The world can frequently be a tricky place to navigate. Not everyone we come into contact with is on the up-and-up, and we have to keep our eyes open for a number of nefarious individuals intent on doing harm. It’s still possible to fall prey to things like scams even when you’re trying to be careful, however, and a Stranger Things fan has come out to say that she was catfished by someone pretending to be Dacre Montgomery (who played Billy on the hit), and a divorce was even involved.
How Was A Stranger Things Fan Catfished By Someone Pretending To Be Dacre Montgomery?
A single mom named McKala who lives in Kentucky recently opened up to Social Catfish about her experience meeting someone online, whom she eventually began dating, who told her that he was none other than the actor who portrayed Max’s bullying step-brother Billy, Dacre Montgomery. According to McKala, it was a few years ago when she joined an online community for those interested in the arts (she’s a filmmaker/actor) and quickly hit it off with another user, who eventually said he was Montgomery.
I don’t know about you, but to me, all of this already totally sounds like something messed up Billy Hargrove would do, especially with his crazy backstory. He may not have turned to scamming innocents had he not met an untimely and brutal demise in Stranger Things Season 3, but the jerk we first met was well on his way to catfish-town.
At the time this started, McKala (who says she’s “obsessed with Stranger Things”) was married, and she knew the real Montgomery was involved in a relationship as well. But, their conversations still went from being about artistic pursuits to bonding over their controlling significant others.
McKala admits that she had doubts that she was messaging the actual actor, but little details he provided that seemed to check out made her second guess that instinct, and when “Dacre” issued an ultimatum after several months and told her they could only work as a couple if she divorced her husband, she agreed. As noted, she already felt that her husband was controlling and “not letting me be me,” so she told him to leave.
She then told “Dacre” that he had to do the same with his girlfriend, which he agreed to, however, he also claimed that his money was still tied up with his soon-to-be ex, and that her own controlling nature kept him far away from access to his money. This led McKala further into the scam, as she agreed to help him. She would buy gift cards and send them to him so he could sell them to have “pocket money.” “Dacre” would also send her money in the form of gift cards and checks, and she would then deposit the money into her account, and send him the cash as Bitcoin.
In the end, McKala realized that she’d sent “Dacre” around $10,000, which is when she asked Social Catfish to do some research and see whether or not she was dealing with the actual actor, and, of course, she was not. As for people who judge those who get taken in by romance scams like this, McKala said:
Love makes you do crazy, stupid, irrational things. I promise. And trauma does one heck of a thing to a person. So, instead of judging that person on why they’ve done that with a total stranger that they’ve never met, maybe just look and see if that person’s ever been traumatized by something. If you’re someone like me, you’re afraid of abandonment, and you’re a real big people-pleaser, and you’re very co-dependent. These scammers come in and they leech off that. [Hearing from the scammer is] a dopamine fix.
In the end, McKala said she has "hope the money went to help someone” and is glad that there’s no longer “wiggle room” in her mind that she could have been talking to the real Montgomery.
