The situation grew more and more tense. My house was crawling with armed security guards. I was completely neglecting my work and personal life, as I was operating on UK hours. I was up until 7 or 8 am every morning, and I would sleep until 2 or 3 pm. I was completely drained and exhausted.
Russell stated that the only way to definitively end this situation was to purchase the evidence of Wesley’s immigration offences, and to have him arrested by law enforcement. He repeatedly asserted that Wesley was able to act so brazenly because he had the backing of an international organized crime syndicate, and that he would definitely lose this backing if he were to be forced to leave the US.
He said that he had been negotiating with his Chinese contact, and had persuaded him to lower the price of the evidence to £45,000. Half was payable upfront and the other half payable on verification. Russell claimed he was only able to afford half this amount.
Anxious to put an end to this situation, and to finally bring Wesley to justice, I agreed to fund the other half, which was £22,500.
Russell thanked me for agreeing to help. He asked me to send the payment in crypto to his friend ‘Ben’. I generally do not use crypto, and I also did not want to send a crypto transfer to an anonymous wallet address that belonged to a third party. So I scrambled at 5 am to borrow $12,000 in crypto from a friend, and had this sent to a trusted friend in London so that he could give Russell £10,000 in cash.
I am not going to name my friend. However, he is a very reputable person within the poker community in London, and is also a successful businessman. If there is any doubt regarding my story, he can act as a witness.
They met in person, and the money was handed off. He promised me that he would have the documents within two hours.
However, this never happened. Russell claimed that his Chinese contact took £20,000 in cash, made a phone call, and then informed him that the deal was for the entire amount to be paid upfront. Russell claimed that they had probably misunderstood each other due to the language barrier (the man spoke only Chinese).
At this point, I requested that he hand his phone to this Chinese man so that I could speak with him myself, since I am fluent in Mandarin.
But Russell told me that the man refused, and would deal only with him.
So, already committed and with no other choice, I agreed to send another £12,500 to my friend, who again gave it to Russell in cash. This took total contribution to £22,500.
My friend warned me that this did not seem right. I told him the situation was complicated, but I knew what I was doing. And so he handed him the cash. Once again, Russell said he would have the documents in a few hours.
Then, incredulously, Russell asked me for money for a third time.
This time, he claimed that he was still short £7,500, because his daily withdrawal limit at his bank was £2,500. He said that he had some urgent personal matters to deal with relating to his girlfriend and the custody of their child, and begged me to “lend” him £7,500 which would be repaid within a maximum of 5 days. I simply told him that if he got my friend to agree, then I would do it.
This voice note was sent to my friend, asking to meet for a third time within 24 hours in order to get cash.
Three Payments in 24 Hours
By this time, Russell had managed to drive me to the brink of my sanity. It was stressful enough to arrange an immediate cash transaction on the other side of the world, let alone three in the same day. I was forced to ask my friends for favors, and I spent hours scrambling to arrange swaps and trades to get him the cash.
However, he also managed to get me committed, and much like in poker, it is extremely difficult to withdraw from an ongoing situation when you’re already heavily invested. He played me like a fiddle. I should have known better, but the fact is I didn’t.
I had given Russell a total of £30,000 (about $37,500), and I made it clear that I would not be giving him one penny more under any circumstances. My patience had worn very thin. I dearly wanted to just extricate myself from the situation there and then, but I felt like I did not have any other choice - to back out means that I would lose the money that I had already committed, and to top it off, Russell would no doubt go to Wesley for money to sell me out and frame me for the whole thing.
I simply told myself to stop being paranoid, and to have faith that Russell would come through this time.
PHONE CALLS WITH RUSSELL
From September 5-8, I was engaged in all-day phone calls with Russell because of this ‘situation’. I hardly slept or ate at all. I was simply anxious for the situation to be resolved. I felt like I was in an abyss, and that I was being sucked deeper and deeper with every new development. Each time I provided him with money, Russell promised it would be the last - only to get in touch hours later to tell me of something stupid that went wrong, and that I needed to send him more money. I was on a very short fuse, and my mind went to a very dark place.
In some of these phone calls, I lost my temper at Russell. I made verbal threats to him, describing very nasty things that could happen to him if he was scamming me. I am not proud of the things I said, and they do not reflect my character. However, I was under overwhelming duress at the time. I did not record any of these phone calls, but I believe that Russell did - and will no doubt try to use them to blackmail me.
More importantly, mere words cannot detract from the fact that Russell is a shameless criminal who utilizes extreme manipulation to create overwhelming psychological pressure.
However, the next morning, I did not hear any updates from him. I gave him three missed calls. There was no answer.
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I reached out to the Chinese contact directly even though Russell had told me not to do so. Russell had previously provided me with his Telegram handle, but warned me that he was extremely sensitive about discretion, and so I should not contact him.
The Chinese contact told me that he had not received a single dollar from Russell. Instead, he claimed that Russell had told him that he had a highly influential contact in the US (me) who had documentary evidence of Wesley committing financial crimes, and stated that he could purchase this evidence from me for $50,000.
However, this Chinese man refused to hand Russell any money, and said that he would only proceed with the transaction if he met me and saw the documents in person.
That is when I knew I had been scammed.
That day, I called my friend Ryan Feldman to tell him what had happened.
Ryan told me that Wesley had called him that same day to tell him that an anonymous person from the UK was attempting to extort him. Under the alias of “JJ”, Russell had reached out to Wesley once more, claiming that he could get the website unpublished.
In addition, JJ claimed to have video evidence that someone known to Wesley had written the contents of the website (refer to the video I posted in Section 3). Knowing that Wesley was also in distress from the sudden attack on his reputation, JJ offered to send the video evidence as well as have the website deleted for $55,000.
When I heard this, I knew instantly that the entire website was a hoax. The allegations had been entirely fabricated.
I asked Ryan to set up a meeting between Wesley and myself for the next day.