Chapter 4 #2
I started typing my complaint email to the app, explaining everything that had happened, asking them to investigate, and take down the fake Brian James profile as a matter of urgency.
Given all their advertising banners stressing the importance of users’ safety, I was confident that they would take my concern seriously.
Sure enough, within minutes of me sending the message, I got an automated response saying that my issue would be looked into immediately and I would be told the results of their investigation within twenty-four hours.
I sighed. I suppose twenty-four hours was better than nothing, but I couldn’t help fearing what trouble Bogus Brian could cause in that time.
I forced myself not to think of it. There wasn’t anything else I could do, for now.
* * *
The normal work routine helped settle my still nagging anxiety somewhat, although I did find myself avoiding both the crime and the business sections.
I processed loans and returns, read a book about a unicorn saving the world to a bunch of extremely enthusiastic under-fives for Saturday Story Time, which soon dealt with any last lingering remnants of the hangover, and finally tracked down the contact details for a local author to arrange an event.
It was good to be surrounded by a different bunch of readers who didn’t know what had happened to me.
Everyone except one particular individual, of course, whose presence I did my best to ignore even though I caught him watching me on several occasions with that penetrating gaze of his.
He was probably terrified I was going to chuck him out again. Served him right.
At lunchtime, I retreated to the break room and curled up with a battered copy of Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers which had been taken out of circulation for repairs. There was nothing like an old favourite to help distract me from reality and boost my mood with some much-needed escapism.
I was reluctantly about to return to library desk duty when the SO Ox app pinged on my phone.
Dear Ms Fisher,
Thank you for raising your concerns about another member of this app.
After a thorough investigation, we have concluded that Brian James is a legitimate user.
He will however receive a warning notification that his message could have been misinterpreted as a request for money.
We take such matters very seriously and are grateful for you drawing it to our attention.
As our terms and conditions policy states, we operate a two-strikes-and-out system.
Unfortunately, we also have to issue you with a warning for making a complaint against another user which turned out to be unfounded.
We hope you enjoy continuing to use SO Ox. Happy dating!
Yours sincerely,
The team at SO Ox
An unfounded complaint? How dare they give me a warning when I was the innocent party in all this?
That was a flawed system at work. In fact, it was downright sinister.
Who knew what other shady characters could be operating under the protection of the app which seemed to be condoning dodgy behaviour?
I was properly livid now. Despite all the information I’d provided them, they still thought that Brian James was a legitimate user.
It was unbelievable. The demand for money wasn’t a matter of interpretation; it was clearly there in black and white.
And how could I enjoy ‘happy dating’, knowing that the app was potentially a festering hotbed of scammers who continued to get away with it because there was a ‘two-strikes’ policy?
I’d never trust anyone from the app again.
The response was so inadequate I would have laughed, if I wasn’t so full of rage.
And to top it all, they’d claimed to have carried out a ‘thorough investigation’– in less than four of the twenty-four hours they’d promised.
They’d essentially given Scammer Brian their blessing to carry on with impunity.
Even worse, they’d basically given him guidance on how to be more subtle with his scam, making him all the more dangerous.
I knew I’d been lucky. I’d got wise to the scheme before I’d lost anything more than a little bit of dignity.
But others might not be so fortunate. What if it had been a retiree like Doris who’d been targeted?
She still berated herself for following legitimate but bad financial advice against her better instincts in the pursuit of love.
Falling victim to a scammer like this would kill her.
What about the other library users, many of whom also scraped by, working all hours to make ends meet, what if they got tricked out of everything they owned because they committed the sin of wanting a bit of companionship?
People like the fake Brian James shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it, taking love and manipulating it in order to steal and destroy.
Something had to be done. They needed to be stopped.
Maybe the SO Ox app would have to reconsider their position if I reported Scammer Brian to the police?
But that irksome voice of reason soon piped up again.
If the people at the app didn’t think there was enough to my complaint to act upon it, the police were hardly going to be any different.
They were probably up to their eyes in much more serious incidents.
Thankfully, the crime rate in Oxford was significantly lower than the Inspector Morse books made out, but that didn’t mean they’d have the time to give more than a cursory glance at my problem.
I looked down at the copy of Gaudy Night lying discarded on my lap.
The heroine Harriet Vane was a writer who took matters into her own hands to investigate a mystery which was causing pain and suffering to those who were dear to her.
Why couldn’t I follow her example and carry out my own investigation?
I could track down the fraudster, find more substantial evidence of his wrongdoing, then take a cut and dried case to the police.
Somebody needed to stop him. Why couldn’t it be me?
I returned to the reshelving trolley full of resolve and with a spring in my step.
As I walked around the library with my squeaky cart of books, I started to put together a plan of action.
Maybe I could find Scammer Brian by evaluating his online footprint, establishing his pattern and tracking down the other sordid corners of the internet where he carried out his nefarious business.
That was how they went about it in crime novels, anyway, and it seemed to work for them.
My fingers hovered by a volume called Hacking for Dummies .
But, judging from the blurb, it seemed to be more geared towards learning how to protect yourself from rogue operatives, rather than helping you work out who was behind it.
And if I was being completely honest with myself, did I really have the skillset to suddenly turn computer whizz and decode whatever information might be out there, to discover the real identity of the so-called Brian James?
My search abilities were more suited to tracking down rare books and obscure authors.
It was all well and good for the amateur detectives of the Golden Age of crime fiction to waltz around getting their man, armed only with logic and a few smart quips, but with the internet, there were so many more places to hide nowadays.
What I really needed was professional help and guidance from somebody who knew what they were doing.
Maybe I could hire a private detective who specialised in this area?
Weren’t they the modern equivalents of Sherlock Holmes?
The crime fiction shelves of the library were full of the adventures of go-getting PIs who never failed to catch their man, even if the police had been floundering for years.
I slipped between the stacks in the classics section, and quickly took out my phone to google ‘private investigator Oxford.’
A host of options popped up promising complete discretion for private surveillance, corporate work, and the somewhat sinister-sounding ‘spouse investigations’.
I was astonished by the amount of choice out there, and the range of services they offered.
It was pretty concerning to realise there was enough dodgy behaviour going on to warrant such a thriving industry, judging by the slick graphics of their high-end websites.
But as I scrolled through the options, none of them mentioned anything about being specialists in sniffing out romance fraudsters.
And on closer inspection, they all seemed to be based in London rather than my home city, not to mention the fact that without exception they charged a small fortune.