- * MTV *
- I've added Alex on suggested friends.
We hit it off really quick,
so I decided to do an image search.
The first profile that popped up was a mug shot.
- Oh.
- Let's do a search just for Alex.
Oh! - Oh, my God.
- Why do this kind of stuff to people?
- It may or may not be true.
- I'm here to get some answers.
- See if there's anyone in here.
Hello? Oh.
[dramatic musical sting]
- Hey, guys, and welcome back to "Catfish."
Kamie is not available.
So despite my best efforts to recreate her,
it's just not gonna do it.
But maybe with a little bit of magic,
we can bring this cohost to life.
So I thought maybe we put a little bit of music on
and just sort of see what happens.
All right, so let's just see. How about this? There we go.
[upbeat music playing]
Okay.
Come on, Kamie.
I need a cohost.
Come on, cohost.
Ooh. Wait a second.
- * It's a bitter pill to swallow *
* Gave it all, but you're still hollow *
- Hey! Hey!
Arlissa. - Hello.
- It worked. - It worked!
* You still check up on me *
- Arlissa is a powerhouse singer-songwriter
from London who has always used music
as a true expression of healing.
Her worldwide viral hits
amassed over 100 million views.
She's co-written for the likes of BTS, Nas, Ariana Grande,
and even wrote a song shortlisted
for Best Original Song at the Oscars.
Welcome, Arlissa.
We're honored to have you.
It's nice to meet you officially.
- Lovely to meet you too, Nev.
This is kind of wild. I actually love this show.
I've watched it for years.
I feel like everyone
watches "Catfish." - Thank you.
Hopefully some of them will be here because of you.
- I'm excited.
- Well, let's start with the most important role
of any cohost, and that is using--
it used to be called the Max Cam.
Now it's the Kamie Cam.
But for this episode, it'll be your cam.
And you can basically do whatever you want with it.
Yeah, exactly. - Okay.
I love it. I love it.
- And that's pretty much it. You ready?
- I'm ready. - Let's do it.
Open up the old email.
"Dear Nev and"--
- Arlissa. - Arlissa.
- "My name is Jeremy."
- * Got my attention *
* My new obsession *
- "And I'm a 30-year-old nursing assistant
"living in Bradford, Arkansas.
About six months ago, I met a guy named Alex online."
- * Made me feel like I just died and went to heaven *
- "We hit it off really great and quickly fell in love.
"I live in a small town with limited options.
"I'm the only gay guy that I know of in my area.
"I've been looking for the right guy
"to settle down with, and it seemed
like Alex could be the one."
* Tell me how your feelings *
* Wound up disappearing *
* Overnight *
- "But about a month into the relationship,
"he was supposed to drive down from Kentucky to visit me.
After saying he was an hour away, he ghosted me."
- Oh.
- "Two months later, he reached out to apologize
and explained that he'd gotten cold feet."
- * My heart's a ghost town *
* When you're not around *
- "I quickly forgave him.
Maybe too quickly." - Yes.
- "And we picked up where we left off.
"But over the months, I started noticing issues
"with the pictures he was sending me.
"One day, his beard would be short,
"and the next day, it was long.
"Then his child went from being an eight-year-old kid
to a toddler." - Oh, wow.
Okay, this is getting a little bit wild.
- "I couldn't ignore that.
"So finally, I image searched the photos,
"and they went back to a totally different guy
named Hunter."
- * Locked down, got no way out *
- "I immediately questioned Alex about what was going on.
He gave me an explanation, but it doesn't make sense."
- * I'm running out of ways *
- "I thought I'd finally found someone special
"to make a life with, but how can I know
"if anything he's told me was really true?
I would greatly appreciate your help.
Jeremy."
- Aww, Jeremy.
- Clearly, this guy is aware that something's going on.
He figured out that this guy has been
using someone else's pictures.
- I'm not feeling too good about this guy, you know.
- Let's call Jeremy. - Okay.
[line trills]
- Hello, Jeremy?
- Yes, hey, it's Nev from "Catfish."
- Pretty good, man. How are you?
- Well, I just read your email.
And sitting next to me is my cohost
for this episode, Arlissa.
- Hello, Jeremy.
- Are you still now talking with Alex?
- Oh. So wait.
So give us--give us the update.
- You mean because it could just be someone else saying,
"Hi, my name is Alex"?
