because I didn't believe

(05:28):
in Facebook or in the Internet.So finally I retired from teaching after many
years of teaching at Temple University inPhiladelphia in the creative writing program. And
then I had time. So suddenlyI look over at these emails and I
thought, well, I'll answer someof these emails. Now, what harm
can it do? And it cando that, then you make it vulnerable.

(05:48):
You don't realize what's waiting for you. And so that's how I got
stuck. And the person said heloved me. I was beautiful. Why
did I fall for that? Well? Yeahack, cut backup, back up,
bucket, and look, obviously youhave taken yourself to task here,
so I'm not you know, Idon't want to second guess you. You've

(06:08):
done that as it is. Butwhen did the first interaction take place?
How did it happen? And whatdid he say? He said, I
liked your picture. There was youknow, there was a picture in there,
and of course it was a picture. I mean, it's had the

(06:29):
date on it. It was twothousand and nine and it was a nice
picture, okay. And he startedwriting the emails, and then I began
to answer. I fell into theIt's like falling into a well or falling
into a spider web. You fallin and then it seems like it's the
most important thing in your life,and you can't get away from it,
Joan, How does that happen withoutany actual physical contact being in the amazing?

(06:54):
Yeah, it's I'm curious here.Obviously you're a very intellectual woman,
you're smart and so forth, andbut it's it just seems to be part
of the human condition. And I'mnot citing you specifically, but people are
needy. People are needy. I'mneedy, and I was very vulnerable at
that time. I wasn't married atthat time, and so I needed And

(07:17):
you know, I've written a lotof books about movies, and that's also
about Japanese movies. So in thebook, towards the end, I have
a paragraph about a Japanese movie abouta man in Tokyo. It's called The
Pornographers, and he is so upsetwith life that he gets a life size
rubber doll and he take puts itin a boat and sets sail into Tokyo

(07:39):
Bay. And who would have thoughtthat? And yet this is exactly what
happened to me. I was overwhelmed, Joe joj okay. Amount of time,
Okay, no, don't worry,we got time, kid, We're
not going anywhere. Relaxed. Well, I got nothing but time. It's
the it's the it's July third.It's a laid back situation. Okay.

(08:03):
A guy got in a boat witha rubber doll. Yes, yes,
and he was just people have fetishes. You see it on the Mets.
I'm a fan of the Mets.It's a team baseball team, and they
have this doll that they take tothe games and it's like their talisman or
whatever. So this guy would justgo for riding a boat with a blue

(08:26):
No. No, they blew upthe He blew up the doll. The
doll, he talked to it,He became a companion of it, and
then eventually at the end of thefilm, he gives up his entire life
and goes in the boat with thedoll and they set sail. When they
when I say set sail into TokyoBay, it means they're going and they'll
never come back. They're just driftingoff into the ocean. And he's just

(08:48):
so overwhelmed by life. Man.Sounds like a real stand up and cheer
kind of movie. Ah. Well, it's very very satiric, of course,
but this can happen. You canbecome overwhelmed by people, become obsessed
by lovers, by movie stars,by anybody, and if you're lonely enough,

(09:09):
it takes up the space in yourlife. Well, how do you
think you would target it? Howabout you? Why did he pick you?
That's an interesting question. It's anaccident because I had nothing to do
with him. He had nothing todo with me, or I was on
the Internet a lot because of theKennedy assassination. He had no interest in

(09:30):
the Kennedy assassination. And when Imentioned at one point in one of the
emails, he never even reacted toand it was nothing to him. So
it couldn't be that he was interestedin a topic. He just picked me.
There I was. I was asitting duck, and I looked he
was smart because I looked vulnerable.I was vulnerable. And so he began
to write to me every day andhe would say, I'm in Cuba.

