Love, Janessa | Episode 4: Helen of Troy

Summary

Summary of "Love, Janessa | Episode 4: Helen of Troy"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Con: Kaitlyn's Baby
• Host/Author: CBC + BBC World Service
• Description: Kaitlyn Braun, a pregnant young woman in crisis, takes dozens of birth workers through an escalating series of disasters – rape, baby loss, and even a coma. One by one, the doulas struggle to support her and grieve with her, and even save her life as they’re led down a distressing path. And then the truth comes out. This six-part true crime series, narrated by Sarah Treleaven, delves into the complexities of Kaitlyn's deception, raising intricate moral and ethical questions.

Episode Details:

• Episode Title: Love, Janessa | Episode 4: Helen of Troy
• Release Date: February 13, 2023
• Content Warnings: This episode contains references to medical emergencies, baby loss, sexual assault, and strong language.

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1. Introduction to "Love, Janessa"

Hannah Ajala, the host, introduces her ongoing investigation into the enigmatic figure Janessa Brazile, whose image has become a linchpin in global catfishing schemes. The episode begins with Hannah's attempts to verify Janessa's identity through various channels, highlighting the obscurity and mystery surrounding her.

Notable Quote:

• Hannah Ajala [00:37]: "I'm Hannah and I'm working on a podcast about catfishing... I've made a lot of calls like this, cold calls that went nowhere."

2. The Quest to Find Janessa

Hannah narrates her exhaustive search for Janessa, detailing unsuccessful attempts to contact her through old voter registration rolls, social media, and even unconventional platforms like Pornhub. This segment underscores the challenges in tracing individuals whose digital footprints have vanished.

Notable Quote:

• Hannah Ajala [01:55]: "Her social media felt like an abandoned amusement park."

3. The Role of Janessa's Image in Scams

The episode delves into how Janessa's likeness is exploited by scammers worldwide. A pivotal moment occurs when Hannah's producer shares a clip from Bubba Clem's radio show, revealing Janessa's apparent awareness of her image being used fraudulently.

Notable Quote:

• Hannah Ajala [08:04]: "Janessa was aware that her image was being used by scammers around the world."

4. Case Study: Canadian Romance Scam Investigation

John Armet from the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre provides an in-depth look into a specific case where a victim was duped into sending approximately $150,000 through a romance scam involving a fake military persona purportedly associated with Janessa. This segment highlights the operational mechanics of such scams and the substantial financial losses incurred by victims.

Notable Quote:

• John Armet [11:01]: "Bank transfer fraud linked to romance scams was up 20% in 2020 in the UK."

5. Global Perspective: Ghana and Organized Romance Scams

The discussion shifts to the international landscape of romance scams, with a focus on Ghana's role as a central hub. Philemon, a cybersecurity investigator, elucidates the cultural and historical factors that contribute to the proliferation of these scams, including societal attitudes towards cybercrime and perceived justifications rooted in colonialism.

Notable Quote:

• Philemon [20:10]: "Cybercrime wasn't really something that people even care about within the country."

6. Challenges in Prosecuting Cybercrime

The episode examines the legal hurdles in addressing international fraud, such as jurisdictional complexities, lengthy court processes, and the low reporting rates of romance scams. John Armet emphasizes the difficulty victims face in seeking restitution, often leaving them without recourse.

Notable Quote:

• Hannah Ajala [19:17]: "International justice usually plays out pretty badly for victims and pretty nicely for scammers."

7. Perspectives on Janessa's Involvement

A critical exploration emerges regarding Janessa Brazile's possible complicity or victimization in the scams. Hannah contemplates whether Janessa is an unwitting pawn or an active participant benefiting from the misuse of her image, raising questions about her true role in these fraudulent activities.

Notable Quote:

• Hannah Ajala [26:46]: "Who could blame her if she tried to get some of that money herself?"

8. Interaction with Bubba Clem

In a compelling turn, Hannah connects with Bubba Clem, the host of a Tampa-based radio show where Janessa is featured as a co-host. Bubba provides insights into Janessa's life, their on-air dynamic, and hints at her possible awareness of the fraudulence surrounding her image.

Notable Quote:

• Bubba Clem [25:03]: "She has been the face of many scams. My first thought was that she's gotta be involved."