- Wait, was the guy in the video not the same
as Alex's pictures?
- Wow, okay, well, look, we wanna help you.
- Very much so.
- I mean, are you ready to get some answers
and find out the truth?
- Great. We'll see you soon.
- Oh, Jeremy. - He sounds very kind.
- This thing with the video sounds wild.
You ready to learn more? - Yeah.
- Let's pack up. - Let's do it.
- * Come celebrate with me *
* All the sinners, all the freaks *
- We are in Arkansas.
- We made it.
- Cute little town up here.
- Hmm! - Let's check it out.
Drive through Main Street for a second.
- It is very cute.
- And that's it. That's the town. Okay.
[laughter]
I see what he means now when he says
there aren't a lot of people nearby
and that he might be the only gay guy in the area,
at least that he knows of.
- Yeah.
I'm not--yeah, I'm not seeing much around.
- No.
- * Love keeps spinning inside of devotion *
* Love for you as deep as the ocean *
- This is it. - Okay.
- You ready? - I'm ready.
- [grunts]
Ooh.
- Oh, yeah.
- Hey, how's it going?
- Oh, sorry. You caught me. - [laughs]
- I was checking out your scooter.
You ride that thing? - I don't.
My nieces and nephews do. - Hey, man.
- Nice to meet you. - How you doing?
- Good. I'm Jeremy.
- Jeremy, pleasure. - Hi, Jeremy.
- Hi. - Arlissa.
- Arlissa. Nice to meet you.
- You wanna come inside? - Sure.
- Oh, thank you.
- You're welcome to sit down. - Thank you.
- All right. So you're a nurse?
- No, I'm a CNA. - Okay, so--
- I'm like a step below a nurse.
- Okay. - I really love helping people.
- That's amazing.
You seem like a really caring, sweet, lovely person.
- It's very rewarding. - That's awesome.
We went for a little drive coming up through here.
It's pretty beautiful. - Yeah.
- But you date men.
- Yes, sir. I've only ever dated men.
- Which I can imagine is not easy around here.
- No, not at all.
- So have you had a boyfriend,
like a significant relationship?
- Yeah, I've had two significant relationships.
- And how did you meet those guys?
- Online.
- Okay, so what app do you typically get on?
- Facebook Dating. - Oh, okay.
Is that where you met Alex? - Yeah.
I've added Alex on suggested friends.
He was very attractive, and we started messaging.
We hit it off really quick, texting,
calling on the phone for hours.
We talk about everything,
like my career in the medical field, his kid,
what they did on the weekends.
Really, we talk about anything and everything.
- What does Alex do?
- He said he's a roofer. - Okay.
- And a month into us dating,
he was supposed to come down here from Kentucky.
He messaged me every time he stopped for gas.
Then when he was an hour away in Memphis,
I lost all contact with him.
- [gasps]
- I went to the extent of contacting
the Memphis Police Department to see if any accidents
were reported matching his description that day.
Because for five days, he wouldn't answer me, respond.
I had to make a fake phone number
to call him from before he actually answered.
- Wow.
- When he answered, I was like, hey, I just wanted
to make sure you was okay.
And then he hung up on me.
- Oh.
- So we stopped talking for a month or so.
Then, finally, he messaged me back one day
and asked if he could call me.
He called me and apologized.
His excuse was that he got cold feet and turned around.
I was excited, I guess, from talking to him again
because we did hit it off really well.
So I kind of brushed it off, I guess you can say.
We considered ourselves dating again pretty quick.
There was, you know, some red flags,
like he wouldn't video chat
because he said his camera was broke.
He had sent me a picture of his son one weekend,
and the picture that he had sent me was of a toddler.
And the previous picture I had seen of him
and his son, his son is eight years old.
But also, some of his pictures, like his beard would be longer.
And he would just be like, well, I groomed more that day
or something stupid like that.
So I decided to do an image search,
and the first profile that popped up was a mug shot.
- Whoa. - Yeah.
And it was a gentleman with a different name
and a different age.
- But same guy.
- Yes, same guy.
And so I messaged him, and I'm just like, hey,
well, I think I found your twin.
And funny story is, he lives in Kentucky, it says.
- Which is where Alex says he lives.
- Yes. - Yeah.
- So he says that he legally changed
his first and last name.
- Okay, so now he's saying that those pictures are of him.
