🔥 Episode 9: Ember to Inferno – The Five-Alarm Meltdown 🔥 Part 1

What starts with a spark of affection can ignite into a full-blown inferno of deception. In this first half of a two-part episode, I walk you through the slow burn of how trust, love, and hope get weaponized — one calculated move at a time.

From promises of meeting, to a “dream job” offer, to diamond rings and love notes from afar, this is the story of how I was emotionally conditioned to believe in a carefully constructed lie.

I’ll share real screenshots on my Facebook page, red flags you might miss, and the chilling details behind a scammer’s playbook — including how I was manipulated into wiring over a million dollars I didn’t own, and ultimately sending my own retirement funds overseas.

💥 This is not “pig-butchering” — it’s psychological warfare.
 💔 This is how scammers earn your trust before they break you.

This episode ends where the flames begin. Part 2? That’s when the mask falls off — and I realize just how deep the damage goes.

⚠️ Trigger warning: Financial loss, emotional manipulation, and the raw aftermath of betrayal.

🔗 Visit my Facebook page for images and documents discussed in the episode.
 💬 If this sounds like something you’ve experienced — you are not alone.

Transcript

0:04

Episode nine, Amber, to Inferno the five alarm meltdown. It started like a spark, small, warm, and full of promise. The sweet love messages that came every morning and evening, a connection that felt very real. What I didn't see was smoldering underneath every message. Every I Love you was laced with the intention of malice. What felt like affection was actually the fuse to a financial and emotional explosion I never saw coming. We decided we were going to meet up in San Diego at the end of April. I had my plane ticket and I was looking forward to finally meeting him. I knew he had been applying at different oil companies since we met, which was now about a month ago. Three days before our meeting, he texted me to tell me he had heard back from adnoc, which is an acronym for Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, a real company by the way. He said they offered him a 30 day contract, but was flexible if necessary to extend. He sent me over his offer letter to review. And I could tell that he was excited because he had been telling me it paid very well. When I read the acceptance letter, it said the salary was$6 million. I'll put this information on my Facebook page so you can review them for yourself, but hopefully you'll take a look at them and take notice of a few things that can clue you in like neither document addresses him by name. There's a slightly different font type when stating the report date and the amount, he'll be paid$6 million for a month of work. It sounded ridiculous, but he had been telling me all along that this was the job he wanted because it paid so well. Well, who am I to question? I have no knowledge of oil rigs. A fact. I'm sure he was counting on. Then my heart dropped. He said he needed to leave immediately and would depart tomorrow. We would not get our chance to meet as I was hoping. I consult myself knowing that this was just a short disruption in a month or maybe six weeks we could finally meet. It would be July or August at the latest. I could deal with that. Once he arrived in Dubai, he said he was staying in a hotel there for a couple of days for onboarding. He sent me a picture, supposedly looking out his hotel room window inside. There was a small round table with a couple of champagne glasses side by side, filled with champagne, and close by was the bottle resting in an ice bucket. Outside the window were other buildings, but way down below. So you knew this room was on a high floor. The photo came from the famous Burge Khalifa Hotel. He didn't actually tell me that, but months later I did do a reverse image search and found the exact photo in a stock image library for that hotel chilling, right? And I don't mean the champagne. He also surprised me a few days later with another picture this time of a diamond ring, which was set in a familiar blue box that comes from Tiffany's. He said he wanted to get married later this year and we would decide the date once he got back from his job every day, he continued sending his morning messages of love, solidifying the hold. He had over me the steady manipulation to make sure he had my undivided attention. I have to admit it worked. I was happy in a relationship for the first time in a very long time. I remember reading an article around the same time that introduced me to the term pig butchering, and I'll just say, this is the only time you'll hear me use that phrase. I have to veer off track here for just a minute to rant if you happen to be unfamiliar with. This term is used as a metaphor to parallel the practice of fattening a pig before it goes off to slaughter, which equates victims to butchering livestock. The shame that people are already going through, it's crushing. But then some fool probably just trying to be clever, had to come up with a dehumanizing, derogatory term to make people being scammed equal to that of a pig being slaughtered. The media, of course, glom onto the phrase and ran with it, let me enlighten you for just a moment. I come from a rural background, and for those of you who don't know, I'll clue you in. Farmers don't build emotional relationships with their pigs destined