1310: Love and Taxes (plus Stalker update)

Speaker: Before we begin today's episode, I want to give you an update. You know, a few months ago, I submitted a request for public records from Phoenix PD about the stalker case. And honestly, I'd forgotten that I even made this request. And then the other day, out of nowhere, I get a response with the files. It was a zip file containing four audio files. Each were police interviews with different people. The most striking interview was with Dr. Gressman. So for the first time ever, we are going to hear what she thinks of this whole stalking case, what she thinks of the Fernandez family. And let me tell you that interview is enlightening. The second file, the second file was the second file was a police interview with new potential victims. These are victims that I sort of kind of knew about, but now they are telling the story for themselves and that one's a doozy. The third file and the fourth file are interviews with Rick Fernandez. All of these interviews are worthy of their own mini bonus episode and I'm going to play those interviews as much as I can. You know, I'm still going to censor certain things. On my Patreon channel and my pretend plus channel on, on Apple podcast. So you could listen to it there. Trust me, you're into the stalker series. This is the nitty gritty right here. But what I don't want to do is play those interviews in its entirety on this feed, because there's a lot of it. And I would like to take only the best information and form a new episode. So you will get to hear the most important parts of those interviews in a future episode, but I don't want to junk up this feed with a bunch of raw audio. Okay. So if you are curious and you want to listen to those interviews in its entirety, Lightly edited, of course, go to pretend plus on Apple podcasts or Patreon. The first episode with Gwen Grisby is available right now. I'll play a clip at the end of this episode, and then the newer bonus episodes will come out as soon as I could comb through all that audio and censor everybody's Patreon or pretend plus on Apple podcasts. That's where you're going to get all the bonus content, really in depth stuff, If you could wait, just wait till we get closer to the trial. Remember the trial was postponed. It was supposed to happen in July. Now it's going to take place in September. And that's when I will release the best of this content as, as an actual pretend episode that's polished with music and the whole nine yards. All right, well, let's get started because the episode I'm about to play for you is one for the romantics. It's called love and taxes. Dating after a divorce isn't easy. Imagine having to start all over again. It's intimidating. Building trust with a new person? But when John Cuchu first met Jennifer Mitchell, he could finally imagine a life with someone new. So I met Jen on like Match. com. It was great. Yeah, we were telling her our divorce war story. She was in the process of going through her divorce. So it was like, you know, we were getting along that way. We used to see each other every single Friday, but we talked. Every single day, she'd call me, I get a text, are you available at six? Absolutely. We talked till 730, two hours a night, every day, two and a half years. They were there for each other, even during the bumpy times. You know, taxes were coming up and she goes, I can totally take care of your taxes for you. At the time, Jen was running a chiropractor's office doing administrative work. She told John that she does her boss's taxes every year. And you know what? She could just take care of his as well. And I'm like, that'd be amazing. I go, I have some stuff where I owe back taxes. She goes, don't worry about it. I'll go in, I'll get you an offering compromise. I'll take care of the taxes. We're good to go. I was like, all right, beautiful. As you can imagine, this is when things start going south. So I guess she was having some problems with them, and they kept coming back. The taxes keep coming back. She tried six or seven times. So she said that she's working with the IRS to get me an offer in compromise and for me to be patient because it takes 45 days. I go, absolutely. Eventually, John got impatient. I'm just going to call the IRS, and I'll just take care of this for myself. I stayed on the phone for four hours with the IRS. When I got through to them, they were like, yeah. None of your stuff. You haven't filed for 2021. I'm like, what? There were two years that I guess didn't get filed. So I don't know on those two years, but there was 7, 000. That was outstanding. Wait a minute. So Jen said that she was taking care of John's taxes. Why weren't his taxes being filed with the IRS? Something was fishy. So John started digging. But when I talked to the IRS, she told me I was looking at about 80, 000. John owed the IRS 80, 000. It turns out there's much more to the story. And John says that he isn't the only one who's been swindled by Jennifer Mitchell's bizarre scam. In today's episode, we're talking about two things that are never