The Liar

This guy couldn’t tell the truth about anything. Starting with his name – and I still don’t know what it really is. He said his name was Jake Pellerin but while we were eating and talking about Facebook, he added me and his name was Jake Thibodeaux. When I asked why he used a different name, he said his real name was Pellerin but he had so many friends asking him for money or jobs because he’s rich that he made this alternate facebook account. So naturally I asked about his real account and he said he deleted it. He only has ten friends on the new account and they are all women from dating sites. I mostly know this because when I look at the girls’ profiles and see our mutual friends, they are all men I met on dating sites.

So clearly this is a fake account he uses to converse with women he’s dating. On his dating profile and his facebook profile, the picture is one with a cowboy hat looking down that doesn’t show his face. The logical conclusion is that he’s probably married.

He’s from Louisiana but his profile said Texarkana, Arkansas and when he messaged me he said he was moving to Branson and coming up here to look for a house. Once he arrived in town, he changed his location to Branson. It would stand to reason that he probably goes out of town for work or looking for jobs and uses these fake profiles to hook up with women while there.

His name was just the beginning of his lies. He lied about obvious things and couldn’t control it. He claimed he owned an oil business with 62 employees. This was in his dating profile too. Upon learning I was an accountant, he proceeded to tell me about how his accountant wouldn’t let him claim all the mileage from his work truck or other deductions. I offered to look over his return and possibly amend it. He said that he had to pay in an additional $6,000 because of the accountant’s mistake. Later he was talking about checking his return online and there was a message that there was a problem with it and he needed to call the IRS. I asked how he checked his return online and he said he went to the irs.gov and there is a link there to check. I said, “Do you mean the Check Your Refund link?” To which he replied, “yeah, that’s it.” I said, “You know you can only use that if you have a refund, right?” He argued with me saying that he’d show me right now on his phone that I (a certified public accountant dealing with the IRS often) was wrong. I told him to please show me because if there is a feature out there that my clients might be able to use, I’d like to know about it. (Said with a heavy dose of sarcasm.)

He claimed to be getting 50 or more messages a day from desperate women wanting after him for his money. He said he had to block some of them because they wanted to do crazy things like pour hot wax all over him. He pulled up a profile of a woman he said he blocked because of her crazy sex talk. Again, I pointed out that when you block people you can’t pull up their profile, so maybe he was confused. But no, turns out I just don’t know how the dating site works either. He really thought I was dumb.

He arrived in a 1999 Jeep Cherokee. When I asked about that, he said he doesn’t like to drive his expensive cars and trucks around because people are always after him for his money. I thought, wouldn’t that be a reason to not constantly tell people that you’re rich?

He was staying in a local timeshare resort that I’m very familiar with since I have a lot of tax clients in the timeshare industry. Branson is a tourist town and the timeshare industry pulls people in with the mini-vacations designed to generate an audience for presentations (and sales).

When he told me where he was staying, I asked if he had a timeshare. He said no, it was nothing like that. He said he paid $8,000 for it about ten years ago and it was unlimited; he could go where he wanted to and stay as long as he waned with no fees. “I even have a deed,” he exclaimed. If you know anything about timeshares, then you know that they all come with deeds.

Not wanting him to continue looking like an idiot, I explained that Branson is a really small town. It looks much bigger than it is because we have about 50,000 tourists a day in town, but our actually population is only 6,000, and as such, everyone knows everyone… and most of us know how timeshare works.

He couldn’t be deterred. Just one of those sad, pathetic people that is so unhappy with his actual life, he needs to create a fantasy world to feel worthy. Unfortunately for him, I’m extremely turned off by lying, especially the self-promotion kind.

I used a coupon that gave us $10 off our meal, he paid, being careful to hide what he was leaving as a tip. I asked if I could get the tip and he said that he already got it and that he tips unusually high and that’s why everyone knows him and likes him (news to me). Since I actually do know everyone working there, I asked our server later about the tip. He left about 7%.... even less if you factor in the $10 discount. Generally when using a coupon, it’s customary to tip off the original bill. And since I really do know everyone, I try to take very good care of my servers. I added to her tip as I usually do in these cases. Tipping tells me things about a person’s respect for others so I always pay attention to that.

So, throughout our entire encounter, he couldn’t be honest about a single thing! Since we were now facebook friends, I posted a quote just for him:

“We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.” ~Tad Williams

It was perfect for him. He lies about himself because he fears people won’t like him, yet by lying, he makes more people not like him. Sadly, I’m sure he didn’t make the connection, and he even asked me out again.