9. Conclusion and Future Directions

The episode concludes with Hannah reflecting on the complexities of her investigation, the elusive nature of Janessa Brazile, and the broader implications of digital identity misuse. The narrative suggests ongoing efforts to uncover the truth behind Janessa's involvement and the systemic challenges in combating such sophisticated scams.

Notable Quote:

• Hannah Ajala [27:56]: "Does anything come to mind for you?" [Addressing Tom Harrington about next steps]

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Key Takeaways:

• Janessa Brazile's Enigmatic Role: Janessa's image plays a central role in global catfishing schemes, but her true involvement remains ambiguous.
• Operational Mechanics of Scams: Romance scams are sophisticated operations often involving multiple perpetrators across different countries.
• Legal and Cultural Hurdles: Jurisdictional challenges and cultural factors, especially in countries like Ghana, exacerbate the difficulty in prosecuting cybercrimes.
• Victim's Plight: Victims of these scams face significant financial losses with minimal legal recourse, often leaving them without justice.
• Investigative Efforts: Journalistic endeavors, like Hannah's podcast, seek to unravel the complexities of these scams and the individuals involved.

Conclusion: "Love, Janessa | Episode 4: Helen of Troy" offers a profound exploration into the murky world of catfishing scams, the exploitation of individual identities, and the intricate web of organized fraud. Through meticulous investigation and compelling narratives, the episode sheds light on the human and systemic challenges in combating such pervasive deceit.

Transcript

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Well, it's Safe to say 2025 is off to an interesting start.

[Tom Harrington]

I'll say. And if you're trying to sort through what's real and what's relevant from a Canadian perspective, we're here for you.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Your World Tonight is more than just a recap of daily news. Our team goes deeper on the stories that speak to the moment to give you the full picture.

[Susan Bonner]

I'm Susan Bonner.

[Tom Harrington]

I'm Tom Harrington.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

And I'm Stephanie Skanderas. Together we bring you the day's news, context and analysis, all in about 25 minutes.

[Tom Harrington]

Your World Tonight from CBC News. Find and follow us wherever you get your podcasts, a BBC World Service and CBC Podcast production.

[Hannah Ajala]

Before we start, please note this series contains adult themes and strong language. So, yeah, my name is Hannah and I'm a journalist and I guess I wanted to ask obvious question in regards to what I'm working on. Do you know Janessa Brazile? The answer from the woman on the other end of the line is no. Right. Okay. I mean, the reason why we ask is that I'm actually working on a podcast about catfishing. That's me calling a neighbor of Janessa Brazile's in a city in Florida. My producer found Janessa's address on an old voter registration roll. I've made a lot of calls like this, cold calls that went nowhere. There's loads and loads of images around her everywhere. So you've never met a Janessa before? We traced old addresses, phone numbers.

[Susan Bonner]

We did not receive the complete number.

[Hannah Ajala]

This is the number you wish to.

[Susan Bonner]

Call area code first. Please hang up and try your call again.

[Hannah Ajala]

I subscribed to pornhub to find her. I messaged a guy on Facebook multiple times who seemed to be Janessa's ex husband. I called a store in Rio de Janeiro where I was told her father might have worked. Hi. Voce pala Ingles? No, I think she's finding out if someone speaks English that can speak to me. Senora Alguem. Fala Ingles. I wanted someone to tell me why Janessa seemed to go dark around 2016. Before that, she had left a vibrant digital footprint. In 2011, she was photographed flanked by several tank top wearing adult entertainment stars at the launch of a new tequila brand in 2013, she promoted swimwear for a label specializing in Brazilian cheeky bikinis. But fresh Janessa posts seemed to drop off. A few years later, her feeds, her video stream channels, all had become dusty, untended places. Her social media felt like an abandoned amusement park. But then My producer sent me a link.

[Bubba Clem]

Janessa, say hi to Nicole.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Hi, Nicole. Hi, Janessa.

[Hannah Ajala]

And suddenly she seemed very much alive. From CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service, my name is Hannah Ajala and this is Love Janessa. The story of my wild quest to find the woman whose face and body is the bait used in catfishing schemes around the world. Episode four, Helen of Troy.