straightforward. Love and taxes. I'm Javier Leyva, and this is Pretend. Stories about real people pretending to be someone else. John Cuchu is a listener of this podcast, and decided to reach out to me over email to tell me his story. I want you to clarify something, because in your email you said your girlfriend, I'm assuming you guys have broken up. Yes. Okay. Yeah. As of Monday, I don't even know what the heck happened, but it doesn't sound like a healthy relationship. Oh, man. Yeah, it's, uh, I could just dive in. If you like, John lives in Cape Cod, but you may have already figured that out by his Boston accent. He told me that Jen Mitchell, his girlfriend lives and works about an hour away. She works during the weekdays at the chiropractor's office, then stays with John on the weekends. So she runs the office there. She happened to be working on her boss's taxes and one of the massage therapist's taxes. And she goes, I'm really good at it. I saved Rob, yadda, yadda, yadda, amount of money, whatever. I'm working on Holly's taxes, yadda, yadda, yadda. I can help you. And I go, absolutely. So I emailed her all of my stuff and that's when it began. Remember, this whole thing started two years prior to when they started dating. He hands her his documents, and she supposedly gets to work. Jen tells John to wait 45 days for the taxes to come back. So 45 days comes and goes. I see nothing. I reach out to Jen. She goes, I'll reach out to them again and see what's going on. From there, John says that Jen kept drawing things out. She told him that he owed 22, 000 in taxes. But then she got them down to 15, 000. Another 45 days went by and John hadn't received anything in the mail. He went back to Jen and she said she called again and again and got the number down from 15, 000 to 7, 000. This process just kept repeating, and time just kept on passing by. Eventually, Jen told John that she was able to reduce his taxes down from 22, 000 to only 700. Wow. She kept dropping it down, dropping it down, down to 700, which she said, she went into Boston at that point, met an IRS agent. They became friendly. They actually offered her a job. And. The woman gave her, her personal stuff. So she started working with this lady personally on my IRS stuff. None of this is real, right? None of it's real. Okay. Never in his wildest dreams did John think that his girlfriend could pull something on him, but something wasn't right. He wants answers. So like I mentioned earlier, John decided to reach out to the IRS agent himself. So the whole time for the past 22 months, I've been getting emails, text messages, Oh, your, your two checks will be deposited into your account on Tuesday, yada, yada, yada. Oh, by the way, these messages were from the IRS agent that Jen befriended. And Tuesday would come and go. I'd never see anything. But this IRS agent was full of excuses. Oh, our systems were down from nine to three. Sorry about that. Should be in there by Thursday, 22 months of that constant. And I have all that documented. Very bizarre. But remember the taxes wasn't the focal point of their relationship. It was just something happening in the background. For the most part, John and Jen were really happy together and they decided to take their relationship to the next level. She goes, would you ever move off Cape Cod? And I go, absolutely. And she goes, would you consider us maybe buying a house together? And she would keep her house on the South shore because her kids are in school there. And then I could come down on the weekends and summers and all that fun stuff. I'm like, that's amazing. And while this is going on, we talked about buying a house together. So we started looking at homes. And the first one we found, it was perfect. We were supposed to close last Saturday. I had my truck packed. I thought I was moving in. She was running a real estate thing on me at the same exact time. There was no house. There was no deal. There was no house, nothing. And there was no IRS agent either. John says that there were all kinds of characters created by Jen. But why? Why would she do all this? Well, we'll get into that in a bit. At the time, John says he thought they were house shopping. They even had a real estate agent named Lori Dickey. But for some reason, he could never get a hold of this realtor. And then excuses came up. It was like, oh, I only work part time. I'm doing a lot of closings, yadda, yadda, yadda. So John was strung along for a couple of months. And then supposedly that realtor got back to Jen and said that the house is infested with rats. Whatever, let's move on to the next property. So then Jen found the new realtor. And then the process started all over again. We found a property, a fixer upper on the South Shore again. And again, excuses. The homeowner fell down some stairs, broke his hip. He can't, he can't show the house. Can't do this. All this fun stuff. Can you wait until the holidays pass and we can talk about it after the first of the year? So we do that. We call him up. The listing agent's wife died of COVID, so can we wait