for the market. They don't send them daily love notes. They don't spend hours flattering them or making false promises about the future. They feed them, raise them, and when the time comes, they do what's necessary, but they're definitely not looking out for the pig's best interest. So no, what's happening here isn't fattening before the kill. It's long-term psychological warfare, and I won't use that term again in this series, ever. And for those of you who choose to keep using it, you might wanna rethink that phrase. Anyway, my point is that this article was describing a woman who had just lost around$450,000 to a scammer. And about the only thing I remember is her saying she thought she had found her guy. I remember feeling sorry for her, not knowing her man the way I knew Pedro. Little did I know my sympathy for that woman in the article wasn't just misplaced. It was a warning shot. I ignored because I was already in above my head. So a couple of weeks go by. It's now mid-May. He's overseas, and he brought up the investment idea again. At this point, I'd had time to think about it. I had a couple of IRA savings account and a couple of other small investments. None of them were making me a great deal of money and Pedro suggested that we each invest$50,000 into this lucrative crypto investment company. I was uncomfortable with this, but I also wanted to please him. So I again, rationalized that my investment wasn't making me much money anyway. And if this was as good as he suggested, then yeah, let's give it a shot. I closed out one of my IRAs and signed up on the crypto company website. Once my funds became available, he walked me through where to send it in order to convert it to crypto, and from there I transferred it to the crypto company. Then he came back with another idea, a second crypto firm. This one, even more lucrative. He exclaimed it didn't take much to talk me into investing the other 50,000. He let me pick out the passwords to make me feel like I was in control. Like it was our money, our future. He told me I was in charge of keeping track of the profits. That was just the spark. The blaze is straight ahead. I hate to admit it, but what came next was even slicker chillingly slick. And it worked because by that point I was already fully engulfed. I would never have guessed at what was really going on in early June. He texted me that his internet was really slow and acting up, and would I help him complete a wire transfer from his personal offshore account to his materials supplier in Singapore. I happily complied, curious to actually see how much money he had in his bank when I got into the account and peered at the balance shown on the screen, it reflected over$4 million. I'd never seen that much money in an account before. It felt like validation, like proof. He really was who he said he was. And if someone like that trusted me to help him, well that must mean I was important in his life that this relationship was genuine and we were actual partners. Back in the real world. However, there's an insidious reason. He wanted me to see this amount in his account. I'd never done a wire transfer before, so of course he walked me through every step. He had me send$1.4 million from this account to his supplier in Singapore, let that sink in$1.4 million. I was pushing buttons and moving money I didn't own based on trust alone. A couple of days later, he asked me to help him again this time for$108,000 to a different receiver. The third time he asked me to help him, apparently his internet was slower than usual and we had to try several times. On the last attempt, the passcode didn't come in soon enough on his phone for me to input it. We got locked out of the account. I gasped and I sent him the screenshot of the response I got from the bank, which showed now that his account was frozen, I was afraid I'd done something wrong. Pedro blamed the slow internet. The next few days were a frantic discussions about how to unfreeze the account. Pedro had called the bank and they told him the only way to unfreeze it was by coming into a branch in person. Well, that was impossible. Of course, he was out on a rig somewhere on the ocean. He was very concerned because he was waiting on his materials to be sent so he could finish this job and come home. In the meantime, would it be possible for me to send him a hundred thousand dollars? He promised to pay me back with interest. As soon as he returned. I knew he had plenty of money in this account to return the favor, and besides he would be home in a few weeks. So I cashed out my second IRA, and once I received the money, I wired it to the supplier in Singapore. He suggested that I communicate by email directly with Mr. Chang at the company because his internet connection was so spotty. Wow. All of this is really difficult to reveal. Even now, saying this out loud makes my stomach queasy, but if I'm going to warn you, really warn you, I have to show how deeply you can fall into this trap. There are too many hard truths to fit into one episode. I split this story into two parts, just so I can catch my breath for a minute. The manipulation ran deeper than I ever imagined, and the fallout even worse. In part two, I'll share the moment the mask fell and everything I believed shattered. I hope you'll be there because what comes next isn't just haunting. It's why I need the world to hear this story. Stay tuned.