[Bubba Clem]

Hello, is this Nicole?

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Yes, it is.

[Hannah Ajala]

This is a clip from an episode of a radio show from 2019.

[Bubba Clem]

Hi, this is Bubba. We're live.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Oh, wow.

[Bubba Clem]

You emailed me and told me to call you.

[Hannah Ajala]

The host is of the shock jock variety. He calls himself Bubba the Love Sponge. Bubba used to host a show produced by Howard Stern, the popular American radio and TV personality. Bubba's style feels very stern esque, loud, cheerfully abrasive, filled with sex talk. He films all of his broadcasts. At one point in today's episode, the camera zooms in on a baby goat that's walking around getting laughs for rubbing on people's legs. So it's not your average recording studio. Bubba is a big guy with a big microphone, wearing a fraternity T shirt and headphones. And some days he has a sidekick.

[Bubba Clem]

And I have the person. You know, Janessa is part of my show. She's a co host. Janessa, say hi to Nicole.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Hi, Nicole. Hi, Janessa.

[Bubba Clem]

Now, now, Nicole, that's the real Janessa. And I think, you know, I mean.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Like, I know she is.

[Hannah Ajala]

It does look like Janessa Brazile. She sits in front of a microphone wearing a white jean jacket, elegantly made up. Her brows are thin and arched high. A questioning look.

[Bubba Clem]

Yeah, Nicole, no. Where do you live, Nicole? Like, just.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

I'm in Montreal.

[Bubba Clem]

You're in Montreal. Okay. And you know, we're a radio show that's based out of Tampa, Florida.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Of course I know you.

[Hannah Ajala]

Nicole got in touch because after 25 years, her marriage is on the rocks. Her husband has become obsessed with a woman he. He met online.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

I don't know how he found this person, but it was all of Janessa's photos. And this person was posing. Her name was Natasha Bellove, a nurse. And he fell for it, of course, because of all the, you know, the beautiful, sexy photos of Janessa.

[Bubba Clem]

You sound like a pretty hot commodity. Why would your husband be going over some Internet bitch for you that he's never met? So he stumbled upon some chick that's portraying herself as Janessa using Janessa's.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

It's probably a dude, too. A lot of. I think it's a guy.

[Bubba Clem]

Now, is he Asking for money.

[Hannah Ajala]

For over a year, Nicole's husband has been sending this woman money.

[Bubba Clem]

How much?

[Stephanie Skanderas]

I think he sent her close to $5,000.

[Tom Harrington]

Oh, my gosh.

[Hannah Ajala]

And it's probably a lot more than that.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Yeah, yeah.

[Bubba Clem]

That's probably what you. That's probably what you know.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Yeah. Because she was claiming to be sick and, you know, and helping her grandmother. So I sat down, I said, listen, I go, I'm going to do everything I can to track down. Because I knew your name was Janessa, to track her down, to prove to you that the person you're speaking with is not even, probably, like you said, a woman.

[Bubba Clem]

No, it's probably a man.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

It's probably usually a man.

[Bubba Clem]

Some guy. Some guy from Ganya or something like that.

[Hannah Ajala]

Part of their co hosting shtick is that Janessa and Bubba are platonic roommates. They post their roomy shenanigans online. You can see videos of Janessa working out. Sometimes she mows the lawn in front of their house in a bikini. Bubba makes raunchy but affectionate jokes. They laugh a lot. They genuinely seem like friends. And on this episode, Bubba jokes that Janessa should get in league with the scammers and spread the wealth.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

This is like, hey, I'm gonna start.

[Bubba Clem]

Doing this for real. I'm gonna make Janessa make phone calls from 6 until 7 at the house every day to pay for half the rent. And be like, hey, listen, honey, you know, you gotta work the phones when we go.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Can you imagine if I got all the money that these people send out to these stakes of Janessa? I'd be a million.