a couple more weeks? Absolutely. Then, apparently, the realtor liked the listing so much that she decided to buy the house herself. Jen and John even filed an ethics violation on the real estate agent for stealing the listing out from under them. Then, house number three. Jen went to check out the listing herself in person. The homeowners come out, the homeowner and the realtor get in a screaming, almost fist fight. You get the point. They would close on one house. And then something crazy happened. Every time. So there were ten different, different excuses. We had one where the attorney's kid got hit with a hockey puck, going 70 miles an hour. Um, there was one I know, right? I was like, how do we know how fast the hockey puck was going? You know what I mean? Really? And there was another one where the lawyer was taking a boat to Nantucket and she got vertigo. So, it was just And then two of them were Jen getting coked. Apparently, the realtor's dad took a fall and died too. They finally found the house. We found the place in Bourne, which is on Cape Cod. While John and his daughter from another marriage were standing outside of this house, Jen asked him if she could go back in and put in an offer. I go, yeah, I'm into it. This would be great. So she went back in to the house. So at that moment, when she went in to talk to the realtor, that's when she told the realtor that my daughter was sick and that we weren't looking right now. And she comes back out to me and says she accepted our offer. Let's go. Let's go get ice cream. That's a horrible. I got a sweet little girl and it's a horrible thing to do like sick, sick, right? Sick. Sick. Yeah. Like I got to focus on her. She's sick. Sick. According to John, Jen basically sabotaged the whole thing. But John didn't know that. He thought that they found the house and he was getting ready to move in. 11 of that year. It was all under her name. So she said, you know, I'll, I'll buy it and then, you know, I'll still live on the South Shore, but I'll come down on the weekends and then you move in and you know, that's how it will work. Did you give her any money for the down payment on the house? No. Um, that we were waiting until the closing to come up with money. It wasn't going to be your house. So it's going to be her house. Yeah, it was going to be her house at that point. And then six months down the road, we were going to refi and then put me on it. So I was having, um, I was working on building my credit. You know what I mean? So I wasn't, I didn't want to drag her down because supposedly she has perfect credit. Jon says that Jen even made up a closing attorney named Lisa Still. And surprise, surprise. This meeting was also canceled. John's world is starting to crumble around him. He called the closing attorney and it turns out that she never even had a meeting scheduled with Jen and that she doesn't even practice real estate law anymore. If the closing attorney was made up, was the real estate agent fake too? So I asked my realtor all these questions I just said to him and she goes, none of that is true. So when Jen was The actual realtor that you met. Oh yeah. This Realtor, the one who is surrounded by this mysterious string of deaths, well, she was real, she definitely exists, and her name really is Lori Dickey. So I reached out to her. I'm like, Jennifer Mitchell, I don't even recall a Jennifer Mitchell, so I had to go back and do a little investigating, and I'm like, oh, that was Jennifer. Jen Mitchell was using her maiden name Jen Spano. You never sold her a house or anything like that. We were in talks of offer on the property, but it never came to fruition. There was never an offer signed, never money turned over, nothing like that. Lori told me that Jen and John were interested in putting in an offer, but it just didn't work out. When John ever told me, he's like, yeah, she said she bought it. Or who's going to buy it. And I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about. That deal is dead. Long time ago with you guys, I guess she took advantage of them or something. So now we got this tax scheme and this real estate fraud. Lori Dickey had no idea that any of this was happening. It would tell John various stories that the realtor and others were experiencing tragedies and deaths in their lives. So the home inspection and closing date. Kept needing to be changed. Did you experience any debts or like life changing moments that would have prevented you from selling them this house? No, but the other side of the coin is that she told me, Hey, listen, John's going through something with his daughter. She's on drugs, blah, blah. He doesn't really want to deal with this. So any communication you have just directed to me, don't reach out to John at this time. That's hysterical. So the real estate agent, Lori Dickey, basically confirmed everything John told me. You know, I got to wonder, if this is true, then this can't be the first time Jen Mitchell has pulled a scheme like this. Who else has fallen for her tricks? I called up her ex husband. That's after the