I stole thousands from hunky one-night stands & faked lung cancer – then bosses found out I was criminal on the run

The Sun

2 days ago

SITTING on the bus, Kari Ferrell glanced at her phone and saw her own police mugshot staring back at her.
After committing a series of scams 2,000 miles away, Kari had fled across the country to start a new life in New York where no one knew her - even landing her dream job at a well-known brand.
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But despite this big break at trendy culture magazine Vice, Kari had continued her crime spree, stealing money from men she hooked up with and cashing cheques from a stolen cheque book.
It would be that dream job that became her undoing, after a viral blog post written by one of her colleagues, entitled Department Of Oopsies! We Hired A Grifter, exposed her as a fugitive on the most-wanted list of a police force on the other side of the USA, accused of a range of offences.
The 2009 article explained the magazine had discovered its admin assistant had five outstanding warrants for fraud, had been run out of Utah and earned herself the nickname 'The Filth'.
Nicknamed 'The Filth'
The blog sparked an online frenzy in which Kari became one of the world's first internet-famous memes.
Across the city, people became obsessed with her story, and with finding her.
Public sightings were posted on forums, while former friends and lovers spilled the beans on her scams and lies.
Long before Anna Delvey and The Tinder Swindler, Kari was one of the OG internet-famous fraudsters, and in an exclusive interview with Fabulous, she opens up about finally revealing her side of the story this year in her book, You'll Never Believe Me: A Life Of Lies, Second Tries, And Things I Should Only Tell My Therapist.
Now married for 13 years to her photographer husband Elliot Esnor, Kari lives in Brooklyn.
She was born in Korea and adopted by her parents, Karen and Terry, who took her to live in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she was raised in the Mormon church.
Consequently, she always felt like an outsider.
Kari, 38, explains: 'It's one of those religions where you're told as a woman that you need to be married and your husband is going to teach you all of the things that you need to know to be able to go to heaven.
It was a very isolated community and there wasn't a lot of Asian representation.
'There were scriptures that talked about how, if you weren't white, you were 'dark and loathsome'. So, I assumed I was doomed to purgatory.
'I figured: 'Why am I aspiring to be a perfect Mormon child when they don't even want me there?''
I was stealing money from other people to pay the previous ones back – it was like a pyramid scheme
Kari Ferrell
Kari's parents divorced when she was in her teens.
That's when she fell in with a rebellious crowd at school and started shoplifting.
The victim of her first 'grift' was a boyfriend, 21-year-old Charlie Connors, who she met when she was 18.
'What I did doesn't make any sense,' Kari admits.
'It was acting without thinking. It was testing the limits. It was an uncontrollable urge to mess up, because I didn't deserve anything good.'
She persuaded Charlie to cash a $500 cheque she wrote him and give her the money, after telling him her account had been frozen. In fact, her account had been closed weeks earlier because there were no funds in it.
Kari, who was working as a receptionist in a veterinary clinic at the time, knew the cheque would bounce and, when it did a week later, she convinced Charlie the bank was investigating why and that she would pay him back.
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Over the following months, Kari began to swindle other friends and acquaintances using the same ruse.
'My victims were good people who simply wanted to help a pal. And I was still convinced that what I was doing wasn't wrong, because I fully intended to have the money to pay them back,' she says.
She even used the cash she scammed to buy gifts and treat her friends.
In her book, she writes that she 'stole money in the hopes that people wouldn't forget me.'
She says: 'I always told myself I had time to get the money and pay them back, but what ended up happening was that I was stealing money from other people to pay the previous one back – it was like a pyramid scheme.'
Her swindling went next level when her own cheques ran out. and she stole a bag from a lady in a restaurant, using the cheque book she found inside instead.
In early 2008, aged 19, she was eventually reported to police by one of her victims.
She was arrested, held on remand and released, after she persuaded another friend to pay the $1,000 bail.
Instead of going to trial, Kari ran away to New York that April, where she tried to make a fresh start.
She spent weeks looking for work until, she says: 'The little money that I did have ran out. And I basically put myself in the same position again.'
She persuaded friends to cash her stolen cheques, then progressed to stealing from men she met in bars and at gigs.
Her 'marks' in New York w­­ere often one-night stands – 'white, trust-fund guys' and 'ones who had an almost fetishisation of me and other Asians.'
She admits she was still attracted to the men she stole from.
'I still had to have some sort of connection with them,' she says.
'There was no plotting. It was more like – I find that person attractive, now I'm at their apartment and there's $50 in crumpled bills sitting on their table. I'm going to take that.'
At the time, Kari was living in the up-and-coming Brooklyn district of Williamsburg, where in the Noughties the hipster movement took off.
Men with beards, wearing checked shirts, who obsessed over craft beer, vinyl records and anything retro, became her main targets.
She even had a tattoo on her back that read: 'I Love Beards'.
She later described 'luring bearded dudes into my web, going home with them, then leaving with their cash, while all they were left with were blue balls.'
It was during this time that Kari also lied to a friend that she had lung cancer. In the book, she recalls how she became jealous of her female friend's relationship with a new man, so lied about the illness to gain more of her attention.
'When they eventually broke up, the lung cancer I had lied about went into remission,' she writes.
But her actions were finally about to catch up with her.
In April 2009, Kari landed an assistant role at hipster bible Vice magazine.
Just weeks in, a colleague she'd flirted with decided to Google her name – and spotted her details on Salt Lake City police department's most-wanted list.
Romance scams red flags
1. They quickly tell you they love you