[Hannah Ajala]

This moment kind of blew my mind. It meant that Janessa was aware that her image was being used by scammers or all around the world, that she knows they're getting rich off of this entity, this floating digital being called Janessa Brazil. But the flesh and blood Janessa, according to her, she's not getting rich at all. And there doesn't seem to be anything she can do to stop it. So at this point, you probably have the same question I do. Why doesn't anyone do anything about this? Calling a radio show to vent about your husband being scammed doesn't feel like the pursuit of justice. It's a common thread in many of these stories. Very few people who have been scammed try to get their money back. The ones who do are rarely successful. So I want to know what legal recourse is there for someone who believes they've been targeted and defrauded?

[Tom Harrington]

On Mother's Day 1985.

[Susan Bonner]

Philadelphia did something unthinkable.

[Tom Harrington]

The city had been engaged in a standoff with a radical organization called move.

[Susan Bonner]

The helicopter takes off. Then the city dropped a bomb on.

[Tom Harrington]

Move's headquarters, killing 11 people, five of them children.

[Hannah Ajala]

My daughters were taken away by this government.

[Tom Harrington]

Why is it so many have never.

[Hannah Ajala]

Heard of the MOVE bombing?

[Susan Bonner]

Black people will never get justice in America.

[Tom Harrington]

The Africas versus America available now everywhere you get your podcasts.

[Susan Bonner]

Why are humans so smart and yet so stupid?

[Bubba Clem]

Is black plastic bad for me or not?

[Susan Bonner]

Can the United States actually take over Canada? We look at these and all kinds of other big questions on the Current, our award winning podcast that brings you stories and conversations to expand your worldview. My name is Matt Galloway.

[Bubba Clem]

We're going to look for solutions to wicked problems. We will actually listen to each other.

[Susan Bonner]

And we'll make time to find the delight that exists in our world. You can find the Current wherever you get your podcasts, we'll talk to you soon.

[Tom Harrington]

I have these two feral cats that live in my backyard that I feed Garfield and Potato and they wait for me in the morning by the back door to feed them. They were eating so much I had to go to get like the monster sized bag. I have a lounge chair out there. They're out there.

[Hannah Ajala]

This is John Armet. I can hear him talking to my producer while I'm getting my tech set up. Hi John. So sorry, Technology. How are you?

[Tom Harrington]

I'm wonderful. And you're in Lagos. I've always wanted to go there.

[Hannah Ajala]

John's based in Ottawa. A feral cat lover and world traveler. He has a soft, nice guy energy, but his job is intense. John is an investigator for the Canadian Anti Fraud Centre.

[Tom Harrington]

We are the central repository for data for intelligence and resource materials that relate to fraud. We at the Anti Fraud center, we do not conduct investigations, but rather we provide valuable assistance to our law enforcement partners. And we work really closely with Europol and Interpol as well. So by sharing our information worldwide, we can actually make some traction on this.

[Hannah Ajala]

Around the world. The fraud business is booming. Covid helped. A lot of people were stuck at home in front of their computers looking for a little companionship. According to UK Finance, a financial services trade association, bank transfer fraud linked to romance scams was up 20% in 2020 from the year before in the UK and in the United States, reports of romance scams hit a record high in 2021. According to the Federal Trade Commission, victims lost almost twice the amount of money than the year before, $547 million.

[Tom Harrington]

And the other aspect of it is romance fraud are the lowest reported frauds versus the highest amount of losses per victim, which is staggering. I've seen on average $150,000 in losses per victim, which is just devastating. And a lot of people seem to think like these fraudsters are just maybe these overweight people in their grandparents basement committing these scams, when really it's a massive organized crime group that are making tons of money. Whether it be organized crime or countries in corruption receiving the funds to maybe look the other way.

[Hannah Ajala]

Did any of your work look at how Ghana has become quite a central hub for romance scams?

[Tom Harrington]

Some of the investigations have in fact led to Ghana. And I don't want to make it seem like Africa is the main hub around the world. Like for instance, Jamaica, they have the prize and lottery scams that they've been involved in. And we have our fair share of fraudsters in Canada. And there's a lot of organized crime groups within Canada that are not only targeting Canadians, but also victims around the world as well.

[Hannah Ajala]

I asked John to walk me through a typical story, a real world example of what happens when victims turn to the legal system for help.

[Tom Harrington]

There is one particular case in Canada here where the victim was hit up by these scammers on a large social media platform. They started a dialogue. She was a widow, she was looking for companionship and this fraudster filled that void. So in this particular case, the person she thought was her new romantic interest was purporting to be a US soldier who is in Afghanistan when the Afghanistan conflict was.