(09:54):
He said, I'm in Cuba.I'm a logger, you know, lumberjack
like Paul Bunyan Cuba in Cuba.And I said, you know what I
meant, Cuba. I wrote abook about Cuba once, so I know
a little bit about Cuba. Butone of the things you can't reach him,
You can't just pick up the telephoneand try to find his number in
Cuba. So that was a safetyfor him. And he was and he

(10:16):
was doing a serious job. Hewas logging, he was cutting down Joan,
Joan, I mean, you knowabout Cuba. But I listen.
I grew up in the state ofMaine, and when I think of I
think of Maine, I think oftrees, I think of Canada. I
think of you know, Moosehead Lakeand so forth. There's logging in Cuba.
Well, that's exact great point.So I have several friends from my

(10:37):
days working in Cuba, and Icalled them and I said, are there
any pine trees? You know?Because there was a picture and pun sorry,
I could have told you, Joan, I could have told you there's
no way in hell as a pinetree in Cuba. No, no,
just a minute, because the peopleof both of them, and one was
a woman in Man in Miami anda woman in California, friends of mine,
and they said, there were pinesand trees in Cuba, there were

(11:00):
forests in Cuba. We do youand I we just didn't know it.
And I wrote a book about Iwrote a book about Cuba without having ever
been to Cuba, So what doI know? So then I thought,
well that that I couldn't track hewas. He put himself in a position
that I could not do anything tofind out about him. And at one
point he said, you know,I don't mind if you do a what

(11:22):
do you call it? It likean FDI search, if you do it,
search on background check, background check, if you do, I don't
mind if you do. And Iand I said, well, that's something
he says, he doesn't mint.But the truth is, how could I
do a background check when I didn'tknow anything about him or anything that was
true. It's ridiculous, you know, don't I have to take a break?

(11:45):
You run a roll. I gotso many more questions coming up.
I need to ask you. Thankyou? Was it? Uh? He?
And what about sex? That's nexton wb Z Now Dan Way Line
from the Window World, Nice SightStudios on WBZ News Radio. Uh,

(12:05):
we have quite the story going onhere with Joan Mellon who was catfished and
she's a professor, she's an author, she wrote about it, and she's
an intelligent woman, but she gotsuckered in. And where we left off
just prior to the break, wasshe had she was getting emails from this
gentleman in Cuba who also happened tobe a lumberjack or a forest or a

(12:28):
lagger and just I and I guessthey they have forests in Cuba, you
know who knew? I just havea hard time thinking of a skita taking
down trees in Cuba. But whatdo I know? So so, so
you're you're getting emails from him,and by the way, what does he
look like like? What was it? What was his name or what was
his name? The name that hecalled himself was Michael Devlin, which,

(12:52):
as it turns out, there ninetyfive Michael Devlin's on Facebook, so you're
not going to get him that way, but that's what he called himself.
I don't think he was re calledMichael Devlin. As I said earlier,
I don't even think he was aman. But nonetheless, because the tone
of the emails change, Ye,why did you you know? That's the
next question. Why don't you thinkhe was a man? Because the emails

(13:13):
became more flowery, more romantic.I'm flowing into a canyon and I can't
get out, and all this Idon't think. I can't imagine a man
saying those things. So I thinkthat some of the emails sound like they
were written by a man, andsome sound like they were written but you
don't know. And the only reasonthat's right exactly exactly because eventually, when

(13:37):
he wanted the money, and Ididn't know his address or anything, so
I said, how do you reachme? How do I reach you?
And he gave me the name ofa woman in Las Vegas, Nevada,
and we whipped her up on theinternet. And it's a sort of Asian,
pretty thirty five twenty five to thirtyfive year old woman, very exotic

(14:00):
dancer or something like that. Soonce I saw that that was the end,
I said, who is her name? And her name is in the
book tom Jay? Who is she? And he said, my colleague,
it's a colleague of mine. Whatand the colleague is misspelled? So then
I begin to wonder whether he's reallyan American. I don't think so,
because after I said who, hesaid who do you root for? What

(14:20):
team do you root for? Andhe didn't know who the Mets were?
Now, how could anybody not knowwho the Mets are? Now? They
mostly have a sarcastic remark about theMets. They're no good, they're ridiculous
whatever, but nobody doesn't know whothey are. I mean, I had
one for you, but they beatthe Red Sox in eighty six, so
I got nothing. Oh that's true. I never know. I don't blame
anybody for anything like that. Okay, but not a slow down here for

(14:41):
a minute. So okay. Generallycriminals get caught because they're stupid. That's
what happens. They mess up.So this person was obviously dumb because they
didn't get caught. I didn't.Once you send the money, you're finished.
The FBI can't do it thing foryou. Because I went to the

(15:01):
FBI. I had a lot ofacquaintance with the FBI to my earlier investigations.
But you didn't like that is whatI'm saying. You did not send
the money, So THENBI was Iwon because the FBI has so many victims
and so many people want help thatthey can't be dealing with somebody that didn't
take didn't give any money. Soas a result, I escaped, and