From calling you their soulmate to saying 'I've never felt this way before' after dating for days or a few weeks.
2. They avoid meeting in person
If you've matched online, they will always have an excuse; working late, family emergencies etc.
3. They ask for money or gift cards
Often they say they need help paying for travel, have a sick relative or child, or their bank account is frozen, or purse lost. They may also ask for gift cards, crypto, transfers or money through apps.
4. Their story doesn't add up
From inconsistencies in their background, to grammatical errors and timeline inaccuracies. Check their photos too, if they look too professional or appear in reverse image searches.
5. They want to move the conversation off the dating site
If they want to talk via email, WhatsApp, G-Chat or another private platform quickly. They might also avoid platforms with scam reporting tools or moderation.
6. They avoid video calls
From claiming their camera is broken, or in an area with no signal - and when they might do a video call, but it may be short, blurry or clearly fake.
That's when the magazine outed her to its readers.
'I read the story and I'm like: 'Oh, boy.' I realised that I couldn't keep on running away and doing what I had been doing,' Kari says.
The story caught the public's imagination, and other articles on her escapades in New York followed.
It included one in The New York Observer, where the author dubbed Kari 'The Hipster Grifter', due to her penchant for trendy, bearded male victims.
Gossip blogs ran obsessive coverage. Interviews with exes and leaked nude photos flooded the internet.
'One from Italy is particularly memorable, referring to me as 'The Filth',' Kari recalls.
Her flirty pick-up lines – scrawled on napkins and matchbooks – like: 'I want you to massage me, from the inside,' were sold on eBay, and T-shirts with her face appeared online.
'It became like a manhunt, like a game for people to try and spot me and then post sightings of me online. I went into hiding.'
Not all the attention was negative.
'Some people had the attitude of 'good for her',' she says, especially those who saw hipsters as self-righteous and humourless.
Initially, she assumed she'd be found and arrested straight away.
But it wasn't for several weeks, in May 2009, that she was finally taken into custody by the police while she was visiting friends in Philadelphia.
'It was a relief,' she says. 'It felt like it was the first step to it being over.'
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Kari pleaded guilty and was handed a suspended one-year sentence and 36 months probation for attempting forgery, and was given a suspended prison term of up to five years and ordered to serve nine months in jail for forgery.
She had already served 132 days, and was released from prison in February 2010.
'After that, I just wanted to fade into obscurity,' she says.
But she struggled to come to terms with what had happened and eventually started therapy, which she says helped her understand her behaviour.
'Being adopted had left a huge hole in my past and, subsequently, my heart. I frequently mourned the relationships I lost, which felt selfish.
"I questioned whether I felt that way because of how I had hurt the other person, or because I had hurt myself.
"We are not good or bad – we're a mix of all the feelings, and we choose which one is allowed to poke its head above water.'
Even now, Kari still wrestles with the big question of why she did what she did. 'I knew what I was doing wasn't right,' she says.
After her release from jail, Kari met Elliot while on probation in Utah.
He was in the military and staying at the same hotel where she worked as a live-in cook.
She wrote in her book: 'I felt supported and loved, and I had a dude – who I didn't even have to lie to, nor did I want to – who wanted to support and take care of me.'
Kari went on to work in offices and was honest with HR departments about her past, but went by her middle name, Michelle, and kept her colleagues in the dark.
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Other high profile scammers
The "Yahoo Boys" Scams
Estimate losses: Billions of dollars globally
Originating from Nigeria, this group of fraudsters uses fake online identities to lure victims into romantic relationships. Victims are often manipulated into sending money under the pretense of emergencies, travel costs, or gifts.
The Tinder Swindler
Estimated Losses: Over $10 million from multiple women
Simon Leviev (real name Shimon Hayut) posed as the son of a diamond mogul on Tinder, living a lavish lifestyle to gain trust. Once involved romantically, he would claim his life was in danger and ask for money.
The Anna Sorokin Case
Estimated losses: $275,000 stolen
Anna Delvey pretended to be a wealthy German heiress, defrauding friends and businesses in the social circles of NYC. While not a traditional romance scam, she used charm and false identity in personal relationships.
It didn't always work out, though.
On several occasions, co-workers discovered her true identity and she was forced to leave.
Even after marrying Elliot in 2011 and taking his surname, she couldn't fully escape her past.
She lasted five years in one role as a digital marketing director, but was let go when clients discovered her criminal history.
Today, Kari runs her own production company, and later this year she's launching a podcast called The Worst Thing I've Ever Done, in which guests share their biggest transgressions. There's even talk of a TV series based on her life.
Kari has been compared to Anna Delvey – who was jailed for posing as a wealthy heiress to scam New York socialites – and Billy McFarland, who defrauded investors out of $27.4million to fund the doomed Fyre Festival.
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'I definitely like to think of myself as being separate from them, because it does not seem that they are very remorseful,' she says, alluding to the fact that Delvey capitalised on her notoriety, even appearing on Dancing With The Stars, while McFarland, post-prison, tried to launch Fyre Festival 2.
Kari notes that her scams totalled around $10,000 and that: 'Compared to them, it was minimal.'
She now hopes that by speaking out and owning her past, people will see the real Kari Ferrell – not just The Hipster Grifter.
'I hope most people would consider me a good person,' she says, revealing that the reaction she gets from people is generally positive.
'I've always had a weird popularity. There were people online saying these horrible things about me, and you would expect that to translate into the real world, but it doesn't.'