Bit Coin Girl

When Josh travels from his Mexican retirement home back to the States, he uses a handy website to find persons willing and able to housesit for him. Otherwise, the plants and the family pets would have no way to survive on their own. Lavinia, a citizen of Great Britain and a gal formerly teaching in Thailand, willingly flew from London to the Mexican state of Baja California Sur to fill the position for a three-week period. Upon Josh’s return, she remained in Mexico and rented a condo near the beachfront for the remainder of her stay. The following year, Josh employed a local Mexican young lady (an English teacher) who dropped by every afternoon to water the plants and feed the dogs. More recently, the Covid outbreak curtailed Josh’s international travel habits, until one day an unsolicited email from “Bit Coin Girl” awakened him once again to the outside world.

Bit Coin Girl randomly sent off inquiries for travel advice to three persons registered on the expatriate website where Josh had advertised in the past. She asked the questions: “Have you been to Mexico? I’m planning a 10 day trip to Mexico City and Cancun. Do you have any suggestions?” Her name was Isabella and her profile picture was a young dark-haired woman holding a furry white dog up close to her face.

The only person who responded was Josh. His cordial response initiated a ten day marathon of texting and sharing and mystery that would become a giant leap into the unknown: “Hi Isabella. Well, being the fact we are living in Baja California Sur (La Paz) and are a long way from Mexico City and Cancun, I can’t really be much help this time. My spouse was born here in La Paz (reason we moved here). Anyway, I hope you enjoy every minute of your ten days in Mexico. Cancun and Mexico City will be prime spots to explore, I’m sure. Regards, Josh”.

But oddly enough, this twenty-eight year old Florida college graduate had only just begun: “Thank you for telling me this, thank you for your blessings. I’m headed to Mexico City tomorrow and I look forward to sharing my journey with you, my friend. I hope your life will always be wonderful. I think it would be better to communicate via WhatsApp.” Without any expectations whatsoever, Josh shared his Android WhatsApp number with this newfound “stranger-friend” as he would begin to call her in the coming days. After seeing the photo of Josh on his WhatsApp profile, her next chat line comment was: “It’s nice to meet you. When you were young, you looked like the Beatles.” Please understand that Josh had chosen to upload a profile photo of himself taken circa 1977, when guys like him wore hair long and shaggy.

The WhatsApp profile image posted by Isabella showed her alongside a beautiful horse with the line: “I like horses. I like nature”. In the coming days, Isabella would explain her close ties with an animal refuge. She shared photos of herself in a red dress holding a golden fox over her shoulder, dressed casually while hugging an adult elephant during its feeding time, and dressed professionally while petting the nose of a white horse with a halter over its nose. In a photo where she was holding her little dog, Josh noticed her lips to be pretty plump. He took the chance to mention his observation with the insinuation that she cheated a little with botox. Her not so evasive answer was: “I like to look my best.” Josh could not help himself from finding this girl fun to communicate with! And if the photos were any indication, she dressed to kill.

On a daily basis, Isabella began to send photos of her many tourist exploits. The very first image of her journey was the dinner tray displaying the meal served on her first class flight from Miami to Mexico City. When Josh noticed one of the food items was unfamiliar, he asked Isabella about the fruits that resembled small green apples. She identified them as ugli fruit. The next photo she sent was the lobby staircase of her hotel. The “Gran Hotel Ciudad de Mexico” was a 5-star hotel offering views of the principal Zócalo Plaza and the National Palace. The next photo shared was her empty hotel room canopy bed. The following week, when Isabella arrived at her all-inclusive hotel in Cancun, Josh decided to ask how she selected her accommodations? She said she simply chose the most expensive resort or hotel. Must be nice to travel in style without even having a budget to consider!

As of her foreign arrival on December 26th, Josh was now spending two or three hours every evening “conversing’ with Isabella. The pattern was as follows: After dinner Josh would check his Android to find the days photos shared by Isabella; she would appear online shortly afterword and briefly text an explanation of her tourist outing(s) of the day; then she would continue to text non-stop until the battery of Josh’s phone was discharged (or thereabouts). The conversations extended from details of previous travel experiences, to heterosexual relationships, to fast automobiles. For a retired Josh, this routine quickly became an addiction of sorts.

Of course, during this entire experience, Josh was suspicious of Isabella’s true intentions. Isabella simply explained her good financial position as being thanks to investments made by her father in the bitcoin phenomenon at the time of its debut. If this texting was indeed from a legitimate person, no doubt the girl was bright, educated, adventuresome, and motivated. Otherwise, it had to be someone working overboard to pull the wool over Josh’s eyes. Josh and spouse were living exclusively on their monthly social security checks. Isabella (or the imposter) would have a most difficult time trying to cash in on Josh’s limited financial situation.