[Hannah Ajala]

Scammers love to use images of military personnel as bait. Makes sense. An officer has a built in excuse to not reveal too much detail about their whereabouts or background. They can vanish for chunks of time and explain it away as a top secret mission. And who doesn't love a man in uniform.

[Tom Harrington]

And so as the relationship evolved, he would make up excuses of why he couldn't come to Canada. And you know, over the course of their time together, which was only a few months, she provided $150,000 in various methods, whether it be gift cards, wire transfers, sending cash in the mail. So the victim finally had had enough and had friends convince her to go to the police. So our investigation began and we end up identifying that there was a money mule in Canada that was the intermediary between sending the money to Nigeria.

[Hannah Ajala]

A money mule is someone who transfers illegal money from one person to another, helping to launder it. These webs are huge, intricate. Many different criminals are involved in a single scam. Each taking slices of the same pie. Sometimes the mule is working in tandem with the scammer, but sometimes they're also being scammed. The mule may not even know they're a mule. They think they're just receiving a nice cash present from a new loving dress they met online. The woman works closely with police on a sting. The money mule. The man who allegedly had been the intermediary between the woman and her beloved fake military boyfriend agreed to come by her house.

[Tom Harrington]

And we end up arresting the individual as he was trying to get an extra $60,000 from the victim.

[Hannah Ajala]

When he showed up, officers quickly intercepted. John says he didn't resist arrest.

[Tom Harrington]

So as a result, we were able to seize some devices and technology from the individual and we wrote search warrants and we were able to access that data. And the data was really surprising even for me to see of how many frauds this suspect was involved with. And it turns out that this individual and his brother had immigrated to Canada and they were not only targeting Canadians, but they were targeting Americans as well. This person was involved with identity thefts, actually stealing people's wallets at malls, involved in the SIM card swap. So he had individuals that were compromised working for financial institutions and telecommunication companies. So the far reach of this one individual was quite incredible.

[Hannah Ajala]

But even with all that evidence, the matter is still before the courts. It's been three years since charges were laid.

[Tom Harrington]

The other challenges is the court process. We know a lot of our prosecutors don't have a lot of experience in cyber fraud and fraud investigations. And as we know with the court systems around the world, that it could take two to three years before these matters get before a jury or a trial.

[Hannah Ajala]

Every once in a while, a case does get legal traction.

[Susan Bonner]

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation says it has busted a Ghana based criminal enterprise with the arrest of six of its ringed leaders in the US on.

[Hannah Ajala]

Charges of laundering more than $50 million. This clip is from a Ghanaian TV station called Joy News. According to the FBI, the scams include.

[Susan Bonner]

Romance scams targeting the elderly, business, email compromised scams, and even fraudulent COVID 19 relief loans.

[Hannah Ajala]

The FBI's William those six men are part of a group the FBI labeled the enterprise criminals whose elaborate schemes zigzagged across the US and Africa in the 2000 and tens. They snagged victims using dating sites and text messaging, laundering money through dozens of American bank accounts. After years of investigation, a woman named Deborah Mensah was extradited to the US from Ghana in 2020 and convicted as one of the enterprise's co conspirators. She was ordered to pay over $1.5 million in restitution. We've not been able to confirm whether the money has been collected or distributed to the victims yet. We do know that Mensah was sentenced to nearly six years in a New York prison where she sits today. An outcome like this is extremely rare. That Canadian woman who thought she was in love with a military man. The thousands of dollars she allegedly lost were likely laundered far from Canada as soon as the money left her account. Even if her case goes before a judge one day, she'll likely never see a penny.

[Tom Harrington]

Like we tell people, the criminal court system is not set up to try and get your money back. Right. Like, if there's assets that we can seize and that kind of stuff, that's one thing. But if they've gotten rid of all the money and these queues have no money, you can't get blood from the stone sort of thing.

[Hannah Ajala]

So our big hyper connected new world works very nicely for scammers. If a scammer is in Quebec or Nigeria and a scammy is in Sardinia or Texas and the mules are doing their mewling in between, that's a lot of different justice systems. Unsynced, physically far apart. I wondered if crackdowns were more successful on a local level.

