Thirteen years of memories.

It’s been thirteen years since I joined the antiscam community.  A lot has happened in that time, certainly too much to actually tell the stories.  Instead I’m going to just name the incidents in no particular order.  Each one could be a headline for a story that I may go into in more detail at some point.  You can preface each one with “I remember the time I….”

Convinced a scammer his email had caused me to shoot my wife.

Heard the worst singing scammer ever.

Was accused of being a racist because I insulted the outfit a female was wearing in a photo I was sent by a scammer.

Was called a “drunkard and a drug addict” by a scammer.

Had the same scammer tell a bedtime story to my “daughter”.

Had the same scammer then insist on having me talk to his own daughter, who turned out to be him attempting a high pitched voice.

Flew for the first time so I could attend a conference in America.

Drove 2000 miles so I wouldn’t have to fly to a conference.

Convinced a scammer to pretend to shove a banana up his bum to give himself an orgasm – on the radio!

Met Jeremy Kyle.

Met Jeremy Kyle again, and had him ask me about stuff he’d remembered us talking about the previous time.

Stood outside a hotel in the middle of the night due to a fire (not my doing).

Had a scammer wander around Swansea looking for me, while I was sat at home on the phone to him.

Did my first podcast.

Was distracted by a pigeon whilst being recorded for TV.

Made some great friends.

Made some enemies.

Blanked Firefly the first time we met as I didn’t recognise her from her photo.

Was suckered into creating scamsurvivors.com

Had the proof copy of my first book arrive in the post.

Realised not everyone in this community is as altruistic as I am.

Had my first death threat from a scammer.

Had our first DDoS attack on the site, that was so big it took down over 100 other sites on the same node.

Drove everyone mad with the constant changing of our site logo.

Did a radio interview in a supermarket car park.

Received our first sextortion victim.

Was called a dictator by another site.

Saw the site go down for almost a month due to a faulty hard drive.

Had a scammer join our chat room asking for our help, convinced it was to help scammers.

Was threatened with legal action by the owner of a model’s site, only to have him join our forum three months later to tell us he’d put a link to us on their front page.

Introduced Firefly and Big Al to caravan holidays, Cornish pasties and scrumpy.

Won an award.

Had my mind go completely blank on live radio whilst trying to remember the word “profile”.

Witnessed others stealing our work for their own gains.

Had way too much interest taken into my t-shirt choices.

There are many more, but that’s just a small sampling of some of the stuff that’s happened in these past 13 years.  If you’d like to hear more details about any particular one, let me know and I’ll expand on it.