- Yes, sir.
- So he was arrested for something.
- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. - And what about the age?
- Age did not match up, either.
- How old was the guy in the picture?
- 24. - Okay.
- And he's supposed to have been 34.
- Right. - Big difference.
- Yeah.
So at this point, are you believing any of this?
- Not really, no. - No.
- It's kind of a little bit too far fetched for me to believe.
- But are you saying to him, like, come on,
quit the bullshit.
- Then, I don't think-- no, I probably wasn't.
We were planning on meeting, so I was--you know,
I was gonna, I guess, ask him to his face.
Well, a day before us meeting, he said,
I'm not the person I've been sending you pictures of.
I was like, okay, well, send me a video
of you saying, "Hey, it's Alex.
This is me." And he sends it,
but I don't know that it really was him.
- Was the guy in the video similarly attractive or...?
- No. - No? Okay.
- Was a...
I mean--
- Can we see... - Yes.
- Alex sort of pre- and post-reveal?
- Sure. Yes.
- Okay, so this is who he said he used to be.
- Yes. This is--
- The first guy that you-- - Yeah.
Very attractive. - Mm-hmm.
- And then this is post Alex.
- Oh, yeah.
So it's a really different person.
- Yes. - Very different.
- Okay, this is video.
You can barely hear it.
- Why is the volume so low? Is that weird?
- Yeah, I'm not sure why it is.
But he's saying, "Hey, Jeremy.
It's me, Alex." - All right, cool.
Here, we wanna go back over there.
- Yes, sir.
I don't want to automatically reject somebody.
I mean, because it-- looks aren't everything.
But, you know, something like that, if you've
been talking to somebody for, like, five months.
This has to sink in.
He called me right after he sent the video, and he's like,
so what do you think about my video?
He wanted to go straight back into,
everything's supposed to be fine.
- Hmm.
- And that makes me feel uncomfortable
because you sent pictures of somebody
that wasn't the person I thought
I was sending pictures to, you know?
- Yeah. - Yeah.
- It makes me feel in a type of way
that he has my pictures and stuff.
- Also, have you guys had conversations that were--
or texts that were, like, sexual?
- Yes.
- What about, like X-rated pictures?
- Yes.
- Is sending sexy pictures something
that you typically do?
- No, not typically.
- So that was already outside of your comfort zone.
- Yes.
- But he kept asking or what?
- Yes, sir.
Kept pressing me for it, so I just did it.
- Has he ever asked for money?
- He didn't necessarily ask.
He had mentioned that he wished he had--
had already gotten paid.
And so I offered to send him $20.
- And did he accept? - Yes.
- How did you send that?
- I sent it on Cash App.
And the Cash App belonged to who he said was his aunt.
- That obviously doesn't make any sense.
- Yeah. - No.
- But you still like talking to him.
- Yes, I do like talking to him.
- So you have very conflicting feelings.
- Very. - Yeah, that's tough.
- That's really tough. - Very.
- Would you say you were in love with him?
- Yes, sir. - You'd say that?
- I would say that.
- Did you say that to each other?
- Yes.
- So I mean, that's a real thing.
I mean, that doesn't just go away.
- Yeah.
- Do you want to pursue that still, that connection,
despite everything?
- There's a possibility, I guess.
Because, I mean, it wasn't just his looks.
- It's actually really heartbreaking.
I feel like you're having to process a lot here,
and you do deserve to see this person face to face.
I think there's a lot there. - I don't feel that it sink--
it will sink in, really, till then
because it hasn't sunk in yet.
- Yeah.
- But at this point, like, I don't think it's safe for me
to go up and meet him, you know, by myself.
- There's something about Alex that scares you a little.
- Yeah, kind of.
Like, I mean, the fact that he thinks
that this is all right to do.
- All right, well, look, send us the stuff you have,
and we'll see what we can find out.
- I appreciate the help.
- All right.
We'll get out of here. - Thank you.
- Yeah. Good to meet you, man. - Lovely to meet you.
- Nice to meet you as well. - See you.
Oh, lord.
- Jeremy is a very sweet man.
- Really, really, really sweet.
- And I get the sense that Alex is really preying on him.
- I feel so intensely for Jeremy
because he's formed an emotional connection
with this guy based on a lie. So that sucks.
But they've had too many conversations.
He's sent intimate photos of himself.
