The Weekly season 1 episode 7 recap: Connecting the World

In the longest episode of The Weekly so far, the series follows a Facebook scam as it takes shocking, devastating and deadly turns.

This deeply unsettling episode of The Weekly follows technology reporter Jack Nicas, who has spent years reporting on the turmoil caused by fake Facebook accounts and scams. According to Nicas, there’s no telling how many fake accounts are on Facebook. Facebook’s own estimate puts the number around 100 million. Nicas wants to understand why on earth these scams work on people.

So, we watch him talk to Renee Holland, a victim of a Facebook scam, and her husband Mark. Renee originally got Facebook for the same reason a lot of people do—to be close to family and friends.

But then she got a message from Michael Chris—an Army soldier on active duty in Iraq. They started talking and Chris made comments that he felt alone, saying Renee was the only person he could talk to, making her feel needed. He even started calling her “my wife” because that’s the kind of relationship he said they had.

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Of course, he started asking for things. Starting with small things like iTunes gift cards, Renee eventually found herself wiring thousands of dollars overseas. Nicas and Renee go through her Western Union receipts and she sent tens of thousands of dollars (somewhere around $30,000 when all was said and done, according to Mark).

As Renee explains it, she didn’t even realize it was a scam until she had sent Chris money for him and a friend to fly home. She got to the airport. No airline. An airport officer took one look at the photo of the plane ticket and told her she got scammed.

Renee was terrified, knowing that she had spent thousands her and her husband’s life savings. (Nicas later mentions that Mark had a history of violence and abusive behavior, which probably played into Renee’s fear.) Renee turned to sleeping pills and alcohol. She remembers going for a drive and then waking up in the hospital.

Still, after all this, Renee kept in touch with Chris.

Because of this, Nicas implements a plan with her to find out Chris’s IP address and figure out where he actually is. Renee wants to find out who this guy really is and agreed to share her story with Nicas to see if he could help.

The next day, sure enough, it works and they find that Chris’ IP address is in Nigeria, not in Iraq like he claimed. (Of course, this episode doesn’t go into the complicated reality of IP address fakes and VPN services and such.)

So, the question is: Whose pictures are these being used on this fake profile?

Nicas tracks down the face in the pictures, 30-year-old Daniel Anonsen, a 13-year Marine Corps vet.

Anonsen, prior to deleting his Facebook and Instagram years ago, had started getting messages from people telling him that he was being impersonated. Not only that, he had messages from women claiming they had been talking to him for months. The Weekly shows screenshots of a lot (way too many) of profiles using variations of Anonsen’s name (Anonsen Smith, Chad Anonsen, etc.).

He reported what was happening to Facebook, but they did nothing.

Even now, long after Anonsen got away from social media and despite Anonsen’s efforts to report fake profiles using his photos, Nicas found 65 profiles pretending to be Anonsen.

And Anonsen isn’t the only vet affected.