(15:22):
in the book I explained how Ireally saw through him because he's also I'm
an English teacher, right, he'sa plagiarist, and he wrote something and
I looked on the internet and Ifound the exact words in an article by
a lagger, real lagger named Chucksomebody or other and in an article in
the Atlantic Monthly, and it describeshis life as a lagger. This guy

(15:43):
took that guy's biography and presented itinto the emails to me as if it
were his own. So I caughthim. I mean, I you know,
I'm good at catching people, feevingand literature. That is one of
my you know jobs. So Ifound him, and I but way,
catfishing is not a crime. Soeven if we had caught him and we

(16:03):
knew exactly where he was, oncethey take the money and they run away,
they have but they had, they'renot that that's not their name anyway,
and then yeah, they're gone.Then the FBI I can't do a
thing. So okay, So youhe wanted you to send money, how
did he ask you to send themoney? In an email? He said
I need fifteen thousand. He didn'tgo for a big amount. I want
please send please wire me fifteen thousanddollars. So I almost did it.

(16:29):
Listen, and I'm so stupid,I'm not so eay telling me, I'm
smart. I'm not snub smart.I almost did it because I thought,
well, I must not be worthvery much. If people don't, people
won't think they can take money.I'll show him. I'll send him the
money. Isn't that ridiculous. That'sokay. So how does the wiring work?
You were going to wire it tothis person in Vegas. Ah,
So he gave me Listen, whenyou wire. I don't know if you've

(16:52):
ever wired money, but you haveto get the name, the account number,
the code number. There's a wholebunch of And he gave me all
those things and I put them inthe book. The book is called cats
Sherlock Being Catfished. It's meant tobe ironic. It's meant to be humorous
against me for being an idiot.But anyway, I got this, all

(17:12):
this information that he sent me inan email. I put in the book.
But then we try to look upthe woman. We even found her
in Las Vegas and she works inLas Vegas, and her picture we took
her picture from the internet. SoI guess you could say that's a victory.
Well, I mean it could havebeen her. It's the whole thing,
could have been her, exactly thatwould be so depressing, because I

(17:36):
really thought it was a guy andthat he was so charming and so loving.
He said to me, you know, he did the thing that they
do on Homemark TV. Where doyou think you're going to be in five
years? Boy? And where doyou think? And then you can make
a fantasy and so forth. We'regoing to be in a little cottage by
the ocean and all of this.I led the ocean. He said,

(17:56):
can you give us an idea ofthe image? Did he look like Kevin
Kochner? Did he look like ClintEastwood? What picture did they use?
Not quite Clint Eastwood, but notbad, not quite George Clooney, but
not bad. Tall. You wouldhave kick him out of bed, exactly
in bed. Yes, there issuch a person. We have to add

(18:19):
that caveat If there is such aperson, where are you, Michael Devlin?
We don't know. I never foundhim. I was going to go
to that TV show Catfish on TVon MTV. It's as a series,
and I was they asked people rightto them and ask for help and finding
the catfish. So I thought fora moment, for a moment, that

(18:40):
I would call them and ask fortheir help in locating him. But I
don't think they could have done itbecause I can't imagine that this is real.
Why didn't he just ask for acredit card or something. I don't
know. My bank didn't like thewhole idea, and my bank said,
do you know these people? Andthey saw right through it. I guess
the FBI has contacted all banks andlet them know that this is on the

(19:02):
on the books, and it's happeningright. So, but my bad question.
You know, I'm not a toopersonal here, but how many emails
did you have with this guy?A good question? I had about seventy
five emails Jesus. Now I didn'tcount them, but I mean they were
like three a day for a month. Wow. Wow wow wow wow wow.