If I put myself in that mindset, yeah,
there's a world where I absolutely would be like, look,
I did not waste my time here for nothing.
You are gonna meet me, and you're gonna tell me
why you did this.
[upbeat music]
- Thank you very much. - Mm-hmm.
This place is cool.
All right, so this is the part where we recap
what we've learned thus far.
- Okay, guys, so this is what's happened.
Jeremy meets Alex online.
They get to talking. They're having a nice time.
Alex sends a bunch of photos to Jeremy.
He's hot. Jeremy's in.
However, Alex's phone camera's broken.
- He ghosts him on their planned meet-up.
- He ghosted him.
- And months go by.
Alex pops back up and says, hey, sorry, I got cold feet.
But I'm back, and now let's just pick up where we left off.
- That leads to Jeremy searching Alex's images
and finds out Alex is a totally different person.
- Right, a guy named Hunter.
- Jeremy asked him to send a video saying,
"Hi, this is Alex."
Alex comes clean, and it's not the same guy at all.
So Jeremy's obviously really disappointed.
We've got to figure out who really is Alex and where is he.
And they need to have a little convo.
- For sure. All right, so here we go.
Email from Jeremy.
"Here's the information I have on Alex."
Wow, his whole name. Alex [bleep].
- That's cool.
- Phone number, Facebook page, Cash App,
which is weird because it's Jenna Lynn.
I guess that's Alex's aunt. - Yeah.
- "I've asked him if he has any other social media,
and he insists that he doesn't."
All right, let's just run the new Alex's picture
and just see if it comes back to anything.
- That's not him. - No.
All right, no hits on these pictures.
So let's keep going.
Let's do a search just for Alex [bleep],
see if that's a real person and he shows up
on the internet anywhere.
Wait, what's this? This is a Twitter?
Another fake account. - Yeah.
- Again with the Hunter pictures.
"Just a simple redneck from Kentucky, 33, gay.
Beware, this profile does contain X-rated--"
oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus. - [laughing]
I didn't know you could do that on Twitter.
- You can. You can. - I did not know that.
- Twitter, you can put anything.
- Wow.
- Yeah, this is definitely a profile by the same guy.
- Yes. But it's never his face, ever.
This poor guy, Hunter.
- That's really messed up. - Yes.
- Okay, well, what else can we do?
We know Alex sent his Cash App to Jeremy.
And the Cash App name was Jenna Lynn [bleep].
- Yeah.
- Let's if we can find Jenna Lynn [bleep].
- What about this person?
- Isn't that kind of weird?
She kind of looks like Alex number two, doesn't she?
Don't they kind look similar?
- Oh, my God. Actually... - Right?
I think the long blonde hair is just photoshopped.
- Oh, yeah, the photos are heavily, heavily edited.
- Super filtered. - [gasps]
And the eyes are so similar.
Oh, my God. This is mad.
- Kind of looks like--
- This is wild. That is him. - It's gotta be.
So does that mean that we found Alex's alter ego?
Like, what the hell would that mean?
This is all wild.
The only thing we haven't done yet
is looked up the phone number.
Let's see if we get anything.
- Carl [bleep].
- That could be his real name.
- That's Alex, yeah.
- 31, which--
- Yeah, that checks out. - Makes sense.
- Not 34. - Kentucky, right?
Okay, so now let's look up Carl [bleep]
and see if we can find a Facebook.
Who's that? That's him.
That's gotta be him. - [gasps]
Oh, my God.
- Here's the real guy. - It is him!
- It's definitely the same guy as in the video.
It's him!
Wait, that bandanna looks familiar.
I feel like I saw this back here on Jenna Lynn's page.
Hold on. - Oh, my goodness.
- There it is, the same bandanna!
- Oh, my goodness. - Wow.
That makes a pretty clear connection.
- Yeah, completely. Carl is Jenna Lynn.
- But when Jeremy called him out and said, hey,
you're not the guy in the pictures,
why not just say, you're right. I'm sorry. My name is Carl.
- I know. - And here's the picture of me.
Because he did send a picture of him.
He--like, he came clean about what he looked like,
which is really the biggest piece.
But in the video, he said his name was Alex.
And now with this Jenna Lynn account,
we found this whole nother...
- Identity. - Identity.
- Yeah.
- But that brings up a whole question of,
was Jenna Lynn catfishing people
and getting guys to send money?