break. John Cuchu contacted me because he wanted the world to know what his ex girlfriend, Jen Mitchell, did to him. But what I wanted to know was, has she lied like this before? You didn't feel any suspicion within the 22 months that something was up? I trusted her. But when did the debt collectors start? Probably about a year ago. When John brought up the fact that he was getting calls from debt collectors, Jen said, eh, just ignore them. She goes, no, no, she's like, it's going to mess up the offer and compromise. If you talk to those guys, don't talk to them. She goes, Celia says, if you see them call and just ignore it, because we're, we're in the works, we're trying to make it work. It's only going to muddy the waters. Apparently Celia was the IRS agent Jen was working with. Is Celia even real? No. Not only was the IRS agent not real, and the real estate agent who he thought was communicating was also fabricated, John says that Jen created other fake phone numbers impersonating her friends. She created a whole world of characters to fool John, but why? I asked John if he had ever done a background check on Jen, and he had. He found a lot of small claim court incidents. I And appropriately, John is really angry, so he filed a police report against Jen. The police documented the allegations but told John that there's nothing they could do because, to their knowledge, no documents were forged and no actual money was involved. The police concluded that, quote, no crime occurred in the town of Brewster, Massachusetts, unquote. The police recommended that John reach out to the IRS, and that's exactly what he did. John got in touch with the IRS, yes, the real IRS, and they assigned a special agent with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. And I've seen the emails, and it checks out. This is a real federal agent who is looking into the case. If the IRS charges, Jen with fraud, well, this little joke of hers could have some serious consequences. As of today, John has had several meetings with the special agent in charge. And it appears that they're taking this case very seriously. But again, why would she go through all this trouble just to fool John? I asked John if there were any other signs that he missed along the way. What about little things? Does she lie about the little things? Um, yeah, yeah. She would make appointments and then just cancel them for random reasons. COVID this, COVID that, you know, our son has a strep throat. She would tell people in her life that John's mom was sick. I'm so sorry to hear about your mom. Jen told us she's been sick. I'm like, no, my mom's fine. That she paid for goods and services that she hadn't actually paid for. Jen was adamant to tell me that she paid in full. Irene was like, I haven't seen a nickel out of her. So it's little, it's everything. I think at this point, it'd be more difficult for me to find out what's actually true. I would just assume everything out of her mouth is a lie. And like I said earlier, I started to wonder if anyone else in Jen's life has similar accusations, because if she lied to John, then she must have lied to other people in her life too, right? Jen has two sons, a 13 year old and a 19 year old. John says that they both had a rough time growing up. They're very emotionally Damaged this 13 year old, if he, Oh man, I just feel bad for this kid. If so, any little thing, he just breaks down as a complete emotional breakdown. I feel bad for him. And then the other one is 19 and he thinks you owe him the world. John told me about Jen's ex husband too, at least the one ex husband he knew about. I want to talk to the ex husband. Oh, yeah. Yeah, his name's Matthew Spano. Yeah. She has supposedly a restraining order on him because she was being nervous about him. And he has a severe drinking problem, so the courts made him stop drinking. So he proceeded to get shit faced at a party and was groping an underage girl. So according to Jen, at this party, the girl's father was there, and Jen's ex husband, Matthew, Got into a fight with this guy, and according to Jen, he even pulled a gun on him and went to jail for three months. I know, right? When he gets out of jail, he's now labeled, deemed a sex offender. Level 3 sex offender, she says. Oh, but we could easily look that up. That I looked up, and I, I can't find it anywhere. Because it's bullshit. When I checked for Matthew in the Sexual Offenders Registry, I could not find him on the list. So, I gave Matthew a call. Hey Matthew, can you hear me now? Yes, I can hear you now. I asked Matthew if he still keeps in touch with Jen. I maybe message her, we message like once a week. After how many years has it been since you split up? Uh, about five. We're still going through the divorce. She's been saying that, uh, she went and filed for it. For years now. And, um, she lied and I caught her in it. I didn't tell her I caught it. Jen was telling Matt that she went to court to file the papers, but she never did. When Matt figured this out, he went to court and filed the papers himself. I already paid for the