A woman from Kentucky named McKayla, who was catfished by a person pretending to be the Stranger Things actor Dacre Montgomery, opened up about the experience and why she believed it was really him.
In a YouTube series called Catfished, McKayla explained that she first spoke with the person posing as the 28-year-old actor, whom she said is “one of my favorite actors,” in a creative online forum. She added, “I am obsessed with Stranger Things.”
McKayla said that although they “just really hit it off,” she was still “suspicious from the get-go, until he starts doing things that make me believe that he is who he is.”
Some of these things included telling her to watch an episode of Stranger Things season four in which Montgomery’s character Billy has a surprise appearance, and sending her poems modeled after the actor’s poetry collection, DKMH: Poems.
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The scammer further gained her trust as they connected over their partners being “very controlling,” and that was the main reason he claimed they could never meet in person.
Montgomery is currently dating Liv Pollock, while McKayla was married at the time she started talking to the person claiming to be the actor. A couple of months into this interaction, she divorced her husband.
After about a year, they admitted that they had feelings for one another, but the other person asked McKayla to “keep it quiet,” saying that he was still publicly with Pollock even though they “had broken up.” McKayla also sent them around $10,000 after the scammer claimed they had a joint account with Pollock and needed to hide what they bought.
Having given up such a large sum of money, McKayla reconsidered the situation and contacted the YouTube show Catfished for help. After the show’s team convinced her that she was catfished, as suspected, McKayla seemed somewhat sympathetic to the scammer’s situation.
She said: “Trauma does one heck of a thing to someone. So, instead of judging that person on why they’d done that to a total stranger that they had never met, maybe just kind of 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,” McKayla noted. “These scammers, they just kind of come in and they leech off that. It’s a fix.”
While some people heard McKayla’s story and didn’t understand how she could fall victim to this catfish situation, others related to her crush on Montgomery.
“hey I get it, I would do the same if I thought dacre montgomery was giving me one chance,” said someone on Twitter (now known as X).
Another wrote, “I kinda understand her like Dacre Montgomery is so fine he can get whatevea from me.”
“i too would send dacre montgomery $10k if he asked,” joked a third.
The Australian actor has not shared any comments on the Catfished story.
Next: Universal Studios’ New Stranger Things Haunted House Will Transport Fans to the Upside Down
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