Because why else would Jenna Lynn have a Cash App?
- [gasps] - If it's not a real person?
Which raises a whole new set of questions about Carl...
- Yeah.
- And how many different people they are
or believe themselves to be.
We may have figured out who Jeremy's talking to.
- Yes.
- But now we have a whole bunch of new questions
about what kind of crazy shit they're up to.
This is not good news for Jeremy.
[line trills]
- * Jeremy *
- Hi, Jeremy. It's Arlissa and Nev.
We've done a bit of digging,
and we've definitely found out some things
that we'd love to tell you.
Is there any way we can meet you?
- Caliente.
- Okay, we'll see you in a bit. - All right, thank you.
Bye-bye. - Bye.
I don't wanna tell him all the bad news.
- Jeremy's going to be upset and shocked at what we found.
Well, there he is. - There he is.
- Hey.
- How's it going? - J-Dawg.
- Yep. This is Caliente. You wanna go in?
- All right, let's do this.
I like it. I like this.
You wanna have a seat? - Sure. Yes.
- Ma'am. - Thank you.
- Ah.
How you doing? - Good.
- You feel okay? - Yeah, a little bit anxious.
Have questions that definitely need to be answered.
- Yes.
- Well, we found some stuff.
- Okay.
- Obviously, you started the process when you searched
the photo and already knew, you know,
a pretty meaningful part of the puzzle.
But it turns out the puzzle is a bit
more complicated and larger
than I think any of us had thought.
- Okay.
- Let's start with, we ran this photo of Alex
that he sent you when he finally came clean.
We didn't get any results,
but we googled Alex's full name,
and a few things come up. - Yes, sir.
- First thing we found was a Twitter page,
which has his name, the pictures.
Have you ever seen this before?
- No, not at all.
- It says, "Just a simple redneck from Kentucky.
And beware, this profile contains X-rated material."
And then right away, you see that it's mostly porn,
which is, like, surprising. - Yeah.
- Because he's making it look as though this is him.
Not that we can see anyone's face in any of this,
but it's suggesting that this is
his page or his body, his sex.
We know he's not the guy in the pictures.
So it's just like, what is this guy doing?
- Yeah.
- I'm sitting here thinking in my head like, what the hell?
[apprehensive music]
I really don't know what to think right now.
- What's concerning for me is, like,
he's clearly comfortable posting other people's
content under false pretenses. - Yeah.
- That's, like, wildly inappropriate
and dangerous and harmful in many ways.
- Yes, sir. - Yeah.
- And if he's capable of doing that,
what else is he capable of? - Exactly.
It makes me wonder, like, about my pictures I've sent him.
You know, has he posted any of my pictures or...?
I just feel kind of disgusted, I guess.
- Understandable.
All the more reason why we need to find out
who's behind these profiles.
- Exactly. Yeah.
- So then we thought, okay, we've gotta figure out
what's up with this Cash App account
with the name Jenna Lynn.
Who is this Jenna Lynn [bleep] person?
How are they connected to Alex?
So we went to Facebook, and we found
a page for Jenna Lynn [bleep].
And we started scrolling through it,
and something sort of jumped out at us.
I don't know if you're seeing the same thing we are.
- Yeah, that it's him.
- It looks an awful lot like the new Alex he sent you.
And when we put them side by side,
it became very clear that they are absolutely...
- Yeah.
- Him using some kind of filter.
- Yeah.
- So that really threw us for a loop.
Alex, obviously, has never mentioned
having identified as a woman. - No.
- Because that would be understandable.
Has Alex ever talked about cross-dressing
or anything like that? - Not at all, not ever.
The way he portrayed himself was that he was, you know,
like a masculine country boy. - Right.
So then it started to dawn on me
that maybe he's catfishing as Jenna Lynn
and getting people to send him money.
Because why else would he have a Jenna Lynn Cash App?
- Right.
- It's sort of giving like he could be doing some kind
of romance scam catfish thing.
- Yes, sir.
- Now, here's where it gets even weirder.
When we ran the phone number that you have for Alex,
we got a new name, Carl. - Carl.
- So then we did a search for Carl [bleep], and we got a hit.
Boom.
Found his Facebook page.
Here he is, definitely the same guy.
But what was interesting and jumped out to us about this
was that we saw this face mask.