(19:26):
Now they weren't in good English.But that's why you know, when
you ask you this, why not? So I think he's from a foreign
country like Romania because one thing wedid, I mean, I had listened.
He was in cahoots with a womanin Vegas who knows some filmmakers came

(19:47):
here to interview me for some filmabout Haiti, and I told him about
it, and then we decided there'ssomething called the check that you can do
on Google backward Google or something likethat, and you can trace where a
photograph has been before. So wetried it and we couldn't. We couldn't
locate him. And there's a photographof him, it's in the book.
And there he is in a biglogging machine and he's wearing and he's wearing

(20:11):
clothes like a longer and he's veryhandsome guy with a small gray goatee and
gray hair, not but a verysort of unlined face and physical and he's
wearing rainbow socks. I didn't evenknow what rainbow socks were. And he
has boots that sitting in the backof the machine, and he looks so
charming and so wonderful. You justwant to hop right over there. And

(20:34):
I have to laugh about it whenI'm telling it to you. I have
never told it to anyone. Imean, I haven't been on much.
The book isn't even now. It'sgoing to be out on us July sixteenth,
so that's a week away or somethinglike that. So do you feel
you fell in love with this person? Yes, I said it. I
admitted it. How do you fallin love without a physical relationship? You
can do it just like the guywith the rubber doll. It gets attached

(20:56):
to these things. Something here,phone here, Joanes, something could have
been done with the rubber doll.I'm just saying, well, I understand
that, but I'm just saying thatI had his photograph. I had all
the emails every day. Every dayyou wake up in the morning and you
turn to your cell phone and there'san email, or at night when you

(21:18):
come in, like after dinner,there's an email. It's constant, so
that he makes a world for there'sa world that you exist in with this
man, and it's your real life, and you feel wonderful, and you
feel somebody really loves you like noone has ever. And he sends kisses,
and he sends emoji, you know, emoji little thank you and lips

(21:41):
some of them have lips. Andone day he sent a photograph I guess
it's emoji of a big bouquet ofred roses. And I was so dumb,
Gary, I was so dumb.I said, well, the roses
are coming. That's just a harbingerof something to come. But of course
no roses ever came. Is alla fake. Everything was fake. Wow,

(22:03):
what a story, Joan Mellon writingabout being catfished and fortunately she didn't
send them money. Please join theconversation. If you have some questions for
Joan, if you have been catfishedyourself, six one, seven, two
five four ten thirty is the number, or if you know somebody who's been
catfished. I have more questions comingup for Joan, like what did she
think would be the end game?Was there ever a discussion about them getting
together and actually meeting? And that'scoming up next. A night Side on

(22:26):
WBZ it's Night Side with Dan Rayon WBZ Boston's news radio. Man,
I have heard some doozy stories inmy life, but this one was incredible.
This is Joan Mellon joining us hereon WBC's Nightside. Gary Tagay for
Dan Ray. If you've been catfished, I want to hear from you,
or if you have a friend thathas been catfished, or any if you

(22:49):
have any insight into this show,If you have any questions for Joan,
six one seven four ten thirty isthe number. The name of the book
is Sherlock Being Catfished, a memoirby Joan A Melon and you can get
that at Amazon dot com. I'mjust listening to Boston radio, and I
hear about sharks all around the area, welld lee iola and white sharks,

(23:11):
other sharks. Anything can happen toyou if you get out of you walk,
put your nose out of the door, out of your house. Anything
can happen. And I'm really andI really appreciate hearing that, because this
thing made me feel so bad.I feel ridiculous, don't know, But
then you know what I did.I wrote a story of my life mixed
in with the catfish, so youcould see that. I'm interested in other

(23:33):
things, Japanese movies, I'm interestedin the FBI, I'm interested in the
Kennedy assassination. I'm interested in things. So when you go out in the
world and you look and see what'sgoing on, you might get bitten by
a shark, you might get catfished. Anything can happen. Okay,
did you ever talk in the nameof the person? This fictitious person was

(23:55):
Michael Devlin, who was a logger, a woodsman, if you will,
a lumber jack in Cuba of allplaces, and who eventually asked you for
fifteen thousand dollars and you would getthree emails a day, so when was
there ever talk about meeting in person? Yes, yes, oh, yes,
he was going to come. Thequestion was where, and I said,

(24:17):
idiot, I said, come andvisit me in my house and I
have a swimming pool. And thenhe said, I have a swimming pool
also, and I want to come. You want to come to me in
my forest. But the thing is, he said he was from Arizona.
Aren't there any forest? Just well, you never know. There might be
pone trees in Cuba, and theremight be forests and arios very hot there,

(24:38):
but I don't know. Maybe thereare forests in Arizona. Although the
pictures that he sent me of himselfand his house had no cactus, And
I thought, I don't know ifyou ever watched a program called Pardon the
Interruption, and Will Bond lives inArizona, and every time he comes on

