Fraud follow-up, again

For a few days I was really obsessed with tracking down this "Gloria" and interrogating her. Not, I have to admit, to bring anyone to justice, but for the prurient reasons of wanting to know how and why she does the work she does.

My zeal took me to the LexisNexis people search where I used a friend's account to track down the phone number used to call me. Here's where the story gets good. The guy who gets the phone bills was jailed for sexual assault about eight years ago. It appears he's out now, and for a while was living only ONE BLOCK from my old apartment in Ft. Greene, Brooklyn. Now he lives on Humboldt St., only a few blocks from where I taught for two years. Dude probably stood in front of me in line at the Lula Bean, probably wondering, "who in this room will someday fall victim to my guiles?"

Note: I'm not posting any of the perp's details to this site mostly because I've succumbed to the delicious sort of paranoia where I worry this guy's prison buddies Google me, find me, and tell me with their fists to keep out of his business. Or else.

So, anyway, none of this search has brought me any closer to "Gloria," my caller. I don't doubt that if I get in touch with the criminal mastermind himself he would never pass on his employee's contact info to someone claiming to be an "uncredentialed journalist and parttime blogger." There's the option of tracking down the tax records of VTS Marketing, the website I was first directed to, and seeing who they employ. But those are methods I'll have to learn from the internet. The other option is to sell my story to This American Life or Bored to Death and have them do the followup. Or, I just wait and hope to be contacted again by a murky telemarketing scheme, and this time have enough sense to get the caller to commit to a confidential interview on the spot.