Crazy, freaky things happen on Stranger Things. People are very often possessed by monsters, throw up little slugs, and even display psychic powers. Well, what if something strange happened to you in real life? Try this one on for size. When McKayla—a Kentucky mom and film editor—posted on a forum looking for other creatives, she received a message from... Stranger Things star Dacre Montgomery? The actor played Billy, one of the older, oddly attractive teens in Hawkins—and the eventual Season Three antagonist.
The only problem? Yeah, you guessed it—this individual was not Stranger Things star Dacre Montgomery. McKayla was catfished.
The scammer asked McKayla to leave her husband—and somehow convinced her to send over nearly $10,000. Montgomery was "one of my favorite actors," McKayla told Catfished. "Me and him just really hit it off. Of course, I'm suspicious from the get go, until he starts doing things that make me believe that he is who he is."
According to McKayla, not-Dacre Montgomery sent her poetry that was similar to his real work, and even knew which new episodes he would appear in before they premiered. He also vented to McKayla about a toxic relationship he was in, which she empathized with at the time. McKayla, now a single mom, left her husband because she felt like he was squashing her creativity. "Within two months, he was gone," she recounted, telling the scammer that if he really wanted to be with her, then he would have to do the same. Instead, he told MacKayla that his girlfriend controlled his bank accounts—and he needed her to fork over some cash. "My ex was the same," she told him. "He always had control."
After a year of sending the scammer money, McKayla lost nearly $10,000. That's when she contacted Catfished. "If you're someone like me, you're afraid of abandonment and you're a real big people pleaser and you're very co-dependent," McKayla said. "These scammers, they just kind of come in and they leech off that. It's a fix."
Would I give someone $10,000 based off a DM? Nope! Would I give everything away for Dacre Montgomery?... Maybe! Stranger things have happened.
Josh Rosenberg is an Assistant Editor at Esquire, keeping a steady diet of one movie a day. His past work can be found at Spin, CBR, and on his personal blog at Roseandblog.com.
