🔥 Episode 10: Ember to Inferno: The Five-Alarm Meltdown (Part 2) 🔥

What started as emotional kindling erupts into a full-scale inferno.

In this second half of Ember to Inferno, I take you into the fire — where emotional manipulation turns into financial devastation. From credit lines and wire transfers to maxed-out credit cards, crypto ATMs, and even sending cash through the mail — this is the unraveling of a scam in real time.

This isn’t just about the money.
 It’s about access. Shame. Isolation. And how trust becomes a weapon in the wrong hands.

💥 Learn how scammers exploit every corner of your life — from your retirement to your relationships.
 💸 Hear how I was drained of over $800,000, one excuse at a time.
🚩 Understand the red flags — including subtle “caring” behaviors that are anything but.

I’ll walk you through the emotional chokehold that made walking into the bank feel like stepping onto a battlefield — and how I still justified each decision, even when the truth started seeping through the cracks.

💔 If you’ve ever thought “this could never happen to me” — this episode might change your mind.

Trigger Warning: Financial trauma, emotional manipulation, family deception, and intense psychological abuse.

This may the darkest part of the story.
 But the war isn’t over.
 The next episode? The Wake-Up Call.

Transcript

0:04

Episode 10, Ember to Inferno part two. Thank you for joining me. To recap from part one, I spoke about the progression of the manipulation and how it starts innocently enough, but then builds over time. If you haven't heard part one yet, pause here and go back and listen to that first. Now you know why Pedro wanted me to see all of that money in his account. This was confirmation to me that anything I sent him could be paid back and that he wouldn't leave me hanging. He promised I was still reluctant to do this, but I thought I knew the situation. I used my best rationalization skills and forged ahead. I called the bank to see if I could get an increase on my HELOC so I could send the money or home equity line of credit. The bank advised I could borrow up to 80% of my home's value. I kind of chuckled to myself and thought, well, I won't need near that much, but I had them increase the credit limit by a hundred thousand. Once completed and the money was available, I wired it to Mr. Chang. I always had to take screenshots to prove to both Pedro and Mr. Chang that the transfer had been sent. This wasn't the end of his needs. However, this was only the first ask. There would be more. Many more. It was always something and always associated with his delay in returning to the us he needed materials, more materials, demurrage fees, which I found out are fees charged to ships overstate at a port. And since it always took time to up my credit and get the money to send to him, he was incurring these fees, which I had to pay to allow the ship to leave and deliver the materials. He had to pay his workers overtime. Really doesn't the company take care of this? All these emergencies. It was like a fire with no extinguisher in sight, just more fuel then. Then the emotional fire became the financial inferno between June and September. I returned to the bank two more times. Finally, topping out my 80% allowable borrowing power. I wired different amounts throughout this time, 60,000 here, 40,000 there. Each time was a different emergency. The final total from my HELOC amounted to about$350,000. Not only this, but he was looking in every nook and cranny of my financial ability to find the equivalent of coins in the couch. I had a Visa card, which I had a$20,000 limit, which I maxed out. I even maxed out my 4,000 line of credit at the bank or overdraft. I was running out of money and options and becoming more stressed daily, and then I did something. I still carry shame for. I lied to each one of my sons borrowing 10,000 from one and 5,000 from the other. I wired money to someone in Florida, then Oregon. I sent cash through a crypto ATM machine, a even sent$43,000 in cash to someone in Baltimore with the same name as a famous author. I was given specific instructions about how to wrap and send that money, and was quickly shut down. When I offered an alternative about how to send it, I became increasingly nervous. Every time I went to the bank to wire the money or to obtain the cash, I could tell the teller was immediately suspicious of the transaction I was making, even though we were both trying to put on a good face after the first few wire transfers. The questions from the bank became more routine and increasingly grueling. It was like walking a tightrope. Every time I stepped into a branch, they started questioning me about where the money was going, and had I met the person requesting it, not just over the internet, but in person. I eventually had to start speaking with someone in the fraud department each time prior to them allowing the release of funds. This was beginning to affect all aspects of my life, my job, how I chose to speak to friends and family. I couldn't tell anyone what was really going on and was trying to juggle how I was going to make all these payments while I waited for Pedro to return. What I want you to understand is this, it's not so much about the dollar amount. It's about access. Whatever money you can reach, your savings, credit, home equity, refinancing your mortgage land, that's what's at risk. The question isn't how much did they take, but how much did they need to take to leave you with nothing? That's what really matters to them. The clarity with which I see this manipulation now is incredibly sobering. Only a person under the influence of one of these scammers would not see these gigantic red flags waving right in front of our eyes. I can see how others who have never been through this personally might think those falling for these scams must be weak-minded, incredibly gullible, lonely, elderly people sitting in assisted living centers with nothing better to do than answer calls from strangers. But this simply is not the case. Loneliness doesn't have an age or an address. At some point in our lives, all of us can probably point to a time we felt isolated or unseen. Many under 60 working intelligent people who just took the chance on love have been duped. It really can happen to anyone looking for a connection. Is there any person on earth who has never looked for connection? Are you starting to see why this could