- By Hannah Ajala and the Love Janessa podcast team.
- BBC World Service
February 25, 2023
Credit, BBC/Jenny Law
For over a decade, stolen footage from a former adult entertainment star has been used to swindle victims into thousands of dollars. How does it feel to be the ignorant face of so many love thrusts?
This text contains spoilers.
Almost every day, Vanessa receives messages from men who believe they are in a relationship with her some even mistake her for his wife. They are angry, confused and some want their money back which they allegedly sent her to pay for living expenses, hospital bills or to help relatives.
But it’s all a lie. Vanessa doesn’t know these men. Instead, their photos and videos captured from their past lives in adult entertainment have been used as bait in online love scams dating back to the mid2000s. Money was stolen from victims through fake online profiles using their name or picture blackmailed by Vanessa, in a type of scam called catfishing in English.
The news flow of stories of money lost and lives shattered has taken its toll.
“I started getting depressed and blaming myself — maybe these men wouldn’t be scammed if my pictures weren’t out there,” says Vanessa — we don’t use her last name to protect her identity.
For about eight years, Vanessa worked as a “cam girl” she broadcast explicit material live on the Internet via webcam. Being a bit shy at first, she decided to create an alter ego named Janessa Brazil. “Actually, it’s not me, it’s Janessa, so I won’t be ashamed,” she thought.
She chose the surname Brazil not only because she was born there, but also because it is one of the most popular search terms on the internet. It was a wise decision. “I hate that name,” she says now. “But it helped me become popular quickly.”
Everything worked fine for a while. Vanessa enjoyed the relationship with her fans, who paid up to US$20 (approx. R$100) per minute to watch and interact with her. “I wanted to please them. I wanted to have fun with them. And they were hooked,” she says.
At the peak of her career, she says, she was making around $1 million a year. Janessa had her own website, a successful brand and a vibrant online presence. But in 2016, his online profile disappeared.
It took us nine months to find her for the Love, Janessa podcast. When we finally caught up with Vanessa in her humble East Coast apartment, she told us that one of the reasons she stopped producing content online was to stop scammers. “I no longer want to give them the power to ever use anything from me again,” she says.
Vanessa realized the scammers were pretending to be her when a man commented on chat during a live show that he was her husband and that she had promised him to stop filming. She thought it was a prank but asked him to email her.
Other victims came forward with similar stories, posting comments during their concerts and asking them to prove their identity. Scammers have also dreamed up strange requests for them — like putting on a red hat — images they use to trick victims.
The constant comments, emails, and tense atmosphere began to affect their business. “It was a nightmare,” says Vanessa. “But I felt sorry for those guys. What should I do?”
Initially, she tried to reply to every email, which took hours every day. She says her thenhusband, who was also her manager, also started monitoring the news. He told the scam victims that he and Vanessa were not responsible for the money the men lost.
“If I made all the money these guys send to all these scammers, I’d be a billionaire today, I wouldn’t be sitting here in my little apartment,” she says.
Credit, BBC/Jenny Law
Vanessa thinks it’s in the nature of many men to want to take care of women, which explains why they send money to someone they don’t know.
“Even if they don’t have any money, they’re willing to give it away just to feel loved,” she says.
Roberto Marini, an Italian in his 30s, got hooked on a fake Janessa. It all started with a Facebook message from an attractive young woman named Hannah, who complimented his startup company a sustainable farm on the island of Sardinia.
After three months of exchanging photos and loving messages, she started asking for money. At first it was for little things, like a broken phone, but soon she needed more. She told him she had a hard life when she wasn’t caring for sick relatives, she had to make a living from adult entertainment.
Roberto wanted to save her and felt a “father energy” for her. But he was frustrated that they never got to speak to each other in person — every time they set up a call, their phone broke or something else happened.
He then discovered thousands of pictures and videos of Hannah online — except they were from adult entertainment star Janessa Brazil — and many were clearer than the ones Hannah had already sent him.