divorce once. She went with me, but then she never, uh, she bitched at me, told me that she'd have me put in jail for forgery if I had something notarized without her. So you're still married to her right now? Yep. Wow. It turns out that a lot of the things Jen is accused of doing to John, she had already done to her husband, Matt, too. You know, she, uh, stopped paying bills, hiding, uh, hiding all my mail and shit. There was, like, court dates for me to go for things, and I had no clue because she did all the shit behind my back. And, uh, eventually we, we ended up getting evicted because of that. And I had no clue. Everything was under my name. I'd just give her my pay at the end of the week, and I got my allowance. And She did whatever the hell she wanted to. So basically, if I heard you right, you're basically trusting her to pay the bills and you're working. Absolutely. She's, was she working at the time? No, no. She just didn't go home. She was always screwing around, yeah. During their marriage, Matt thought that she had been paying the bills. Just spending it on, uh, on stupid shit. No, I mean, there's numerous other fucking things too. What happened to that? Well, she didn't pay car insurance. I got pulled over. My truck got towed. She got in an accident in my truck and I got pulled over on my motorcycle. And they said that I was involved in a hit and run. I was, wasn't even in the same fucking town. They pulled me over like. Minutes afterwards and told me I was involved in a hit and run. I have two kids. One's 19 now, one's 13 and they're not mine. I just found that out like a year and a half ago. Wait, they're not yours? You thought they were yours? Yeah. Matt told me that after he decided to leave Jen, he ran into an old friend who DNA test for his oldest son, just to make sure that his son was his. Matt thought that was a good idea. That's when he found out that both of his kids weren't actually his biological sons. So, did you raise them as yours? Yeah, they don't know it still. I didn't tell them. What am I going to do when the youngest one's 13? Am I going to break his fucking heart? Can I use that part in the in my reporting or you want to keep that kind of close to your No, I don't give a fuck. Use it. Okay. Did you ever suspect that she was lying to you the whole time? On some things, like, forgetting, you know, I was always hiding her fucking phone and all that crap, whatever. But, yeah, she, uh, I didn't suspect the whole time. She's manipulative. She's so phony, she believes herself. There was, uh, one guy that she talked to, and then, like, two years later, she left her phone out and the number kept calling and calling. So I took the number on my phone and it came back to the same number that I wrote down. I wrote Jen's dick. That was the name of the guy in my phone because it was her dick. This guy thought that she was taking care of it because he had like back taxes that he had to pay and she goes, Oh, you know what? I do the, I do taxes for my boss. I could do your taxes. That's another thing that fucked me with my taxes. I still owe taxes. She told me that it was everything's all taken care of. Fuck that. No, I'm in debt with them. I owe them. Well, now it's only about 4, 000, but it was up close to the 10 by the time I figured it out. So what, she was doing your taxes and doing the same exact thing? Well, she said everything was all taken care of. Matt told me that Jen also made fake social media accounts to communicate with him, just like she did with John. For a car insurance incident, Matt said he had emails coming in from an insurance company saying that he would be compensated soon, but he never got the money. Nothing ever seemed to get resolved. Finally caught her doing the shit. You figured out that those accounts weren't real? Correct. Man, that's crazy. Why do you think she's doing all this? Like, why do you think she I have no clue. I think it's because, oh, I want to help. I want to be the good girl. I want to be the nice person. And then, fuck, and it all falls back onto her, you know? Yeah. And when I asked Matt what Jen was doing with the money? I have no clue. Just fucking McDonald's, fucking spending it, just fucking stupidly. And since their rent wasn't getting paid, they ended up getting evicted. And when Jen and Matt were evicted, he ended up finding some mail that Jen had stashed away. She would take the mail before I got home from work and just leave the trash mail there. But she would squirrel away the other mail and hide it. So, like, why would you just throw it away? She kept it. So I found it, you know, when we were moving out. And that's when I told her to go fuck herself. In the mail, he found summons asking him to go to court for not paying rent. Matt could have been thrown in jail if this had gone a little differently. Matt told me that there was another reason why he left Jen. Apparently, Jen's dick, those are Matt's word, not mine, says that he figured out that she was having an affair with another guy, not John Cuchu. Another guy. We'll just refer to him as Jen's