Mixed in with the general evening texting were the encouraging suggestions of Isabella for Josh to invest in bitcoin himself. Her repeated monetary “advice” continued almost on a nightly basis, even after Josh explained in no uncertain terms that he had no cash on hand to invest. After several sessions of trying to politely decline her offers to coach him in the bitcoin business, Josh finally agreed to register on a website that made dealing in bitcoin possible. Isabella suggested the website, and gave him an optional “invite code” to use during the registration process. She failed to explain the “benefits” of entering this optional code into the system.

While Isabella was intent on promoting this bitcoin thing, at the same time Josh wanted to believe she was looking for more than just a way to take advantage of him somehow. The hours and hours of chats did not seem like a wise investment for a true con-artist, at least not in Josh’s case. He continued his suspicions of the girl’s possible ulterior motives, but he still wanted to think she was not the devil-angel that his friends told him was the most likely scenario. When Josh mentioned his friend’s suspicions to Isabella directly during an evening chat, she simply stated that did not describe her at all. She continued on as if Josh’s friendly “accusation” had absolutely no basis nor justification. She blew it off just like that! During the course of another evening chat, Josh expressed his doubts about Isabella’s sincerity in these words: “To be honest with you, I still don’t know for sure who you are. But I have narrowed it down to between two things, either an extraordinary angel or an extraordinary devil. I hope it is the former, but only time will tell.” Isabella seemed amused by that interpretation and claimed again to be nothing less than genuine.

After Josh completed the online registration process (but without having made any deposit), he could not login to his new account. Perhaps he entered his passcode incorrectly? Isabella said he could recover his account by calling a customer service number. By this time, Josh was getting nervous and not entirely trusting his new “stranger-friend” and he decided to abandon the operation altogether. He told Isabella that since he was a permanent resident of Mexico, perhaps he should invest using Mexican pesos and only with a small initial investment equivalent to $100 USD. So Isabella encouraged Josh to open a personal account at a local commercial Mexican bank where he could convert to foreign currency. Josh said he might just do that.

In the meantime, and again between all the daily chats regarding tourist activities and general chit-chat, Josh agreed to let Isabella coach him one evening on how to open a second bitcoin account. He followed her step by step instructions and successfully completed imputing all the required personal data. Josh really didn’t understand all the ramifications of the bitcoin market and decided to once again postpone making any deposits. After he finished the online process, Isabella seemed extremely pleased and told Josh what a “good student” he was! By this time in his life, Josh already had completed a B.A. degree in Spanish/Political Science as well as three A.A. degrees in other fields. Her “compliment” didn’t phase him.

What had Isabella been seeing all this time? Photos were shared of the central Mexican plaza (Zócalo), an aquarium, art museum, Mayan civilization sculptures, and both inside/outside of the home of artist Frida Khalo (spouse of Diego Rivera). Sometimes Isabella was posing alongside or in front of the subject/object. In fact, Josh asked Isabella’s permission to make a framed poster of her standing out front of Khalo’s residence. Two months later, Josh gave the attractive poster to his Mexican step-daughter for her birthday.

In conjunction with the hours of daily evening chats, Isabella shared private photos. When Josh mentioned living in Alaska four years and never having seen the Aurora Borealis, Isabella posted several photos of landscapes and herself during a winter visit to Denmark. She wore a fur hooded snowsuit and held a snowboard. Josh informed Isabella that he snow skied as a teen during school holidays when he stayed at the family cabin near Lake Tahoe.

When Josh mentioned his travels to Havana, Madrid, Gibraltar, Tangiers, and Great Britain, Isabella shared photos of her trip to Australia. When Josh told the story of having been thrown from a wild horse twice one day and fracturing his left radius and right clavicle, Isabella shared photos of her horseback with the animal standing up on its hind legs (like in a circus performance). Then she explained as a youngster she fell off during an ill-advised night ride and broke both her legs. She admitted to being somewhat of a rebel as a teenager. Isabella described her parent’s efforts to correct her behavior by arranging a transfer to a private high school. When Josh looked the school up, he found the tuition extremely expensive and the mission statement sounded more like a reform school.

When Josh described his hobbies of restoring classic automobiles and amateur drag racing, Isabella sent photos of what she described as one of her “impulse” purchases: namely, a Mercedes-AMG with a retail price tag of over two hundred thousand dollars! She also sent a photo of her second vehicle, a Range Rover, another expensive machine. The funny thing is that Josh interpreted all of this “sharing” on Isabella’s part as less braggadocio and more like just plain stating the facts. Of course, this was all shared while texting, so really difficult to get a grasp on Isabella’s tone, intonation, or intentions.