And when we go back to the Jenna Lynn--
same face mask. - Yeah.
- So in case there was any doubt...
- Right.
- Now we know for sure
that Jenna Lynn and Alex are all Carl.
- Mm-hmm.
- I mean, obviously, I'm probably not the only person
he's been doing this to.
[somber music]
There's a lot of questions.
Like, why?
Why do--why do this kind of stuff to people?
- * I won't ever win *
* I won't bend again *
- Why didn't he tell you his name was Carl?
- I've been honest with him about everything
from the get-go.
And I've told him that, you know?
I'm a very understanding person as well,
so why just keep on lying about stuff?
- * There's nothing worse *
* Than a loud sunburst *
* When you feel so low and it's gotten there first *
- I don't know what to really say about it all.
It's really messed up.
It's like it's some big, screwed-up game.
- Yeah.
- I feel kind of numb.
It feels like it still hasn't even sunk in really yet.
- I hope you don't let this take away your kindness.
Because I know that this is really hurtful,
and I know that you must feel really angry.
- Yes, ma'am.
- Now we need to figure out if you still wanna meet him.
- I'd still like to meet him,
just so I can ask him face-to-face why.
I definitely would like to know that my pictures are deleted.
- All right, well, should we reach out and see if
he'll finally agree to meet you?
- I'd like that.
- All right, let's give him a call.
[line trills]
- Hi.
Is this Alex?
- Hey, Alex.
My name's Nev from the show "Catfish."
I am trying to help someone that you know
who has been trying to meet up with you for a while.
- Yes, that is correct.
And I'm hoping that you are willing
to kind of meet up and come clean.
- Okay. Well, I'm happy to hear that.
How and when would--
would we be able to meet up with you?
- Alex?
[tense music]
You still there?
[disconnect tones]
- Was that--was he-- felt like--
- I think he got a bit spooked. - Let me try calling back.
[line trills]
- Please leave your message.
- Text him.
"Hey, Nev again.
"Not sure if we got disconnected or if you hung up,
"but I appreciate you talking with me
"and being open to meeting up with us.
"We're happy to come to Kentucky and meet you.
"Please confirm that if we bring Jeremy up there,
you won't ghost him again."
See if that goes through.
[phone dings] Oh.
He said, "I don't know if I can do this.
I don't want to rush into meeting him and blow it."
Okay.
"I understand.
"I can assure you that showing up now and taking
accountability for your actions is going to be
your best chance at forgiveness."
- I mean, not really--
not wanting to take accountability for what he did.
If you really care about somebody,
then quit playing games with them.
[phone dings] - Oh.
He said, "I appreciate your help, and I apologize.
"I just wanna make a good impression.
"I need to get a haircut,
"buy a new shirt before I can see him.
"I know if I don't show up looking good,
he's not gonna like me."
"Okay, well, could you do all that stuff tomorrow
while we drive up to Kentucky?"
- Ooh.
- Oh, he said, "Let's meet in Richmond.
I'll send you an address tomorrow."
"We will plan on seeing you Saturday."
Well. - Okay.
- It looks like we have a plan.
- One step closer to the truth.
- I guess he wants to make a good first impression.
So you down for a road trip?
- Yep. - All right, man.
Pack a bag, and we'll figure out a place
to meet tomorrow morning. We'll hit the road.
- Yeah. Yes, sir.
- Let's do it. - Here we go.
Whoo!
Bye, Jeremy.
See you tomorrow. - See you tomorrow.
Jeremy's obviously in shock.
- It's so heartbreaking.
This is not easy, and he took it like a champ.
- The crazy thing is that I feel like
we've only scratched the tip of the iceberg
with this guy. - I 100% agree.
- What we found might only be a fraction
of the messed-up life that this guy's been living online.
Who knows what we're in store for when we get there?
- Morning. - Hi.
- Looking good. - Hey.
- Thank you. - How are you?
- Ready to get this show on the road.
- All right. Load up.
- Ooh.
- Okay.
Eight hours.
I can't wait.
- Long trip.
- Let's see if he sent an address yet.
Yes.
- It's very cloudy, but it's pretty.
- Enjoy the scenery now because we're about to be
hitting fields as far as the eye can see.
[upbeat music]
- * We're ready to go *
* *
* I guess you just didn't know *
* *
* I was already ready to go *
- Whoa, look at all those birds out there.