happen to anyone or do you think I'm just justifying my own actions? What doesn't get enough attention is how sophisticated these scams have become. How good these people are at this game. They're playing chess while we're playing checkers. In late October, early November, I was out of money, out of options, and just starting, just barely starting to question everything, but I still hadn't hit bottom. Not yet. Pedro said a friend was going to help him by transferring money into my American Express credit card account. Once it showed up, he asked me to use it to buy store gift cards, valued between 250 and$500 each. Send those to him. He claimed he could sell them and use the cash to help cover the cost of a$5,000 international phone card. The purpose so he could call his friend in Israel who had supposedly agreed to send him money. I offered just to buy the phone card myself, but he insisted the kind he needed wasn't available in the US and that calling Israel was incredibly expensive. At the time, I had a quiet flicker of doubt. Israel and the UAE aren't that far apart. Could a phone card really cost that much? It didn't add up. But I still went along with it. He needed my help and I needed him to come back so he could pay me back. Once I saw the money in my account, I went and started buying the gift cards. The problem was, however, two or three days later, after the money was put in the account, it was also withdrawn. I confronted Pedro with this and he said he didn't know what went wrong, but he would check with his friend and was sure the money would be added back in. I found the same anxiety surface as I had previously felt at the bank when trying to buy these$500 gift cards. It wasn't as simple as I expected it to be. I was, again, being questioned by the staff at the Apple Store or at Best Buy about who I was sending these cards too. So what I ended up doing in order to reduce my own stress would be to purchase fewer cards at each store. And then that created a need to go to different stores to avoid suspicion. I would run up and down the valley, varying my times of day to purchase just to avoid running into the same employee more than once. At the Apple store, I found out that only certain people were authorized to sell you these cards. Apparently these are very popular items for scammers. I had no idea in all four payments were made to my credit card. And all four payments were withdrawn. A few days later, I received a communication from American Express that they were shutting down my account, but my bill was now at$25,000 and needed to be paid by next month, December, Christmas, I was spiraling. Before I realized I was being scammed, the fire was already raging. People. This is not a drill. These are things that are critical for you to hear, see, and understand. This has been the most difficult episode so far for me to write. This is my Lady Gva moment. I have bared my soul, my experience in hopes that I can make you see how insane this can get and how polished these scammers have gotten. Again, people don't talk enough about how good. How very, very good they are at what they do. If you take nothing else away, take this, be skeptical from the very start, because once you're emotionally invested, seeing the truth is nearly impossible even when it's right in front of you. It wasn't just the big stuff, it was the series of tiny repeated things that never quite sat right over the entire course of the time I spent with him, but I continued to brush them off. Don't talk to another man over and over like that was reasonable. Have you eaten? Did you shower, brush your teeth? It sounds like care, but it's manipulation, disguised as concern. Constant check-ins, so you feel seen, wanted and dependent. And later on when he would go dark and more often, there was always an excuse. The internet in San Diego was bad. San Diego with bad internet. That's pretty laughable. Also, the rig had bad or no signal, though. Later I learned that ADN knock runs 5G satellite internet, or he was meditating at church or he had dropped his phone and suddenly it didn't work. Well, all of it designed pauses just enough to keep me dangling probably so that he could catch up with his other clients. And then came the things I didn't fully understand, where my confusion gave him power. Crypto investments, oil reg emergencies, tech. I didn't know industries I didn't question. He made requests that felt wrong, but not impossible to rationalize. And when someone says they'll put money into your credit card account, consider that a flashing neon exit sign and take it. Never, never, never give anyone access to your financial information. No matter how convincing it may sound, that's not love. It's a setup. Now I'm going back to my pig grant from yesterday for just a minute. So no, the targets are not the pigs, the pig is every scammer out there sniffing around for their next meal. Or maybe another bottle of champagne to celebrate their descent into being the most despised, inhumane type of life form on the planet. My access to money was the meal the pig consumed. Not just the money, but my time, my confidence, mental anguish, and my trust each lie made him fatter with greed and more bloated with confidence. And when I'm depleted. He simply waddled off to the next trough, the scammers, the real pigs. They pretend to love you. They groom you with kindness, empathy, and attention. Not to take care of you, but to bleed you dry. It's nothing more than psychological warfare. That's why I'm repeating this again. Be skeptical. Stay skeptical from the very first message because once they've got your heart. They can take everything else too, and you won't even see it coming. This isn't just a love story gone wrong. It was a five alarm blaze, and I didn't just get third degree burns. To this day, I'm still in the ICU of the financial unit on life support while he's out there doing the same to someone new. Watch out. Pedro Karma's a bitch and so am I. You may have won the battle by blindsiding me when I wasn't even looking for love. But make no mistake, I'll win this war. My scars remind me, I'm still here stronger, wiser, and ready to fight back. Not just for me, but for everyone. Caught in this same type of nightmare. This war is just getting started. Stay with me. We're in this together. More revelations to come in the next episode, the wake up call. Remember, self-compassion isn't weakness. It's resistance.