[Philemon]

I've been doing this job in terms of cyber security and cybercrime investigation for the past 10 years now.

[Hannah Ajala]

When I was in Ghana, I sat down with Philemon heads up that we were speaking in a car during a rainstorm. So it's a little noisy. Philemon's part of a private digital forensics agency that works with local law enforcement. His job is different than it was a decade ago.

[Philemon]

At the time, you realize that cybercrime wasn't really, really something that people even care about within the country. It wasn't the kind of crime that you find, let's say law enforcement changing people to arrest and prosecute them because it was quite new.

[Hannah Ajala]

And it could seem like criminals had a social cache in Ghanaian society that shielded them from prosecution.

[Philemon]

When somebody is a cyber criminal and they are enjoying their proceeds from this crime, they tend to donate to society. You know, they are kind of respected. So the laws wasn't really punitive, it wasn't really enforced. So people just do things without being punished.

[Hannah Ajala]

I wondered if part of the reason Saqawa boys had this slightly elevated status in some people's eyes had to do with Ghana's history. I'd heard there are Scammers who justify their illegal actions because of colonialism. When I was in Accra, I met up with another Saqqawa boy named Romanus. There's an argument that romance scams are a form of reparations for slavery. People see it as a way of taking back what was stolen from them.

[Philemon]

100% true. Yeah. Because back in the days, we were not there, but we had the white skin for our gold, more of our properties, took it to their side, and then built something for themselves. So, yeah, I can see it's kind of a payback.

[Hannah Ajala]

A kind of payback. Whatever the scammers perceived justification is for these crimes, the end result is usually the same. No repercussions for the criminals involved. But why is it that most cases don't lead to a prosecution? I asked Philemon why most cybercrime investigations fail to lead to a prosecution.

[Philemon]

The only challenges that we have currently is the complainants. When there is a case, getting the complainant to come to court is difficult.

[Hannah Ajala]

Why don't they want to come forward?

[Philemon]

The person making the complaint have to also make sure that you are willing to support the investigations. Okay. You are willing to also testify, but if you are not, it's difficult. And most of the time, the victims are outside the country. So getting a plane ticket, coming here, you know, they don't see it as worth it, so they don't come.

[Hannah Ajala]

So international justice usually plays out pretty badly for victims and pretty nicely for scammers. But there's a third party in the romance scam chain. The bait. So I wanted to know if Janessa Brazile had ever sued anyone for using her name and image. Simon, the journalist from episode one, believed he'd uncovered Janessa's true identity and that her real name was was Vanessa. When Simon thought he'd tracked down Vanessa, he tried to warn her about how her pictures were being used.

[Tom Harrington]

And she basically said, thank you for alerting me to this. I'm well aware of it. This scam has been so enormous that I'm absolutely unable to work at the moment, and it's made my life a misery. I've been subject to court proceedings in Florida. I even had one man who claimed that he'd given me $2 million that I'd embezzled from him. And I was taken to court. My assets have been frozen. I'm not allowed to post anything in public online. And I'm basically struggling to try and clear my name so I can get back to work again.

[Hannah Ajala]

Of course, we don't know if Simon had actually been corresponding with the real Janessa Brazil. But we were curious about the idea of court proceedings involving her. We couldn't find any traces of her name in the courts, but then we found that video from 2019 of Janessa Co hosting Bubba's show.

[Bubba Clem]

You gotta work the phones.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Can you imagine if I got all the money that these people send out to these fake Janessas? I'd be a millionaire.

[Bubba Clem]

There's probably millions of dol.

[Hannah Ajala]

Bubba's show is recorded in Tampa and in Florida. My producers know a guy who specializes in finding people, Bob Norman. Bob's a journalist based in south Florida. He works closely with a private investigator to find people in a place where a lot of people go to not be found.

[Tom Harrington]

There is a culture of con in Florida. There's no question about it. There's a lot of grifting going on in Florida.

[Hannah Ajala]

Maybe he's been down there too long. But Bob's take on Janessa was immediately skeptical.