- Oh! Oh, my God.
Oh, my God. That's so wonderful.
- Holy moly.
- It's so pretty!
- Hopefully that's a good sign.
- * We're ready to go *
* *
* We're ready to go *
* I guess you just didn't know *
* *
* We're already ready to go *
* *
- Should we let Carl know that we're an hour away?
- Yeah.
I said, "Hey, we're getting close now."
He said, "Okay. See you tomorrow."
- Still no address? - No.
The closer we're getting, I think it's starting
to all sink in a little bit.
Was anything he told me true at all?
- Today is the day.
I see you've got your big final day--
- I've got my reveal dress on.
I'm ready.
But I'm nervous.
You've done this a bunch of times.
I'm--I'm like--I've got the...
- Right.
- The anticipation wobbles.
- There's a lot that could come out.
- Yeah. [knocking on door]
- Oh, there he is. Come on in.
What's up? - Good morning.
- Here. - You look lovely.
- Have a seat. What do you got?
Any response since the texts last night?
- He just now messaged back.
"You can meet me at this park, Catalpa Park."
- Okay, cool.
Why don't you tell him that we can be there in, like,
30 minutes?
- Okay.
- How are you feeling about all this?
- I'm anxious, ready to find out some answers.
- We still don't know if they'll show up
and who's gonna show up.
But we better get going
if we're gonna make this happen.
Let's do it.
- Whoo!
- We had to get a new car
because we had a flat after that long drive.
[apprehensive music]
- Ooh. I'm nervous.
I can't imagine how nervous you must be.
- Here we go.
[phone dings] - Oh.
He's asked for a change of place.
- Like, to meet him somewhere else?
- Yeah. - Now where?
- So, "Hey, I went to the park, but it was way too crowded.
"My friend rents a house on a farm.
Can we meet there instead?"
- Okay. - We're just 15 minutes away.
That's fine. - All right.
Well, a house on a farm?
Nothing's easy with this guy.
- No.
* *
- Really getting out into the sticks here.
- Very secluded.
- Nice.
Okay.
- Lots of horses. - Nice.
- Moment of truth. - Yeah.
- It all boils down to this. - Mm-hmm.
- Feel confident? You ready to--
- Yeah, I'm ready to get some answers.
- Yeah. - Let's see what's what.
- Thank you, Jeremy.
- Yes, ma'am. - You're so nice.
- See if there's anyone in here.
* *
Hello?
Oh.
[apprehensive music]
- See if there's anyone in here.
Hello?
- Hi.
- Oh.
He's in here.
- Oh, God.
- Hi.
I'm Nev.
- Carl. - Carl. Good to meet you.
Well, got Jeremy here, who you know.
And Arlissa. - Hi.
Nice to meet you.
Um...
I'm sorry I lied.
My feelings for you were true.
I do love you.
I care about you.
- I mean, that's--
that's just hard for me to believe with all of this.
Why go to those lengths to lie to me?
- I was just really nervous and afraid that you wouldn't
accept me for who I was.
- What was actually true?
I mean, what about the son?
- I don't have a son.
- What about, like, the different accounts?
Like Jenna Lynn?
- I don't know who that is.
- Well, the Cash App was Jenna Lynn.
And then you had a Facebook in that person's name.
- Um...
Jenna Lynn is my name that I use for drag.
- But just now, when he asked you who Jenna Lynn was,
you said, "I don't know who that is."
Your default response was to lie.
Why put her name on a Cash App?
Can you explain that?
- I don't know.
I just--I thought
that I could just use that name as a Cash App.
I didn't know that it would be such a big deal.
- Do you get people to send you money
as Jenna Lynn who don't it's you?
- No. - No.
- I swear it's not like that.
- I mean, I hope that's true.
- What about, like, the Twitter account
in Alex's name with a lot of nudity?
Were my pictures that I've sent you
posted on that Twitter account?
- No. - Or anywhere else?
- No.
- I'd really feel more comfortable
if they were deleted.
- I don't have any pictures of you on my phone, I swear.
- It's kind of hard for me to believe with all--
with everything. - I understand.
But I'm telling you the truth.
- So how long have you been making up these fake profiles?
- Since after high school.
- What about specifically this profile?
- Three years.
- Okay, so before Alex, you had other pages?
- Yeah.
- Do you know what made you start catfishing?
