Oh, Crazy Kari!

I think I'm supposed to be working right now or something, but the blinking messages can wait.

I would like you to turn your attention to the following two articles: The Hipster Grifter, and Kari Ferrell: Criminally Hipster. (Update: Also: Hipster Grifter Victims Speak Out) (Update, Again: Hipster Grifter Writes a Well-Wisher, "Yes, I've Made Mistakes" The "Well Wisher" - Derek Erdman) (Update Once More: Meet Kari's Bail Bond Agent)

As some of you may know, because the story is almost always too good and crazy not to tell, this same Kari Ferrell infiltrated my group of friends last summer with her slippery (and in the end, totally outrageous) lies and tricks, and though my dear friend Richard Lawson has mostly laid out our experiences with her, I have a few things to add.

I had been "friends" with Kari for a few years on Myspace. I don't remember exactly how she found and added me, but it may have been through a friend-of-a-friend in Texas, of all places. We were never the sort of pals to write long-winded messages to each other, but I thought she was brave and funny. Her profile was filled with gross-out jokes and crude statements, and I didn't really know anyone like that. She seemed like a person who didn't care what others thought, and I have always thought that was an interesting way to be.

When she told me she was moving to New York, I gave her advice I would have liked to have. I hooked her up with a room my friend Alex was renting (yes, the one on Bergen. It was not "condemned", she was "kicked out"). I told her that I would show her around, introduce her to my friends, etc. And that's what I did. I met her after work one day, and we went to my friend John's house for a small get-together. She would crack Asian jokes at her own expense and say funny things and told us a great story about her real parents. We liked her. It didn't last too long, though, and not just because we thought she was a liar.

After first meeting her, I admired quite a few things about the way she operated, things that I now see very clearly as deceptive. I thought it was neat that she could talk to anyone and everyone, and how she could somehow find them interesting enough, and vice versa, to get all of their contact information and plans to hang out soon, all after a few minutes of meeting them. My friends were her first victims in New York in that regard. We were bombarded with texts and emails from her to hang out. She was constantly looking for something to do, somewhere to go. At first I chalked it up to being in New York for the first time, feeling a bit out of it and stir-crazy, as we all might. Then: it just got annoying.

I would like to say that my first huge problem with Kari was that I realized right away who she really was. That's just not true. The first real problem with Kari was that she was so markedly different than me and my friends. While I love and cherish my pals to the utmost degree....we don't really hang out that much. We email and text funny things daily, but we don't get together every day...sometimes, not even every week. Kari didn't seem to understand that, and so we all started twitching a bit and wondering if she was bugging the others just as much.

Then there was the matter of too many inconsistencies. For as much success as she's had conning people, she's not a very good liar. Or, not a very careful one. As The Observer article mentions, it's strange that she would use her real name. And that job she had at Goldenvoice? I introduced her to a friend who works for William Morris in the music department. I thought they would have a lot to talk about. She mentioned a bunch of normal first names to him, seeing if any of them stuck, and then would pretend to know the person he was talking about. Thinking back on moments like that, I can't believe that I didn't see it. When I was leaving my job at Jonathan Adler, she was very quick to say that she could get me one at Goldenvoice. She even had her "boss" email me. When I emailed him back (what a fool), the address didn't work. How curious!

Money is an interesting thing. It makes people lose their minds. Don't get me wrong: I think Kari Ferrell lost her mind a long time ago, which is sad. But, as more and more comes out about this girl, it seems that all of her lies and stories are rooted in monetary gain. We were lucky. Unlike her ex-boyfriend Casey, we were not victims of Kari in this way, aside from a few meals, drinks, or train rides here and there. That was not for lack of trying, though. Reading about her bogus check scam, my stomach dropped. She tried that on each one of my friends, including me. None of us went for it, and I can't tell you how glad I am for that.

Then comes the cancer. Oh, cancer. Such a fun and crazy thing to lie to people about! Especially people (and I would guess this applies to most people, sadly) who have lost a loved one to the very same disease. My own Papa Bill is watching Grandpa Bud struggle with this monster right now...it's not fun. It's not funny. There's nothing funny about it.

See, I didn't even know about the cancer. Despite being the one to have "known" her for the longest, I first heard about it from Chelsea and John, to whom Kari had light-heartedly confessed to having the disease randomly one night. Chelsea's employers work in the health care industry, and she went to them with Kari's story, asking if there was any way they could help Kari get the surgeries she so desperately needed, but couldn't afford. They were going to try to find a way to help her, but Kari never came through with any information for them. I think if I were dying of cancer, I would probably take any assistance I could get, and as quickly as I could get it. Kari just made excuses, and said that she didn't feel right getting help from strangers. I suppose she only feels right stealing it from them. Many lies and fake hospital visits and "coughing up blood" later, us kids got together, had a discussion, and made a decision.

We decided that Kari did not have cancer. We worried that we would look like huge dickheads if we were wrong. I mean, who lies about having cancer? We worried that we might be casting away this poor girl, whose adoptive parents were allegedly abusive, who seemed to have all kinds of trouble getting her finances straight. We're good people, after all. Or, we try to be, any way. It's hard with people like Kari coming in and blowing our minds.

I felt incredibly guilty for bringing all of the drama into our usually happy circle. I felt awful for getting her a place to live, with a person I'd worked with every day, for christ's sake. I felt like a naive doofus, who had been taken in by a scam artist. I warned every one I had introduced her to, telling them things like, "You know that girl? Kari? Yeah, I think she's a con artist. Stay away from her." That doesn't make me look very stable, now does it? I knew I had to be the one to tell her to fuck off. So I did. It sucked. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I still wondered if maybe we were all being the crazy ones.

She didn't deny anything. She didn't seem upset. She wasn't upset, I realize. Me, and everyone she'd met through me, were just people she pretended to want to know. She told us she had cancer. She tried to steal money from us, as if any of us has any money to steal. She would have taken things from us, knowing that her theft would mean that we wouldn't be able to pay the rent that month, despite working hard for the things we have. Well, not too hard, or anything: but still. I told her not to contact us any more. A few of us contacted the Salt Lake police department, who said they couldn't do anything, since she was in New York. The NYPD basically told us they had more important things to do, like, oh, solve murders and stuff. She sent a text to a friend a few days later, asking why he wasn't returning any of her calls. He perfectly replied with: "We know who you are."

And now, everyone else does, too.