[Tom Harrington]

You know, when you look at her, I think it seems that suspicions arise over and over. And as you say, she's been the face of many scams. My first thought was that she's gotta be involved. I mean, that was my first thought. Either that or she's the most unlucky person to be wrapped up in this all the time. It's natural to have suspicion. Is that fair? Probably not. Is it worth pursuing? Absolutely.

[Hannah Ajala]

I have to admit that I felt sort of protective of Janessa when he said that. Making this podcast, it feels like I've spent a lot of time with her. Even though we've never met, I realized I'd come to think of her as someone who'd been exploited. The Roberto version of Janessa. Was I, too, getting caught up in a fantasy of rescuing her? As Bob talked, I also wondered if I was a bit naive about who was pulling the levers on the Janessa Brazil scheme. After all, she was in a perfect position to make a lot of money off her image. And would that even be such a terrible thing? It was her image, after all. As she said on Bubba's show, millions of dollars have been sent to the fake Janessas around the world, and she hasn't seen a penny. Who could blame her if she tried to get some of that money herself? Do you see Janessa Brizzeau as the victim, that she could very much so be the innocent person whose images have resurfaced the Internet thousands of times?

[Tom Harrington]

I mean, your image is not yours once it's out there. But, I mean, if it. Why would they use her face? What is she, a modern day Helen of Troy or something? You know, or she's a siren from Ulysses. She draws them in like. Is that what it is? Is she just got a face that somehow is more effective than other faces? I don't know. Perplexing is a word that comes to mind. It's perplexing.

[Hannah Ajala]

The best way to get to the bottom of this would be to speak to her myself. But first I'd need to. If, let's say, she does fall under the category of someone who doesn't want to be found, how easy would it be for someone to disappear in the.

[Tom Harrington]

US it's not easy at all. It's almost impossible.

[Hannah Ajala]

I guess we're kind of in that mindset limbo of trying to think of another angle or another approach that we may not have thought of. Does anything come to mind for you?

[Tom Harrington]

Well, I mean, there's obvious, I think, ideas that come to mind. One is, and I think you all are following that, trying to find other people that are close to her and trying to find another way into her graces or confidence in some way.

[Hannah Ajala]

We know one person who's close to her.

[Bubba Clem]

Janessa is part of my show. She's a co host. Janessa, say hi to Nicole.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Hi, Nicole.

[Hannah Ajala]

Bubba the radio host from Tampa, Florida. His full now legal name is Bubba the Love Sponge. Clem, by the way.

[Bubba Clem]

B U B B A T H E L O V E S P O N G E. Then you have to put the little registered trademark, the R, the circle R because it's a federally registered trademark name. And then the last name is Clem.

[Hannah Ajala]

So I set my hunts for Janessa aside to see if I can get Bubba to talk to me. I try Twitter, I tried Twitch, I try his agent. I also try reaching him at a racetrack he owns in Ocala, Florida.

[Susan Bonner]

Please check Bubba RacewayPark.com for times and pricing.

[Stephanie Skanderas]

Thanks so much and we hope to.

[Susan Bonner]

See you here at the restaurant. At the tone, please record your message.

[Hannah Ajala]

Hi, my name is Hannah Ajala. I am a BBC journalist hoping to speak to Todd, AKA Bubba the Love Sponge. I can be reachable via email. And then one day, Bubba's name pops up in my inbox. Yes, I'm available for your podcast. Tell me what next time on Love Janessa.

[Bubba Clem]

I met Janessa in New York at Howard Stern Studios and I just thought that, oh my God, she's so stunning. I hope I can add some insight for you guys.

[Hannah Ajala]

Love Janessa is produced by Antica Productions. And telltale Industries for the BBC World Service and CBC Podcasts. I'm Hannah Ajala. Our producers are Katrina Onstad and Laura Regue. Associate producers are Hailey Choi and Simona Rata. Sound design and audio mix by Philip Wilson with help from Cameron McIver. Executive producers are Stuart Cox and Jago Lee at CBC Podcasts. Emily Canal is coordinating producer, Chris Oak is executive producer and Arif Nurani is the director at the BBC World Service. Anne Dixie is senior podcast producer and John Mennell is the podcast commissioning editor. Thanks for listening.

[Susan Bonner]

A BBC World Service and CBC Podcast production.