He didn't want a room full of crying people, so he pulled off the ultimate funeral prank
In October 2019, Shay Bradley, a 62-year-old Irish Defence Force veteran, loving father, and grandfather, was battling a long-term illness and knew his time was short. He and his son secretly recorded a hilarious audio track. As his coffin was lowered into the ground in South County Dublin, Ireland, a hidden speaker suddenly started playing the recording.
Shoutout to the folks who do that little awkward jog when a car stops to let them cross. You’re not actually going any faster, but the effort is adorable. I see you. I respect you.
My grandma has been catfishing scammers for six months and she's weirdly good at it.
Okay so my grandma is 74 and lives alone since my grandpa died. We got her an iPad last year so she could FaceTime with the grandkids and she's become dangerously online.
She got one of those typical scam messages like two months ago. The "Hey beautiful, I'm a soldier stationed overseas, let's get to know each other" type thing. We've all told her about these scams.
But instead of blocking him, she decided to "play along and waste his time so he can't scam real victims."
Her words.
So she's been talking to "Raymond," who claims to be a 58 year-old Army medic stationed in Syria (red flag central). But my grandma has created an entire fake persona. She told him her name is Carolyn (it's Janet), she's 62 (she's 74), and she owns a "successful cupcake business" (she's retired from accounting and once burned brownies so bad we had to replace the pan).
She sends him stock photos of cupcakes from Google Images. He sends her clearly stolen photos of some random handsome dude in fatigues.
Here's where it gets weird: she's actually doing research. She watches YouTube videos about common scam tactics. She's in a Facebook group about scambaiting. She has a NOTEBOOK where she tracks details of their conversations so she doesn't slip up.
"Raymond" recently tried to move to the "I need money for a phone to call you" phase and my grandma strung him along for THREE WEEKS with excuses. "Oh the bank was closed." "My account is frozen, something about taxes." "I sent it but maybe it went to the wrong place?"
She's never sent him a cent, obviously. She's just wasting his time.
The family is divided on this. My mom thinks it's hilarious. My aunt thinks grandma's losing it and this is early dementia (it's not, she's sharp as ever). My uncle thinks she's going to accidentally get doxxed.
But grandma is having the time of her life. She's started messing with two other scammers. One thinks she's a wealthy widow in Miami. Another thinks she's a former pageant queen.
She showed me her notebook last week and it's incredibly detailed. Different backstories, different names, relationship timelines. She's put more effort into this than I put into my actual job.
I asked her why she doesn't just block them and she said, "Every minute they're talking to me is a minute they're not stealing some poor lonely person's retirement money."
Which is kind of sweet? In a chaotic way?
Anyway "Raymond" is getting frustrated because she won't send money and keeps changing the subject to cupcake recipes. I think he's about to give up.
Grandma's already got her eye on a new scammer who claims to be a widowed oil rig worker. She's workshopping a new persona. Thinking about being a "former Vegas showgirl."
I've stopped trying to talk her out of it. This is her retirement hobby now.