- Romantically, there's nobody to talk to in my town.
That's why that I go online.
- Have you ever tried dating just
without using a fake person?
- Yeah, I have.
But it didn't go nowhere.
I wasn't getting anybody interested.
- And that's what led you to start creating fake ones?
- Yeah. I did it for attention.
- Is this something that you still wanna keep up,
or do you think it's time to retire all of these lies?
- I can retire them for him.
- But don't you think it would be a good idea
to retire them for yourself?
- Maybe, yeah.
- Jeremy, if it's okay,
why don't we take a minute, chat for a sec?
We'll be back in a minute.
- Okay.
Hey, I'm just gonna walk down to the house.
- Okay.
- I may be wrong, I just-- I just don't feel like he's--
I don't know-- being sincere about it all.
- I don't think he gets the emotional pain
of putting yourself out there, being super vulnerable,
and then finding out that it was all a total lie.
And if there is gonna be any hope that he doesn't
do this again to someone else--
- He needs to take accountability.
- Right. - Right.
- Why don't we go talk to him one more time?
* *
All right. How are you feeling?
- I'm glad that everything's out in the open.
I wish things could have went differently.
I messed up a lot.
I didn't mean to hurt him.
- I mean, I get where you're coming from about being
a small town, feeling that the Alex profile
was your way of kind of reaching out from there.
But like, I'm from a small town also.
I live in a town of 600 people.
I didn't go, you know, make another profile
to meet other people like that.
It's hurtful.
I really opened up to you and felt like I knew you.
I felt like there was a lot of potential
for there being something.
Me talking to Alex and it not really being
who you said you were, it's like you took that choice
away from me, for me to be able to choose
to catch feelings for you.
It's really messed up.
Just...
It's just hard.
- All I can do is say that I'm sorry.
I never really did mean to hurt you.
- But you did hurt him.
And I'm sure you know that, like, for him to open up
and for him to be vulnerable and for him to send pictures,
which is not something I think he's ever done with anyone,
was a big deal for him.
And then to discover that all of that was part of a lie
makes it feel like it was nothing to you.
- But you weren't a joke to me.
And when you asked me to send you the video, I did.
- But you still sent it as Alex.
- I think it's important that you recognize
that means deactivate the Alex Facebook, the Alex Twitter.
You think that's something you're prepared to do?
- Yeah.
- I mean, I'm still willing to be your friend,
but it's gonna take me a long time to be able to trust
anything you say to me.
- If Jeremy is willing to start this friendship from scratch,
you really have to--you have to only be telling the truth.
- I understand.
- I guess only time will tell.
- You feel like you've said everything
you wanna say, Jeremy?
- Yeah.
- All right.
Well, thank you for meeting up.
Shall we?
Maybe walk us out?
- Yeah.
- All right. Good to meet you, bud.
- You too. - All right.
- Lovely to meet you.
- All right.
- Bye - Bye.
- * Look at the state of the world *
* That was based around so much *
- How do you feel that went?
- It feels like it's sort of kind of a relief, I guess.
I just hope it actually sinks in to him,
and he does make some changes.
- * Now you show your true side *
[upbeat music]
[computer chimes]
- Hey, what's up, man?
- Not much. How's it going? - Good. What's new?
Anything since we last hung out?
- Not really.
I've just been working on myself, I guess.
I haven't been getting out in the dating world again yet.
- Right.
- But he's tried messaging me as Alex.
He still has that account up, still using that account.
- Wait, really?
So Carl still has the Alex account,
and you've seen it active?
- Yeah, that's where he tries messaging me on.
- Wow.
So are you still talking to him or no?
- No--clearly, he's not changing any of his ways.
I mean--
- Sounds like Carl has a lot of work he needs to do.
So I think while he's doing that, it's probably best
that you give him space.
- Yes, sir.
- There's a big world out there and plenty of wonderful guys
that would love to meet you.
- Yes, sir. I appreciate you, Nev.
- All right, Jeremy. - You take care.
- Later, bud.
- Everything about Gabby is top tier.
We both have sickle cell, so she can relate to it.
But I send her pictures of me all the time.
I've gotten like, one.
- Let's see. What is this?
- What? - Hello!
How do you feel about Ayla?
- Now we just--oh, wait. Who's that?
- There is someone walking into the park.
Definitely coming up here.