So I’m a 28 year old gay male, kinda over the whole one night stand thing and I was hoping to go on some dates. A few months ago, I was on Hinge and Tinder and not getting any luck, so I gave up and swapped to the last known option… Grindr. Now I know, it’s definitely not the place to look if you’re not wanting a hookup, but I gave it a shot.
After scrolling through Grindr; most accounts were anonymous which I assume are all republicans, so I stay away. And the rest were, well pretty much nudes. Suddenly I get a message from someone out of my range of people to speak with, they’re still in my city but there were so many people around me it wasn’t enough range for me to message him directly without buying a subscription but if they message me first, I don’t have to pay anything.
Anyways, we get to talking. He read my bio which I purposely changed to saying, “looking for dates & such” and said he was immediately interested. Conversation went great, he seemed like a genuine person and it seemed like he was looking for exactly the same thing. After talking for about 3-4 days, he said we should meet up and get coffee or something, I said yes and we met up at a coffee shop near my place. First impression was great, he was really nice he matched his picture and the date went really well, he had 0 red flags. After we chatted at the coffee shop we went for a nice walk and then he walked me home after about an hour or so walk.
After the date we talked for a few more hours through text and Snapchat, he seemed very interested in getting to know me, and I did the same with him. We set up a second date on my next day off, but at his place since I have a roommate and didn’t want to make them feel uncomfortable bringing a random guy home.
A few days roll by and I headed over to his place, his place was immaculate, not a shred of dust to be seen. After just one look at his place I knew I should have brushed the cat fur off of my favourite sweater. We ordered pizza, poured a few glasses of wine and watched RuPaul’s drag race for a bit and then threw on hilariously Black Mirror. I haven’t seen much of Black Mirror personally, but I wasn’t opposed to watching it. He said Season 3 was his favourite so I just went with it.
I’m not going to describe what I watched but by the 3rd episode I was kinda done with it and I was a little tipsy from drinking so much wine. He insisted I keep watching but I warned him I might fall asleep on his couch. He said he has a TV in his room too so if I pass out watching it in his bed it’ll be fine and then we can cuddle. Nonetheless I passed out after 30 mins of the next episode.
The next morning was nice, he made me coffee and breakfast and then I went to work. While I’m at work I noticed I wasn’t able to access any of my social media accounts and most importantly, my bank account. Then I look at my service bar which is now showing SOS. I looked at my Apple ID and it was also signed out with the password changed. I was feeling all of the feelings, anxiety, stress. I couldn’t send a single text regardless if it was iMessage or a basic text at this point.
At this point I didn’t know what to do, I felt like my entire identity was stolen. I didn’t know if I should have called the FBI or what, my boss came over to me and asked what was going on, I told him what was happening. He recommended me to avoid the cops and just hire a PI to help get everything back. I told my boss I wasn’t sure if I even had any money left in my bank account after someone logged into my account. My boss offered to cover it until it was figured out as well as give me a temporary phone. I found one PI that suited the experience, he said on the phone that he’s helped numerous people get through similar situations like this. So I naturally agreed.
After meeting with the PI, he asked me for a list of my close friends and family and current/past relationships. So I gave him everyone I knew including the date I was with last night. He said to give him a few days and he’ll hopefully have figured out who has stolen everything from me.
About a week later, I get a knock at my door from the PI. He said he looked into all of my contacts and couldn’t find the person doing this to me, he also mentioned he wasn’t able to find the guy I was seeing. He couldn’t find anyone under the name I gave him. It didn’t make much sense to me but it also did because after trying to contact him with my temp phone, I got no response. So I gave the PI more information about this guy, like where he lives and what he looks like. He asked me to give him some time and hopefully he’ll find him.
Another week goes by, I didn’t hear back from the PI so I’m assuming he’s still working on it but I gave him a call just in case. Didn’t answer so I left a voicemail. The PI got back to me the next day saying the address I gave him was an Airbnb and Airbnb doesn’t give information about their users without a warrant. So that was unfortunately a bust. My next solution was to try and track him down on Grindr using a catfish account but it’s not guaranteed it’ll work. I asked the PI to help with this as well so it’ll double our chances of getting the same guy again.
About a month has gone by, and I haven’t found him on Grindr and neither has the PI. I felt like this has gone nowhere. And then all of a sudden my mother told me she got a weird text from my old phone number. It said insulting things towards her and my family which I won’t repeat. My sister also got a weird text from my phone number. So I told the PI that my phone number is still active and that they are actively using it. The PI said we can use that against him by tracking his IP if he’s using Internet. Sure enough I get a text from him saying “gotcha” and then sends me the troll face they used in one of the Black Mirror episodes we watched.
I let the PI know immediately that it was 100% the guy I went on a date with that’s fucking me over but still don’t have his proper identity. He didn’t use iMessage so his IP couldn’t be tracked and to this day he still has a number of accounts. I got my bank account and phone number back very easily by going to the bank and internet/cell provider and explaining my situation, but I feel like my whole identity was stolen. Any advice to be able to get any of my other social media accounts?