(24:59):
in the background or cactus cactus,So if you're in Arizona, I think
probably they're a cactus there. Okay, So so you fell you fell in
love with this guy. Was theresomething in your in the back of your
mind here, Joan, when you'rethinking, like, you know what this
is like having junk food. Ishouldn't have am I just going to go

(25:22):
along for the ride, Am Ijust going to enjoy it? Were you?
Were you taking? Were you ignoringthe reality just because somebody was telling
you they loved you? Yes?And also the promise, there's a promise
here as you, as you referredearlier to sex, there was going to
be sex on the on the horizonwhen we don't know. But before we

(25:45):
got to the sex came his theasking for money. He said, there
was an accident and some people gothurt and a big machine broke and he
needed to fix it, and thereforefrom me, he said. He said,
he brought two hundred thousand dollars withhim to Cuba, and he but
he needed another fifteen thousand, anda friend it gave him thirty thousand,

(26:08):
and he needed another fifteen and couldI please give him that? And his
life depends on it. And hewanted to retire, but he would get
a bad mark and if he didn'tfulfill his contract in Cuba, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. NowI knew enough about Cuba to think
this. Cuba really make contracts withindividuals like this. It didn't make sense
to me. There were many redflags that they call red flags, but

(26:32):
I I preferred to ignore them andto go and just to keep this fantasy
going until when I couldn't any longerbecause he was waiting for the money,
money, money, money. Andthen all the emails had to do with
please go to the bank, becauseI had told him that the bank wanted
me to go in person to sendthis money, and I so I and

(26:52):
I had hesitated about that, sothey would please go to the bank,
Please do this for me, honey, sweetheart, sugar. What was the
main one I kept? I can'tremember right now, but he had a
whole chain of sunshine that was abig one sunshine. And I almost did
it. I have to say Ialmost did it. An Audrey, that's

(27:14):
my assistant who was like a childto me, and she just wouldn't go
along with it. Yeah, wellyou had good God bless Audrey. Fifteen
grand. For fifteen grand, thesex had to have been good, or
you were thinking for fifteen thousand dollars, this better be something else. Well,
you know, I was. It'sall prostitution, Joan, it's all
we're all paying for it. It'sall prostitution. Maybe you know I turned

(27:40):
on doctor Phil one day, youknow, doctor Phil and he had a
lot of victims of cat fish thereon one show had all the catfish victims
and they gave many more, manythousands of dollars. Crazy. I mean,
just go to a dating site.Why don't you just why don't you
just like go to lunch couples?Well, but I wasn't looking for anything

(28:02):
really right, Yeah, he cameto you. He made the world to
me. It wasn't just him orthe sex promises of sex. It was
another world other than the one Iwas living in. We have a phone
call. Let's go to Vicky ofSalisbury, Vicky Europe on WBC with Joan
Mellon. Hi Vicky, Hi,Hi Joan, and listen, I recognize

(28:23):
your name from the Kennedy assassination.I became an avid reader about a year
and a half ago, so I'mgetting to your book shortly. But I
was catfished. I mean it wasIt was really kind of strange when when
they were filming, I'm from portsTheford Island, right outside of Newport,

(28:48):
and when they were filming, I'mas Dodd Beer. I got to meet
Morgan Freeman and Steven Spielberg and soone time It was about a year or
two ago, sometime during the youknow, as we were coming out of
the pandemic. I was on MariaShriver had some kind of a post she

(29:12):
would post all the time, andshe said something about I don't race relations
or something like that, and Imade a comment saying that what we need
is your uncles to come back.So anyway, someone liked it, and
I wanted to know who it wasbecause it was a public forum. And

(29:34):
I looked, I pressed on thelittle icon, and it turned out to
be Morgan Freeman. Wow, andso and so I said, you know
is this He got me to talkto him on messenger and I said,
look are you? Are you MorganFreeman? Because I said, I met

(29:55):
you in Newport and everything, andI got to tell you that I loved
it was called the movie was seven. I said, oh, I love
that movie. And he said,bless you, and and he was he
was so stately and you know,reserved and just totally handsome. And so
anyway, uh, he said somethingyou know, he would say, You've