Their love seemed real, so he wondered if she had decided not to reveal her true identity in order not to complicate their relationship.
Confused, Roberto attended one of Janessa Brazil’s live online concerts. “Is it really you?” he typed into the chat. He wasn’t getting the answers he wanted and he was paying by the minute so he didn’t stay long.
In his search for the truth, Roberto also emailed her, along with many other people he thought might be the real Janessa. During our interview with her, Vanessa searched her inbox and found a message from him among thousands of emails.
“Hi. I need to speak to the real Janessa Brazil,” he wrote in 2016. She replied an hour later, “I’m the real Janessa Brazil.”
He asked a few more questions to find out if they had spoken before. That email exchange was the first and only contact they ever had.
But that wasn’t the end. Roberto remained ensnared by scammers. He says he sent them a total of $250,000 ($1.2 million) over four years, used up their life savings, borrowed money from friends and family, and took out loans.
We found Roberto through his online posts warning others that fake accounts are using Janessa’s stolen pictures. But even after everything that had happened to him, a part of him still believed that he had a deep connection with the real Janessa.
That’s the sign of a successful scam, says Dr. Aunshul Rege, a Philadelphiabased criminal justice expert who has researched online love scams.
She says the messages are often sent by criminal networks working as a team to lure victims by sharing images and information. She even found an example of the manuals they use — handy guides that also list excuses to avoid a call that might embarrass her.
The scams follow a pattern lots of love, threats of separation, and then requests for financial help, ostensibly to help the couple finally get together. The tactics are so formulaic they’re awfully familiar to anyone who’s ever received them, but they work.
“As humans, we are programmed to help one another. That’s how we were built,” says Dr. Rules.
Vanessa claims to hate these cruel tactics. “They show love and then take it away. The guys are desperate and willing to do anything to get him back,” she says.
The doctor. Rege believes it is likely that Roberto’s coup was carried out by an organized group. She says there are large networks around the world, with a significant number hailing from Turkey, China, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, Nigeria and Ghana.
One of the places Roberto was asked to send money to was Ghana, home to a group of online scammers called the Sakawa Boys. We tracked down some of them in Accra. “Ofa,” a softspoken young man, told us that impersonating someone else online was timeconsuming and administrative—if only to keep track of the lies. He admitted the job made him “felt guilty” but earned more than R$50,000 (R$260,000).
Credit, BBC/Jenny Law
Upon seeing Janessa’s pictures, Ofa said he had never used them but understood why they were popular with scammers. He also said that for a scam to work, he would need a variety of photos showing the women in everyday situations like cooking or at the gym.
Vanessa believes her photos were used in part because she shared so many candid moments from her daily life. “I gave myself completely, so they had a lot to do,” she says.
But she draws a clear line between her professional alter ego and her true self. “Vanessa has panic attacks. Not Janessa,” she says.
Eventually, the unstoppable tide of cheating victims turned into “a monster” that traumatized Vanessa.
Having to appear in front of the camera every day took a toll on her mental health and marriage. Exhausted, Vanessa said she started drinking before shows. She says she hates watching videos from the period because she can see her own dissatisfaction.
In 2016, she said she couldn’t take it anymore and decided to give up. She says she packed her car, left home and her husband, and started a new life. Now studying to be a therapist and writing her memoirs, she’s regaining control of her own story.
Vanessa has never gone to the authorities to report scammers using her picture. She doesn’t think they would take her complaints seriously. “They look at me like ‘You’re a porn star’ and laugh in my face,” she says.
Over the years it has become more resilient. She knows scammers will never stop impersonating her, but she understands why some victims fall into the trap.
“When it comes to love, we can be so stupid,” she says. “I know I was there. It’s like ‘Damn! I’m smarter than that!’ That’s how it is for all of us.”
Reporting by Hannah Ajala, Laura Regehr, Katrina Onstad and Simona Rata