dick. So the other guy that I left, uh, because of, uh, he's married and has kids too. I've actually talked to, I've actually talked to his wife. Oh, he's Jen's dick. Yeah. Yeah. And he's since been married or he was married while he was Jen? He's still married. Yep. Well, it turns out that Matt calls the married boyfriend's wife every now and then, and they vent about this whole crazy situation. Every once in a while, she'll call me just like, Hey, how's everything going? Yep. Me and her talked shit hundreds of times, fucking just bashing on the both of them, you know? They're divorced now? Or no? They're still together. I told her She calls you to bash on him? All the time. I know, this whole thing keeps getting wilder and wilder, so I decided to call the married boyfriend, you know Jen's a dick. And I figured that maybe he has something to say about Jen. I wanted to know if he too had been caught in Jen's web of lies. Hello? Hey, it's Javier. You called me. What's going on? Oh, yeah. I filled him in on everything. Everything that Matt and John told me about being ripped off. And so I wanted to kind of check with you, like, have you heard stories like this? Or is this? No, I haven't heard. He denies any of these wild accusations about Jen. By the way, he also asked me not to use the recording of our call. So as far as you know, Jennifer is a stand up citizen. He said as far as he knows, he's never heard of any negative things. He ended the call by saying good luck with my story. He said it sounded like a lot of drama and he didn't want any part of it. As of now, it's unclear as to whether he and Jen are still romantically involved. If they are, it's understandable why he wouldn't want to say anything negative. But he's right about one thing. I wanted to get the facts straight. So I reached out to Jen herself. I couldn't record because of the laws in Massachusetts. I'm a reporter working on a story, but I don't ever want to work on a story without talking to the person. I've had two separate people tell me that, that you kind of ripped them off, you did their taxes, and you didn't, you weren't actually doing their taxes, and now they're in trouble with the IRS. Jen told me that she had no idea what I was talking about. She says she's a mom of two and would never screw anyone over. Then she told me not to call again because she had no idea who I was. She was pretty quick to get off the phone. And that's it. That's all I got from Jen. After that, I gave John Cuchu a call back. Really? She just denied everything? Wow. Yeah, but basically that was her only answer. It's like, I don't know who you are. I don't know what you're talking about. Really? Huh. I said, I've spoken to multiple guys who have said that you screwed them over. And why do you, if it's a lie, if you don't know what I'm talking about, why do you think they're coming after you like this? She's like, I have no idea. Really? Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. She's unbelievable. She's unbelievable. But she did sound a little rattled, I have to say. It's not hard to see the pattern, though. If what John told me is true, and what Matt told me is true, then Jen Mitchell may have done this to other people, and could still be doing it now. If this is true, then we have a serial con artist on our hands. Yes, a serial con artist, um, liar, cheat. Dare I say she's criminal. But that's the thing, according to police, Jen didn't commit a crime. All she's guilty of is misleading a bunch of dudes. But what's her motivation? I told John Kuchu that I ended up calling Jen's ex husband, Matt, to tell him what I learned. Hey got off the phone with Matt. No shit. Yeah, he was just same story same story as you Yeah, so basically he almost got evicted because he was working giving her money thinking she's paying the rent and meanwhile They're getting court summons for their eviction and he had no idea Like, no clue. No? Yeah. They're still married. Did you know that? No, I didn't. She told me they were divorced. Nope. He says they're still married. Yep. No shit. And he says that the kids, he did a DNA test, they're not even his. Are you fucking kidding me? That's what he said. Apparently, Jon didn't even know Jen was still married to Matt while he was dating her. He had to find out from me. Matt and I discussed the DNA test Matthew had on Jen's two sons. So the kids aren't even his. Nope. That, that is blowing my mind, man. Oh my god. And to your knowledge, you thought they were divorced. She told me she, they got divorced in 2019. So the whole time she was married, God, I would love to talk to him. Yeah, I could put you guys in touch. I could reach out and let him know. So I connected Matt and John and they had a call and compared war stories. It turns out Gen Zexes have a lot in common, but these guys have never actually spoken to one another. John Kuchu called me and told me about their call. He told me about his two kids aren't his, I guess the DNA came back and it's two different guys. Wow, and it was two different guys. Wow. Two different guys. He says he's