(30:18):
got to keep this secret and everything, because he didn't know how I had
gotten to him. And so anyway, the same thing with me, Well,
I did have to kid the secret. Yeah I did. I did.
I thought it was him. SoI talked to him for about a
month and there were red flags.There were, uh for one thing,

(30:41):
the spelling was off and the sentenceswere off, and it sounded very foreign
at times. And you know,I would say to him, I said,
you know, Morgan Freeman is oneof the best communicators that we have
in this country, and I getthe one that can't spell. So I
was kind of on at first.I was excited about it and everything,

(31:03):
but the red flags were there andI didn't want to give in to them.
But anyway, there were things abouthe was going to set up a
meeting but his management couldn't he couldn'tknow about it because they didn't like stuff
like that for insurance purposes and everything. But they had some kind of a
website where you'd go to and youwould pay for meetings with celebrities and stuff

(31:29):
like that. And I so Isaid, no, you know, I
knew, I knew enough. Imean, you know, I didn't lose
any money. I did law schoolfor a while, No, nothing,
nothing. You'd get cat fish.You kind of bought into it a little
bit. He's just so easy toget cooked in there. And it's just
a miracle when you don't give yourmoney, it's a miracle. That's what

(31:51):
I think, absolutely, And I'mlooking forward to meeting your JFK, to
reading your JFK books. Well,thank you. It's cold a farewell to
justice a title in the light ofall of this. But you know,
as I said, I think ifI said, catfishing is not a crime,
you can't get arrested for it.You can't go to jail for it.

(32:14):
Yeah. Yeah, is that,Matt, Matt, even if you
send the money, even because youwillingly sent the money, right, yes,
Yeah, Vicky, thank you forthe phone call. We appreciate it.
If you've been catfish, give usa call here uh at six one,
seven, two thirty. I havemore. I have more questions for
you, Joe, can you stickaround. I've got a couple and one
does involve Kennedy. But I've gotsome more questions. I mean, do

(32:37):
you men get catfish? We'll discusscoming next on WBZ. Now back to
Dan ray Min from the Window Worldnight Sight Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Welcome back Eury tank Wine for daytonight six work, seven, two five
four ten thirty, where you're talkingto Joan Mellon. She's a professor and
an author of the book Sherlock BeingCatfished. She's also has written a book

(33:00):
on the assassination of John F.Kennedy and people, I'm asking you,
have you been catfish? She justtold us her story, and it's We're
all human, Joan, We're allhuman, That's all I can. I
didn't think anyone would read my book, and then I would be hiding and
no one would know. And suddenlyI'm on your program and I'm enjoying it,

(33:22):
and I realize people will know aboutit, and they know me,
and they know about this book,and it's sort of upsetting. Let's go
to Steven Cambridge's on with Joe Mellonon WBZ Good Evening. Joan, I
don't understand why you say you cannotbe arrested for cat fishing. I have

(33:43):
a paralegal degree, and that isa perfect example of fraud. Obtaining money
from someone with an intent to defraud, presenting yourself as someone who you are
not making promises you do not intendto keep. These are all the perfect
example of fraud, and it isby all means in my estimation prosecutable.

(34:07):
Probably you're right. But the thingis that they never give the real name,
they never give the real country thatthey're from, that they're in,
they don't give their address. It'svery hard to track them down. That's
what I think. And I guessthis is promoted and way by this TV
show Catfishing, because they what thesehosts do. At the end of the
program, they say, please forgivethem And of course I would never forgive

(34:30):
this in a million years, butpeople they want to and they don't see
the harm of it. And that'swhy quote examples in the Book of Catfish,
Who's saying, I didn't think Idid any harm. I didn't think
I heard anybody. Now I'm notcounting the money part of it there,
of course. Well yeah, Imean, Steve, I have a question
for you here. If no moneyhas exchanged, how can you prosecute an

(34:53):
attempted fraud? I mean, ifthey try to get money from you and
you don't give them money, ifstill an attempt attempted fraud. Now,
obviously if the person is doing itthrough from Nigeria using an Internet and we're
talking about international internationality here in theextradition and so forth, it becomes very

(35:14):
difficult to prosecute, but it isa prosecutable crime, and it may be
difficult to enforce, but it's not. It is illegal, absolutely illegal,
in every country in the world.Well, I suppose they take so much
trouble to conceal themselves, Okay,that you never you can never catch them,
I sink. Okay, Joan,Yes, you have been a great