A few times Isabella used the smart phone voice message feature. She announced her arrival at the archeological site of Chichén Itzá using a short voice clip. That, along with a few other brief vocal messages made it clear she spoke perfect English, but with a definite foreign accent. Being the fact that her best friend Yami was a Ukrainian girl, Josh assumed Isabella was originally from Eastern Europe (he never dared to ask her birthplace). Isabella did explain she was a United States citizen but entered the country with her family as an immigrant. Although she had a hispanic last name, Isabella did not speak Spanish. Josh attempted to teach her to say “the best is yet to come” translated as “lo mejor está por venir”. She made a brief effort but demonstrated little interest in the lesson.

During the beginning of their New Year’s Eve chat session (a Sunday evening), Josh encouraged Isabella (still at the 5-star hotel in Mexico City) to go out and celebrate with other hotel guests. Josh had no other plans, so when she insisted they chat to bring in the new year “together”, he gave up trying to convince her to party. At midnight, they exchanged mutual New Year’s wishes and then Josh implied he was going to sign off for the night. But Isabella disagreed. According to her, Josh was texting from a time zone one hour earlier than Mexico City. She insisted they continue to chat until the New Year arrived in Josh’s time zone! Josh agreed to comply with her wishes and they texted for another hour still.

That same New Year’s Eve, Isabella expressed some sentiment which was truly hard for Josh to swallow. One would think this attractive girl didn’t have any friends to speak of when she asked: “Will you accompany me to complete every wish list?” Taken aback, Josh responded: “I’ll do what I can to help you out which is really little because each of us has to fend for themselves in the end.” Isabella’s final thought: “But my wish needs to be reached by us together. I hope our friendship will last forever.” Now “grandfather” Josh didn’t know what to say! He did not want to offend the girl, but come on, this was getting silly.

When the subject of age did arise, Isabella had divulged her age to be in her late twenties. When she took a stab at trying to guess Josh’s age at 55 (thirteen years shy of his actual age), he had to think long and hard about how to follow up with an honest answer. He decided to say he was now a grandfather and would like to leave it at that. Isabella accepted his imprecise response and the subject of age was never again approached. When Josh shared a video link to a performance of the song “Peace of Mind” from Boston’s debut album of 1976, Isabella agreed it was an excellent song with meaningful lyrics. Of course, if not a true Boston fan, she could have been just playing with Josh’s mind.

The two “stranger-friends” from different generations had established a wonderfully pleasant rapport which was sometimes over the top on the girl’s part. For example, when Isabella said she was now a “fan” of his, Josh felt somewhat uncomfortable because he did not believe he should or could be playing that role. It may or may not have been a factor that he occasionally shared some excepts from the unpublished relationship/memoir book he had authored titled “Pleasure, Turmoil, Despair”. After a ten year period, he still had not found a literary agent to read his work, let alone publish it. One evening Isabella asked Josh what he thought were her shortcomings? Josh said he was not qualified to answer such an inquiry from someone he had never even met before. She seemed disappointed in his response. Josh would ask himself over and over again: “What exactly was this girl looking for anyhow?”

Isabella sent a couple of provocative photos along with the touristy ones. One in particular was her posing on a bed wearing a short black robe not covering her naked slim legs. She was holding her left hand up against her cheek so that her forearm tattoo was plainly visible. The orientation in the frame had her upside down. Josh thought the photo seemed a little too perfect and asked if photoshop was a factor? Isabella said maybe a little bit.

The evening that Isabella stated she had plans to sunbathe in Cancun the following day, Josh asked her specifically to abstain from sharing any beach photos. Well, the next day the first thing Josh found on her daily chat update was a full image of her in a white bikini. It was not a close-up, so Josh grabbed the magnifying glass he kept handy to see what she physically had to offer. She resembled your average, pretty vicenarian girl with a slim figure. When Isabella soon came online, she justified her “disobedience” by asserting that the photo was a rather long shot and, regardless, she planned on deleting it. That same moment, the photo vanished from the chat. Josh blew a sigh of relief because now his spouse would never find this minor indiscretion.

After completing her stay in Cancun, Isabella returned home on a Friday to Florida. That same day she shared a picture of her holding a little dog with her girlfriend Yami alongside. Because she was exhausted, the evening chat session was brief. Saturday Isabella began an early morning chat after breakfast that very quickly turned to the question: “When was Josh going to open the new account at a local Mexican bank?” Josh was alarmed by the sudden pressure to involve herself all over again in his personal finances. This girl was so determined for him to invest in bitcoin, but why? He was convinced the prime time to invest had long passed. Josh felt he could never be sure if Isabella was a friend or a scammer or a member of the Russian Mafia. He had misgivings later, but he decided to block her once and for all. Unfortunately, the many questions Josh still holds about her character will never be answered.