JoAnn, a 43-year-old from Minneapolis who asked that her last name not be used, met “Derek Allarad” on Match .com in August 2014. He told her he was a lawyer with a big downtown firm; in reality, he was hiding out from a warrant for defrauding the Saint Paul Hotel. Derek racked up about $23,000 on JoAnn’s credit cards during the three months they were together. When she reported him to the police, she was told that legal action would likely be a waste of her time and money. “The fraud detective told me it would cost me way too much money to get a lawyer and sue him in civil court,” JoAnn says. “He said they’d say I was just blaming my ex-boyfriend because I’m bitter. He said, ‘If I were you, I’d let it go.’” Six months and many phone calls later, the credit card company finally reversed the charges. But JoAnn still regrets not taking Derek to court. “Just because of how many women he hurt since me,” she says.
All together, Derek seems to have scammed at least a dozen women out of about $1 million since 2010. He used different names and occupations, but the identities he took on always had an element of financial prestige or manly valor: decorated veteran, surgeon, air marshal, investment banker. Con artists have long known that a uniform bolsters an illusion, and Derek was fond of dressing up in scrubs and military fatigues. He tended to look for women in their 40s or 50s, preferably divorced, preferably with a couple of kids and a dog or two. Many of his victims were in a vulnerable place in their lives—recently divorced, fresh out of an abusive relationship, or recovering from a serious accident—and he presented himself as a hero and caretaker, the man who would step in and save the day. Even women who weren’t struggling when they met Derek soon found their lives destabilized by the chaos he brought—they lost jobs, had panic attacks, became estranged from family members.
Yet, as far as the growing group of Derek’s victims could ascertain, he had never been charged for a crime against any of the women he’d scammed, only for defrauding businesses. Derek seems to have counted on the fact that credit card abuse is often not taken all that seriously by law enforcement when the victim and the perpetrator know each other. Even in instances where the police pursued Derek, he’d typically serve a short sentence. Or he’d just skip town—like he did in November 2014, after he was caught racking up thousands of dollars in fraudulent charges at luxury hotels. When he was finally captured and brought back to Minnesota, prosecutors lobbied to escalate the charges and hold him on $100,000 bail.
“That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?” the judge asked.
“Judge, if I may,” the assistant county attorney replied, “the defendant is a con man. He conned a number of victims within the state of Minnesota. He’s been all over the world pretending to be people he’s not, and taking money from people who don’t have money to spare.”
The judge denied the motion. About six months later, Derek was released. Shortly afterward—and despite the fact that his parole mandated that he stay in Minnesota—he was sitting on a beach in Hawaii with another woman who thought she’d met the perfect man.
FOR YEARS, DEREK HAD EVADED PUNISHMENT BY MOVING around; local police had limited ability to chase him across state lines. But the women he’d victimized had no jurisdictional limitations. They began tracking his progress across the country, using social media to share updates and information—and to warn others.
Missi reached out to her former coworker at the airline, Vicki, who was Derek’s cousin-in-law—that part of his story, at least, wasn’t a total lie. After Missi explained what Derek had done, Vicki agreed to pass on any information she learned. Through a family member, Vicki heard that Derek had left Minnesota and was hiding out with his mother in Sedona, Arizona—where, lo and behold, he had an outstanding warrant for an old DUI. Urged on by Missi, Vicki alerted the local police, who picked him up in early September 2016 and held him in the county jail for a few days. It wasn’t much, but the women took satisfaction in seeing him face at least some consequences.
Still, Derek had a remarkable ability to keep perpetrating the same scam. After his release for the DUI, he began dating a new woman, posing as Navy SEAL Richard Peterson. She soon discovered that he had stolen and pawned some of her jewelry. He was arrested, pleaded no contest, and was taken back to jail, but was bailed out and never showed up for his sentencing. By January 2017, he’d popped up in Las Vegas, where he met another woman and joined a country club, racking up charges before skipping town in April.
When new victims reached out to Cindi Pardini, she’d add them to the group text so they could share their stories with the other women. It was frustrating to find out about Derek’s latest escapades only after the damage had been done. His victims watched and waited, hoping he’d soon make a mistake that would take him out of action for good.
CONSUME ENOUGH MEDIA ABOUT SCAM ARTISTS AND, strangely enough, you, too, might find yourself wanting to date one. In The Big Con, perhaps the seminal book on American con men, David Maurer calls them “the aristocrats of crime.” The writer and critic Luc Sante once wrote that “the best possess a combination of superior intelligence, broad general knowledge, acting ability, resourcefulness, physical vigor, and improvisational skills that would have propelled them to the top of any profession.” On film, they’re played with a spring in their step and a glint in their eye: Think Paul Newman in The Sting, Leonardo DiCaprio in Catch Me If You Can. The con man looks good in a suit and is in on the joke. (“Humor is never very far from the heart of the con,” wrote Sante.) And who doesn’t want to be in on the joke? Our appetite for stories about cons is, in part, a way of reassuring ourselves that we’d never be so foolish as to be taken. It’s in our own self-interest to dismiss the victim of a con as greedy (you can’t cheat an honest man, as the adage goes) or just plain dumb: if being scammed is somehow their fault, that means it couldn’t happen to us.
One excellent way to dispel yourself of any con man fantasies, however, is to spend some time with the people they’ve hurt. Derek’s victims are negotiating ruined credit scores and calls from collection agencies. Several were so flattened by the experience, they’ve had old medical problems flare up or have struggled to go back to work.
“You just lose days,” Linda told me. She’d plastered her wall with sticky notes mapping out Derek’s crimes: “That’s what I was doing instead of looking for a job; instead of taking care of the motorcycle, the bank accounts, the bad checks. Instead of moving on with my life; instead of living.” Saddled with the rent for a house she couldn’t afford, she’d scraped together enough to pay for all but the very last month; now she has an eviction on her record. She and her son crashed on friends’ couches while she found a place to live, and, she told me, her ex-husband began campaigning for full custody of their son.
Even more damaging than the financial ramifications was the damage to their fundamental faith in the world, that bedrock sense that things are what they seem. “My mind was all over the place—Am I being taken or am I being overly suspicious?” Derek’s Las Vegas victim, Kelly, recalls. “It’s so far-fetched—you’re just like, there’s no way. He gets into your life, your family’s life, your finances. I didn’t know that people like him existed.” The damage rippled outward, affecting the women’s families and friends as well: “It just about killed my mother,” Linda said. “He would sit and talk with her for hours. She’s like, ‘Was all of it a lie?’”