(35:37):
guest. You have certainly sent themessage that people need to be careful,
they need to sometimes push their emotionsaside. But now I want to ask
you who killed Kennedy. No,no, I'm not going to answer that.
I'm not sure. I haven't gotproved after that last caller, the

(35:58):
paralegal, I'm not going to sayanything like that. I'm just saying that
one thing we know for sure isthat Lee Harvey Oswold did not do it.
Okay, what do you feel thatway? Because this proof he wasn't
there, It wasn't his fingerprints weren'tthere, his his fingerprints weren't on the
gun. I even hired a retiredpoliceman to check a fingerprint that was founded

(36:19):
in the school book depository that wasnever identified. That that and that the
FBI found and then we went andI identified. I investigated that fingerprint to
see if it was Oswald, andit wasn't. So that alone. I
have another book. It's not evenin my main book. It's in another
book I wrote called Faustian Bargains becausepeople had said that this person excuse me,

(36:44):
name mac Malcolm Wallace worked for LyndonJohnson, and that he at Johnson's
behest he killed Kennedy, and thatthe fingerprint that was in the school book
depository was his. And I hiredan organization and cop and everybody to go
look at that thing. And bythe way, the FBI lab is fantastic,

(37:05):
and the fingerprint was Christine. Noproblem with that identifying that fingerprint.
But it wasn't Oswald. So howdid Oswald become? How did he enter
the picture? Well that's a longstory, and that of course he was
set up and he was he wasplaced down there, placed in Dallas,
placed and place in Dallas by who. Well there we go. Now you

(37:30):
have to figure. We have tofigure. But we know one thing about
Oswald. He worked for the FBIand he also was with CIA. That's
provable with documents. Thank goodness forI have to say it don'tlike Oliver Stone's
relationship with Putin, but I dolike the fact that his film JFK resulted

(37:52):
in the Freedom of Information Act beingpassed by the Congress, resulted in all
the documents that we have from themilitary intelligence the FBI CI a huge number
of documents, real documents that wecan use for purposes of investigation. So

(38:13):
every can we have Oswald's FBI number, We have got. I haven't got
thought about that in several years.And his ci A relationships, the fact
that he was placed in Mexico Citywith a known CIA operative named David ATTLEE.
Phillips, and one of Phillips' mainassistants came to a conference that I

(38:35):
attended in which he said that thewhole scene of Oswald in Mexico was invented
by Phillips, that he never thatwas it was all a fantasy. None
of it was true, and nothingto do with the Kennedy assassination. We
worked hard, everybody has worked veryvery hard on exonerating not because we wanted

(38:57):
to particularly exonerate Oswald, and he'snot a person we admire, but he
did not kill John F. Kennedy. So if I hear you correctly,
the finger is pointing at the Vicepresident. No, because that Malcolm Wallace.
That wasn't his fingerprint either, theone in the school book depository,
And that was one of the thingswe investigated to see, well who was

(39:19):
that. We have not identified thatfingerprint, but we know for sure who
it isn't. It isn't Oswald andit isn't Malcolm Wallace. Now I wrote
a whole book about that because people, let would go if there was a
person who promoted this view that LyndonJohnson hired somebody to kill President Kennedy.

(39:39):
Was the book like that was writtenby Roger Stone. Now we know a
lot more about Roger Stone today thanwe did before, but he wrote a
whole book about LBJ KILJFK. It'seven it's even the title of it.
I see, Joan, and youare fascinating. You are fascinating. You
are too. I enjoyed you programenormously. I hope you say any times

(40:04):
Sherlock being catfished. And she alsohas a lot of theories on the JFK
assassination. She's a professor and anauthor. Joan Mellon Johan If you can
get catfish man. Anybody can Ican tell you that right now. I
appreciate it. All right, youhave a nice holiday, Thanks for joining
us here on WBZ. All right, Wow, what a story. I
mean it just you just think thatpeople aren't people are human beings. People

(40:30):
are human beings. And when itcomes to the affairs of the heart,
if somebody gives you attention, somebody'snice to you, you want to believe
it. You want to believe thatit's genuine. You want to believe that
somebody's coming to see you. Youwant to believe that somebody's in love with
you. I guess that's just partof being us. Coming up next,

(40:50):
the hot Dog Eating Contest, asport Yes or No, and it's Joey
Chestnut getting screwed here on WBZ.