spent over 180, 000 in child support over the years. Wow. And she knew. She knew the whole time. So she scammed him out of all this money right there. And they weren't even his kids. And then Matt was saying, uh, when they would go anywhere, she was always texting with somebody named Joanne from work. But Joanne was really Jen's dick. The third guy. Yeah. And I noticed when she was with me, she was always texting with somebody named Holly. From her work. Do you think it was some other dude? I do now. Now I do. Absolutely. A hundred percent. So what now? These two guys are pissed and they want answers, but Jen, well, she had one last surprise. She told them that she was diagnosed with cancer. So tell me about this cancer thing. I don't think it's real unless karma is kicking her in the ass. That's the only reason it'd be real. He said it's only real if karma is kicking her in the ass. John said the djinn would fake illnesses often while they were together. Once she even sent him photos of her being treated for COVID in a hospital. They're like stock photos of a empty hospital. It's weird. Yeah. It was real. I go, why is nobody there? What's going on with you, man? Any updates? John told me that he's actually redone his taxes with an actual professional. IRS and he only owes 8, 000. So he sees the light at the end of the tunnel. Yeah. And he actually was able to get his old home back, so he's not out living out in the streets. He's also still in contact with that IRS special agent who's looking into the case, and it sounds like they're investigating Jen for tax fraud. He says he has, he has the proof, he goes, the proof that you've given me is clear case of fraud. You know, it's refreshing to chat with somebody because he's a type of an authority figure. I called up John Cuchu one last time just to check in on him and see how he's doing. And it looks like he may have found somebody new. He said he finally got a break and is in a really healthy relationship. He said one thing's for sure. He's going to be doing his own taxes from now on. Today's episode was reported by me, Javier Leyva. It was written by Audrey Gibbs and edited by the talented Puneeth Shanoi. With the podcast pundits. I also want to thank my new Patreon supporters. Amy Peters, Jeffrey Bulow, Clarissa Miller, Bev Wolfe, Nicole Kingbird, Sabine McLerth, Jules Anderson, Laura Trelizio, Maureen, Kimberly Cook, thank you for all of you who make this show happen. Remember, we're an indie podcast and we are listener supported at the end of the day. You hear ads and I love that you support our sponsors, but really the Patreon supporters and the Apple podcast supporters on pretend plus are the ones who make this show happen. So thank you very much. And by the way, if you haven't checked out the Ponzi playbook, my third podcast, you should check it out. Also, big news. John Taylor and I have just wrapped up all the scripts for Criminal Conduct Season 4. We are gonna try to get that out in August. It's an incredible season that we've wanted to do since the very beginning. So look out for that. Lots of fun cases coming. Can't wait to tell you about it. But in the meantime, stay tuned. Find me on social at pretend pod and let me know what you think. Also wouldn't hurt to leave a review. All right. Well, we'll talk next week. Take care. Okay. That was love and taxes. Now let's switch gears and I'm going to play you a small portion Of the police interview with Dr. Gresmith from the Stalker series. This police interview is what we've all wanted to hear from the very beginning. What does the doctor think of all this? I'm going to play you a clip. But you don't know why this family decided not to like you back in March and why all this would start happening. No, I mean, like I said, they've always been really appropriate and very nice to me and very thankful. And so, I don't feel like I really truly don't feel like they want to hurt me physically. I feel like they just like the attention. Okay. What do you want to have done? Obviously have them stop, but what criminally are you going to want them arrested or what? I would, I mean, to me, the most that can be done because I feel like that sends the strongest message. You can't do this. You can't do this again. My guess is this has been going on to other people. Like I, I can't imagine this is their first time doing this because it's so elaborate. Like, who has time to make all these fake accounts and talk to each other and, and, you know what I mean? Like, When you're sitting around doing it, it's so easy. You just make a fake email. I guess, but maybe, My life is so busy. Each one of those emails is a different account. And it's easy. It takes five seconds. I mean, I guess I just don't have time to sit around at night. No, you don't. Have fake conversations with other people. All right, that was just a short clip of a longer conversation that police had with Dr. Gresman. To listen to the whole thing, head on over to Patreon or Pretend Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'll have a link in the show notes. Take care.